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