Perennials

I’ve betrayed them all:

columbine and daisy,

iris, daylily,

even the rain barrel

that spoke to me in a dream.

 

I inherited this garden, and

miss my grandmother

in her big sun hat.

My inexperienced hands

don’t know what to hope for.

 

Still, flowers come: yellow,

pink, and blue. Preoccupied,

I let them go

until weeds produce spikes

and seeds around them.

 

I never used the rain barrel.

Water froze in the bottom;

too late, I set it on its side.

 

Now lily-of-the-valley comes

with its shy bloom,

choked by a weed

I don’t know the name of. One day,

too late, I’ll weed around them,

and pull some lilies by mistake.

 

Next year we’ll all be back,

struggling.

 

Just look at these flowers

I’ve done nothing to deserve:

and still, they won’t abandon me.

 

Kathleen Norris, Journey (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001)

My Daughter and Apple Pie

She serves me a piece of it a few minutes

out of the oven. A little steam rises
from the slits on top. Sugar and spice -
cinnamon - burned into the crust.
But she's wearing these dark glasses
in the kitchen at ten o'clock
in the morning - everything nice -
as she watches me break off
a piece, bring it to my mouth,
and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen,
in winter. I fork the pie in
and tell myself to stay out of it.
She says she loves him. No way
could it be worse.

Raymond Carver, anotherhand.livejournal.com November 25, 2010

Daystar

She wanted a little room for thinking;

but she saw diapers steaming on the line,
a doll slumped behind the door.

So she lugged a chair behind the garage
to sit out the children’s naps.

Sometimes there were things to watch –
the pinched armor of a vanished cricket,
a floating maple leaf. Other days
she stared until she was assured
when she closed her eyes
she’d see only her own vivid blood.

She had an hour, at best, before Liza appeared
pouting from the top of the stairs.
And just what was mother doing
out back with the field mice?  Why,

building a palace. Later
that night when Thomas rolled over and
lurched into her, she would open her eyes
and think of the place that was hers
for an hour – where
she was nothing,
pure nothing, in the middle of the day.

Rita Dove, madpoetssociety.com/blog January 4, 2020

Night Ambush

We are still, lips swollen with mosquito bites.
A treeline opens out onto paddies
quartered by dikes, a moon in each,
and in the center, the hedged island of a village
floats in its own time, ribboned with smoke.
Someone is cooking fish.
Whispers move across water.
Children and old people. Anyone between
is a target. It is so quiet
you can hear a safety clicked off
all the way on the other side.
Things live in my hair. I do not bathe.
I have thrown away my underwear.
I have forgotten the why of everything.
I sense an indifference larger than anything
I know. All that will remain of us
is rusting metal disappearing in vines.
Above the fog that clots the hill ahead
a red tracer arcs and dims.
A black snake slides off the paddy dike
into the water and makes the moon shiver.

Doug Anderson, The Moon Reflected Fire (Alice James Books, 1994) 

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you've never read, never even
        heard of.

It is as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and now even as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your way to oblivion where you will join those
who have forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Billy Collins, Questions about Angels (University of Pittsburgh, 1991)

Just a reminder

A puppy thinks:

“Hey, these people I live with feed me,

love me,

provide me with a warm, dry home,

pet me and take good care of me…

They must be Gods!”

 

A kitten thinks:

“Hey, these people I live with feed me,

love me,

provide me with a warm, dry home,

pet me and take good care of me…

 I MUST BE A GOD!”

email from marc and angel, October 22, 2021

The Woodcutter Changes His Mind

When I was young, I cut the bigger, older trees for firewood, the
ones
with heart rot, dead and broken branches, the crippled and
deformed

ones, because, I reasoned, they were going to fall soon anyway,
and
therefore, I should give the younger trees more light and room
to grow.

Now I'm older and I cut the younger, strong and sturdy, solid
and beautiful trees, and I let the older ones have a few more
years

of light and water and leaf in the forest they have known so
long.
Soon enough they will be prostrate on the ground.

David Budbill, While We've Still Got Feet (Copper Canyon Press, 2005)