Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

 

The loud voice is famous to silence,  

which knew it would inherit the earth  

before anybody said so.  

 

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds  

watching him from the birdhouse.  

 

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.  

 

The idea you carry close to your bosom  

is famous to your bosom.  

 

The boot is famous to the earth,  

more famous than the dress shoe,  

which is famous only to floors.

 

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it  

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.  

 

I want to be famous to shuffling men  

who smile while crossing streets,  

sticky children in grocery lines,  

famous as the one who smiled back.

 

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,  

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,  

but because it never forgot what it could do.

 

Naomi Shihab Nye, Words Under the Words  (Far Corner Books, 1995)

Lord, how much juice you can squeeze

Lord, how much juice you can squeeze from a single grape.

How much water you can draw from a single well.

How great a fire you can kindle from a tiny spark.

How great a tree you can grow from a tiny seed.

My soul is so dry that by itself it cannot pray;

Yet you can squeeze from it the juice of a thousand prayers.

My soul is so parched that by itself it cannot love;

Yet you can draw from it boundless love for you and for my neighbor.

My soul is so cold that by itself it has no joy;

Yet you can light the fire of heavenly joy within me.

My soul is so feeble that by itself it has no faith;

Yet by your power my faith grows to a great height.

Thank you for prayer, for love, for joy, for faith;

Let me always be prayerful, loving, joyful, faithful.

 

Guigo the Carthusian, Facebook Group: Mystic Prayers March 20, 2021 

The First Book

Open it.

 

Go ahead, it won’t bite.

Well…maybe a little.

 

More a nip, like. A tingle.

It’s pleasurable, really.

 

You see, it keeps on opening.

You may fall in.

 

Sure, it’s hard to get started;

remember learning to use

 

knife and fork? Dig in:

you’ll never reach bottom.

 

It’s not like it’s the end of the world –

just the world as you think

 

you know it.

 

Rita Dove, 318class710.blogspot.com 

The Gift

To pull the metal splinter from my palm

my father recited a story in a low voice.

I watched his lovely face and not the blade.

Before the story ended, he’d removed

the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

 

I can’t remember the tale,

but hear his voice still, a well

of dark water, a prayer.

And I recall his hands,

two measures of tenderness

he laid against my face,

the flames of discipline

he raised above my head.

 

Had you entered that afternoon

you would have thought you saw a man

planting something in a boy’s palm,

a silver tear, a tiny flame.

Had you followed that boy

you would have arrived here,

where I bend over my wife’s right hand.

 

Look how I shave her thumbnail down

so carefully she feels no pain.

Watch as I lift the splinter out.

I was seven when my father

took my hand like this,

and I did not hold that shard

between my fingers and think,

Metal that will bury me,

christen it Little Assassin,

Ore Going Deep for My Heart.

And I did not lift up my wound and cry,

Death visited here!

I did what a child does

when he’s given something to keep.

I kissed my father.

 

Li-Young Lee, Rose (BOA Editions, 1986) 

Glory

A July afternoon 
A friend’s deck 
A Michigan lake

A bald eagle lodges itself onto a nearby tree 
Big brute shoulders and murderous intent 
Then off as he galumphs over the water

A Baltimore oriole comes to a feeder 
Bold beautiful black above a brilliant belly 
I thought I understood orange

The eagle is a torpedo bomber 
The oriole God’s paintbrush 
So much to be astonished by

I look for the edge 
What we’ve almost lost 
What we’re losing

Yet today is heaven 
Bright sun dancing on blue water 
I break off a bit of bread with my wine

 

Jeffery Munroe, Christian Century July 2024

Twenty Minutes in the Backyard

The house sparrow flies to the ground

To get the seed that has fallen from the feeder.

 

In doing so, it flies through a bit of spiderweb

Which works as something like a phone call

 

To the spider, who then answers with a hello,

Careful and very quiet, but nobody is there.

 

This happens a lot to spiders.

It makes them grumble about the neighbors

 

Who walk across the spider’s curious lawn.

But the complaint is hollow—sometimes

 

Someone is indeed there, a fly, a moth,

Any number and manner of very small beast.

 

They try to run away but are tripped up

By the long, thin fingers of the web.

 

The small thing quivers, asks politely, please,

To be let go, followed by a sincere apology.

 

But a spider does not have ears. This explains

Why it does not hear the house sparrow

 

Swoop up into the air, high enough

To reach the spider. Few leaves rustle,

 

While the whole world simply moves forward.

This is the Saturday business of the immense

 

Backyard conglomerate at work.

If one listens, one might hear

 

The great, bustling city of it all,

The small sirens and screams,

 

The caterpillars backing up,

The geckos at their mysterious work.

 

Victoria Chang, You Are Here Ada Limon, ed. (Milkweed Editions, 2024)

Autobiographia

I had everything and luck: Rings of smoke
blown for me; sunlight safe inside the leaves
of cottonwoods; pure, simple harmonies
of church music, echoes of slave songs; scraps
of candy wrappers -- airborne. Everything.
Mother and father, brother, aunts, uncles;
chores and schoolwork and playtime. Everything.

I was given gloves against winter cold.
I was made to wear gloves when I gardened.
I was made to garden; taught to hold forks
in my left hand when cutting, in my right
when bringing food to my mouth. Everything.

I had clothes I was told not to wear outside;
a face you could clean up almost handsome;
I had friends to fight with and secrets, spread
all over the neighborhood; the best teachers,
white and colored. I'm not making this up.
I knew that I had everything. Still do.

 

G. E. Patterson, poetrynook.com accessed on August 8, 2022 

When I forget that the whole world is holy

When I forget that the whole world
is holy, even the tiny dark bugs
that slip through window screens
and flock and stick to kitchen lights,
even the charred black remains of forest,
even the river as it floods bright red,
even when my cheeks are tear-stained
and my body tightens with fear,
that is when a kind letter from a stranger
arrives in the mail, or the rabbit will stand
on his back legs to nibble on mint,
or the meadow will blaze with the day’s
last slant of sunlight and my heart opens
so wide that inside the fear rises praise.

 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com July 17, 2024

The Fair

The fair rolled into town surprisingly intact, like a plate unbreakable because it has been dropped and glued so many times that it is all glue and no plate. The fair was no fair. But, oh, it was a thrill! The fair slid into town just as a clown slides into pants. The fit was loose but right. The sheriff  had a job directing traffic. The barber was the sheriff  for a night, and people paid to see a human ape. They frowned to find her happy and alive. The fair spilled into town like a box of tacks. Later that month, in with the rest at church, were people no one knew, though none could tell exactly who was who.

 

Joshua Mehigan, Poetry May 2014

Six Inches

One minute I’m meandering down
a country road on a magnificent fall day,
lost in thought, radio playing,
and the next minute I feel my wheels

on the loose gravel of the shoulder,
there’s a deafening bang and I’m
climbing out of what’s left of my car.
The cop who came to investigate

was pretty sure I’d been speeding
but settled for lecturing me about how lucky
I was to walk away from such a crash,
that I’d be dead if my car had hit the tree

just six inches further to the left.
Anyone could see that what he said was true,
but it also struck me as I stood there
watching his car flash red and blue

that it was equally true the accident
would not have happened at all
if a raging storm some sixty years ago
hadn’t blown an acorn six inches closer

to the road than where it would’ve landed
on a day as sunny and calm as the one
we were in. It was a point I thought deserved
serious exploration—though perhaps

not just then, I decided, with a hundred birds
singing their tiny hearts out overhead
and the sky raining down yellow leaves,
and definitely not with the cop.

 

Jeff Coomer, A Potentially Quite Day (Last Leaf Press, 2015) 

When we still had forests

I was a feather collector.
The hundreds I’d gathered
affixed to yellowing pages:

-goose quills left along riverbanks,
-gull plumes from fast food parking lots,
-down preened by mourning doves.

Now impossible to find. I’m tired
of scanning skies in vain. After
I refresh birdbath water, discard
moldy seeds, refill the feeders, in case,
I’ll hike the once treed escarpment,
scrapbooks snuggled in backpack.

Swallow, sparrow, warbler, killdeer—
feather by feather. I’ll release each one
from the page. Let the wind
lift them into wings again.

 

Kimberly Peterson, poetrybreakfast.com August 8, 2024

Hamburger Heaven

Tonight we find them again,
parked under the stars
(no one ever
eats inside in Heaven),
beeping the tired carhop
with her pageboy and mascara
for a paper boat of French fries
drenched in sauce,
a smashed hamburger baptized
with spices.
They’re sixteen and in love;
the night is hot,
sweet and tangy on their tongues.
Why do we stop?
They’re in Heaven, after all,
listening to the fry cook
in the kitchen
with his savory benedictions,
the AM radio playing
“Love Me Tender,” “Peggy Sue,”
unperturbed by the future with its
franchises and malls, its
conglomerates and information
highways. Is there something
we would tell them?
Here in Hamburger Heaven where
the nights go on forever,
where desire’s resurrected
and every hunger’s filled?
Wait! Do we call out?
But now they’ve seen us
close behind them with our
fervent “Thou Shalt Nots,”
our longings glaring in
the rearview mirror.
And they’ve turned on
the ignition
and they’ve floored it
and are gone.

 

Ronald Wallace, For a Limited Time Only (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008)

Build Up the Ruins

They shall build up the ancient ruins...
                         —Isaiah 61.4

When you are surrounded by broken things,
when you find yourself in a barren place
of devastation and discouragement, take heart.
Blessed are you, for you have been sent by the Spirit
to do the work of love among ruins.
Blessed are you who mend the shattered,
who build up what's been torn down.
Blessed are you who accompany the broken,
who stand with light and hope amid the rubble.

We don't understand the stitching of wounded flesh,
the mystery that knits strands of death into life,
but in the splintered night you can hold the lamp,
you can bear, or at least bear witness to the love
that makes whole, that creates again,
that makes of these disappointed pieces
a new thing of beauty and glory.
The mystery is hidden in your being there.
Build up the ancient ruins, beloved;
the Spirit will guide and strengthen you.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes. unfoldinglight.net December 13, 2023

Taking Out the Trash

I remember as a child
watching my father take out the trash
at the frozen crack of dawn, cursing
as he dragged the stinking cans to the curb,
and thinking, that's not something
I'm ever going to do.

In other ways I was a model son,
standing at the mirror as he shaved,
dabbing the warm cream on my cheek,
dreaming of a razor
and whiskers of my very own.

Watching him light up
as he read the Sunday paper,
one eye squinted against smoke
and bad news, had me reading the funnies
before I could even read, my eye
squinted against nothing.

And the deft, one-handed way
he straightened his fedora's brim,
while at the same time
adjusting the coordinates
of rake and tilt,
makes me regret that the hat,
like my father, has vanished,

along with the strop and razor,
and lathery bowl of curds.
Even smoking, and the Sunday paper
are on their way out.

These are the losses I'm mourning
this morning as I drag the stinking
trash cans to the curb.

 

George Bilgere, writersalmanac.com July 31, 2013