On Safety

When the storms of life
come bearing down
threatening to
lash you senseless,
seek shelter.
Find the warm
blanket you caress
like the felted fur
of your cat
curled before
a glowing hearth,
of breath that fills
both heart and earth.
Breathe.
There’s always time
to curse the darkness.
After the tears,
light a honeycomb candle
and heal your own sun.
The bridge
from sorrow to joy
may seem to vanish
in the flood,
but who says you
can’t join those
who cross over,
with a single
braided rope
of gratitude.

 

Nadine Pinede, janicefalls.wordpress.com February 16, 2022

Improvement

The optometrist says my eyes

are getting better each year.

Soon he'll have to lower my prescription.

What's next? The light step I had at six?

All the gray hairs back to brown?

Skin taut as a drum?

My improved eyes and I

walked around town and celebrated.

We took in the letters

of the marquee, the individual leaves

filling out the branches of the sycamore,

an early moon.

So much goes downhill: our joints,

wearing out with every mile,

the delicate folds of the eardrum

exhausted from years of listening.

I'm grateful for small victories.

The way the heart still beats time

in the cathedral of the ribs.

And the mind, watching its parade of thoughts

enter and leave, begins to see them

for what they are: jugglers, fire swallowers, acrobats

tossing their batons in the air.

Danusha Lameris, Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburg Press, 2020)

Franz Marc's Blue Horses

I step into the painting of the four blue horses. 

I am not even surprised that I can do this.

 

One of the horses walks toward me.

His blue nose noses me lightly. I put my arm

over his blue mane, not holding on, just 

          commingling.

He allows me my pleasure.

Franz Marc died a young man, shrapnel in his brain.

I would rather die than try to explain to the blue horses 

          what war is.

They would either faint in horror, or simply

          find it impossible to believe.

I do not know how to thank you, Franz Marc.

Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.

Maybe the desire to make something beautiful

          is the piece of God that is inside each of us.

Now all four horses have come closer,

          are bending their faces toward me

                   as if they have secrets to tell.

I don’t expect them to speak, and they don’t.

If being so beautiful isn’t enough, what

          could they possibly say?

 

Mary Oliver, inwardboundpoetry.blogspot.com October 4, 2020

Gate C22

At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching—
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after—if she beat you or left you or
you’re lonely now—you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

 

Ellen Bass, janicefalls.wordpress.com June 7, 2023

Some Glad Morning

One day, something very old
happened again. The green
came back to the branches,
settling like leafy birds
on the highest twigs;
the ground broke open
as dark as coffee beans.

The clouds took up their
positions in the deep stadium
of the sky, gloving the
bright orb of the sun
before they pitched it
over the horizon.

It was as good as ever:
the air was filled
with the scent of lilacs
and cherry blossoms
sounded their long
whistle down the track.
It was some glad morning.

 

Joyce Sutphen, Naming the Stars (Holy Cow! Press, 2004)

The Conductor

There's no mention, of course, in the program
that the conductor has Parkinson's.
He enters the stage, stands for a moment
facing the audience,
his hands by his sides, tapping air.
Then he holds them together, an act of gratitude
—we are gathered, we can do this—
and of firmness, each hand forcing
the other to be still.
His expression, darkly bemused,
the good news/bad news:
I've lived long enough to lose so much.
Or maybe he's staving off our sympathy,
don't clap because of this.
Then he turns his back to us, begins his work,
Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony.
No baton, and from behind
his body is jerky as a boy's,
jumpy with excitement.
His hands shake when they scoop
the sections of the orchestra,
as though pulling a weighted net
from the sea. Still, I wonder if this work
is easier than taking on the ordinary
objects of a day—
buttons, keys, and pens.
I am an old man
he must think when he looks
in the mirror,
briefly naked before trading
the bathrobe for the tie and tails.
And when he turns to us again
after the last movement, he looks both
old and young, his face washed
of the expression in the program photograph,
clearly taken years before,
one eyebrow slightly raised,
his smile more satisfied than happy.
Now he shows us his innocence,
if innocence is what the face
unconstructed can be called.
What else can he do,
while his fingers tap their useless code,
while the audience, in rows, rises from their seats,
still clapping, what can he do
but show us who he is,
a man standing too close to the edge,
edge no one can call him back from.

 

Jacqueline Berger, The Gift That Arrives Broken (Autumn House Press, 2010)

The Radiation Waiting Room

They bring us to this pastel room,
          point to the lockers,
          point to the dressing rooms.
It could almost be a gym,
          only there’s a wheelchair, there’s Health News,
          there’s a complicated flower jigsaw puzzle,
          there are romance novels to borrow
          in case you will be returning often.
We change into gowns that tie in the back;
          some of us get to keep on our shirts,
          some our pants;
          we all wear shoes.
Those of us who have come so often
          wait comfortably,
          take care of the new ones,
          offer answers, directions, suggestions.
Only we are careful not to say
          how long we’ve been coming
          or what we have or
          what they’ve done
          or are about to do.

 

Susan Herron Sibbet, Great Blue (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2016)

Emily Dickinson at the Poetry Slam

I will tell you why she rarely ventured from her house.
It happened like this:

One day she took the train to Boston,
made her way to the darkened room,
put her name down in cursive script
and waited her turn.

When they read her name aloud
she made her way to the stage,
straightened the papers in her hands —
pages and envelopes, the backs of grocery bills,
she closed her eyes for a minute,
took a breath,
and began.

From her mouth perfect words exploded,
intact formulas of light and darkness.
She dared to rhyme with words like cochineal
and described the skies like diadem.
Obscurely worded incantations filled the room
with an alchemy that made the very molecules quake.

The solitary words she handled
in her upstairs room with keen precision
came rumbling out to make the electric lights flicker.

40 members of the audience
were treated for hypertension.
20-year-old dark-haired beauties found their heads
had turned a Moses White.

Her second poem erased the memory of every cellphone
in the nightclub,
and by the fourth line of the sixth verse
the grandmother in the upstairs apartment
had been cured of her rheumatism.

 

The papers reported the power outages.

The area hospitals taxed their emergency generators

and sirens were heard to wail through the night.

 

Quietly she made her way to the exit,

walked to the terminal and rode back to Amherst.

 

She never left her room again

and never read such syllables aloud.

 

Dan Vers, inwardboundpoetry.blogspot.com  June 17, 2021 

Go and Learn

             “Go and learn what this means,
           ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”
                           —Matthew 9.13 (quoting Hosea 6.6)

There are two religions in the world:
the religion of being right
and the religion of being loving.

They are incompatible.
Get it right and you may hurt someone.
Love, and you may break a rule.

We are always practicing one
or the other every moment,
always choosing.

This is Jesus' faith in a nutshell:
not religious orthodoxy but loving behavior.
Not being right but being loving.

I know this, and believe it deeply.
Yet Jesus' words stick:
“Go and learn.”

I'm not there yet.
I'm still right, and proud of it.
Still learning, still learning.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net June 9, 2023

Custodian

I am a custodian.
Custodian of the landscape,
its mysteries and memories.

Custodian of the May blossom
that wakes the hedges
after winter slumbers.

Custodian of languages:
the calling of cattle at first light,
the arguments of foxes,
the complaining of sheep
the gossip from overhead geese.

Custodian of the berries and sloes,
the rich bounty of hedgerows,
of the fallen trees,
the scampering of squirrels,
the whirring of pheasants’ wings,
the hide and seek deer,
the woodpecker’s drum roll.

Custodian of winter’s snow and summer’s draught,
of sunset and sunrise, of misty hideaways,
of dripping fog, of woods and streams,
the valleys, hills and skies.

I am a custodian.
I have no desire to own these things,
these places, just to know
that on my watch,
and until I relinquish responsibility -
All is as it should be.

 

Brian Moses, nationalpoetryday.co.uk accessed on June 11, 2023 

Blind Man

He strolls down the middle of the sidewalk
leaving little room for me. I lag behind
to get around an open gate, to avoid
a fence post, a mailbox sticking out.
You don’t walk as fast as you used to, he says,
striding ahead on his personal red carpet,
feet turned slightly out, a spring in his step
like he’s about to go up for a jump shot.
I dodge a low branch and the open door
of a parked car. Just as I decide
to hip-check him out into the street
he stops and crouches to pet
a little white cat. He croons to her,
stroking her arched back. The cat
closes her eyes and I think of how he sleeps
nestled against me, turning when I turn
all night long, and never wakes me.

 

Debra Spencer, Pomegranate (Hummingbird Press, 2004)

Baptism

The preacher pinches my nostrils between
thumb and forefinger, pushes me
backward, hard, into the chlorine sting
of the pool, its deep, still water immediately
closing in around me like a second flesh,
heavy and resolute. Once, then again,
I go under, the former self of my childhood
swimming away, an embryo in reverse.
The age of reason, against every obstacle,
has found me. I am old enough now,
my mother reminds me, to be held accountable,
old enough to suffer those unrelenting
flames through eternity, for lack of belief,
unintended blasphemy, or simple misunderstanding.
Far overhead, the sun blazes on, unblinking,
the world surrounding it seemingly turned
upside down, wheeling, tumbling,
while here below, sudden slashes of light
weave in and out of my periphery.
My instinct is to reach for it, to kick, flail,
break free from the grip that holds me;
my instinct is to save myself,
to simply not drown — as I feel I am —
whether by water, wine, or blood of sacred lamb.
Then, as if it were unexpected, I am pulled
back into the world, sputtering, gasping,
the welcome shock of oxygen like pinpricks
to the lungs, as if I had been running for miles,
my first steps back on land uncertain.
This world is not my home, they are singing,
so happy to only be passing through.
But I don't know what could be better than
this — the earth that accepts us again
and again, sinners to the last, the one on which
our songs are written, the one that sings
them all back to us in return.

 

Christine Klocek-Lim, autumnskypoetrydaily.com April 24, 2023

A Walk

 

I took a walk on the railroad track.
Followed that for a while
and got off at the country graveyard
where a man sleeps between
two wives. Emily van der Zee,
Loving Wife and Mother,
is at John van der Zee's right.
Mary, the second Mrs. van der Zee,
also a loving wife, to his left.
First Emily went, then Mary.
After a few years, the old fellow himself.
Eleven children came from these unions.
And they, too, would all have to be dead now.
This is a quiet place. As good a place as any
to break my walk, sit, and provide against
my own death, which comes on.
But I don't understand, and I don't understand.
All I know about this fine, sweaty life,
my own or anyone else's,
is that in a little while I'll rise up
and leave this astonishing place
that gives shelter to dead people. This graveyard.
And go. Walking first on one rail
and then the other.

 

Raymond Carver, All of Us: The Collected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000)

First Love

My first boyfriend was my second choice:
Beth got Gerry Jenson so I got Billy James
whose jaw hung, his tongue showing.

I looked down on Billy: girls were taller
in seventh grade. I wore his ID bracelet
and a motorcycle cap with his initials.

When we hugged, he smelled like Ivory soap,
his cheek smooth and soft—a Norman Rockwell boy.
Walking me home from school he carried my books,

and looked forward to a kiss at my door.
I knew he was trustworthy and true,
reliably mine, but Billy didn’t know me:

I’d met a tall guy who drove a Ford.
His cheeks were sandpaper rough
and he French kissed.

And on this day on my front porch,
when Billy handed me my books,
I handed him his ID bracelet

and watched his face redden, his eyes tear,
hurt bursting his seams. We both cried
soap-opera style, and Billy ran home.

In my room, I draped myself over my bed,
like an actress far away from home,
pained and in love with drama.

 

Jeanie Greensfelder, Biting the Apple (Penciled In Press, 2012)

Waves and Wet Kisses

I had only seen my parents kiss twice.
The first time after my father’s ear surgery.
I was seven or so, don’t recall the nature of the kiss
but only that his hearing was bad
from his youthful years of lifeguarding.
Or was it after he tore the cartilage around his ribs
from lifting heavy glass bottles of milk?
I don’t recall.

The second time was after my mother’s mastectomy.
They rolled her out of recovery.
She looked sad without her glasses —
eyes, small and watery.
He bent over and touched his lips to hers
then turned away and shook his head.

So that is it; that is all.
Two small kisses
for me to coast on like a wave.

 

Ann Iverson, Mouth of Summer (Kelsay Books, 2017) 

Honest Cheating

One day I crammed my notes and went for the exams,
But came information decay and washed it away.
Again I wrote them in shorthand on top of my desk
But came the teacher, and swapped the sitting arraignment.

I tried to copy off my friend, sitting close to my right,
But he was busy covering his work, with all his might.
Then I peeked at the guy on my left, in hopes of some luck,
But he caught me red-handed and gave me a grin, smug and stuck.

Desperately, I scratched my head, trying to jog my memory,
But all I could recall were the facts from my history.
I even tried to cough a code to my classmate in the back,
But the teacher caught me and threatened to give me the sack.

With my mind racing, I gazed up at the ceiling in despair
And saw the answers written up there, big and clear.
I blinked twice, rubbed my eyes, sure I had gone insane,
But my classmates were ogling too, with disbelief written plain.

Now, sweating and shaking, I decided to come clean,
"I am sorry, dear teacher, I tried to cheat in this scene,"
The class erupted with laughter, as my face turned red,
But I learned my lesson and, from then on, did not cheat ahead.

From that day on, I hit the books with all my might,
Taking diligent notes and studying late into the night.
I learned the value of proper preparation and hard work,
And how cheating would only lead to failure and smirk.

With great focus and determination, I aced the next exams,
Far surpassing my classmates and earning high in all realms.
I showed them that success can be achieved through honest means,
And that cheating is always a shortcut to shattered dreams.

So now I encourage all students to study with zeal,
Read with purpose and memorize with feel.
For if we work hard, we can achieve the best,
Without relying on cheating, which only brings unrest.

 

Olute Aete, internetpoem.com accessed on May 25, 2023