Walking to Oak-Head Pond, and Thinking of the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks
by Mary Oliver
What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,
not the inside of stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I’m fooled-
I’m wading along
in the sunlight-
and I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead-
I can see the light spilling
like a shower of meteors
into next week’s trees,
and I plan to be there soon-
and, so far, I am
just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.
I don’t know where
such certainty comes from-
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind-
but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth
with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines
against the hard possibility of stoppage-
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.
“Walking to Oak-Head Pond, and Thinking of the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks” by Mary Oliver, from What Do We Know. © Perseus Books Group, 2001.
———
Summer Cottage
by Anne Porter
This is a house
That smells of melons and roses
Sea-wind pours through it
The airy curtains float
And the wiry sprays
Of the sea-lavender
Tremble on the table
The hushed roar
Of the massive ocean
Covers us night and day
It shelters us
Like a tree shadow
We live in it
As in a forest.
“Summer Cottage” by Anne Porter, from Living Things Collected Poems. (c) Zoland Books, 2006.
———-
Poem for June 2009
To Brooklyn Bridge
by Hart Crane
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty–
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
–Till elevators drop us from our day . . .
I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;
And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,–
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!
Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.
Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky’s acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.
And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon . . . Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.
O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet’s pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover’s cry,–
Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path–condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.
Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City’s fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .
O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.
From The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane by Hart Crane, edited with an introduction and notes by Brom Weber. Used with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 1933, 1958, 1966 by Liveright Publishing Corporation.
————
Posted January 4, 2009 by Gayle
IN MEMORIAM
Glenn Goldman, founder
Book Soup, Los Angeles, California
1950-2009
Circles of Our Lives
Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon
within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.
Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.
Only music keeps us here,
each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.
And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone
into the darker circles of return.
-Wendell Berry
“Song (4)”, Collected Poems, 1957-1982, North Point Press, 1984
———–
Posted November 4, 2008 by Gayle
Excerpt from The Mad Farmer Manifesto: The First Amendment
by Wendell Berry
1.
‘…it is not too soon to provide by every
possible means that as few as possible shall be
without a little portion of land. The small
landholders are the most precious part of a state.’
~~~Jefferson to Reverend James Madison, October 28, 1785
This is the glimmering vein
of our sanity, dividing from us
from the start: land under us
to steady us when we stood,
free men in the great communion
of the free. The vision keeps
lighting in my mind, a window
in the horizon in the dark.
2.
To be sane in a mad time
is bad for the brain, worse
for the heart. The world
is a holy vision, had we clarity
to see it-a clarity that men
depend on men to make.
3.
It is ignorant money I declare
myself free from, money fat
and dreaming in its sums, driving
us into the streets of absence,
stranding the pasture trees
in the deserted language of banks.
usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.
And in a later excerpt from Some Further Words, Berry writes:
When I hear the stock market has fallen,
I say, “Long live gravity! Long live
stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces
of fantasy capitalism!” I think
an economy should be based on thrift,
on taking care of things, not on theft,
“The Mad Farmer Manifesto: The First Amendment” from The Mad Farmer Poems, a beautiful edition, accentuated by glorious engravings and general attention to printerly detail. Copyright 2008. Published by Press On Scroll Road. Engravings by Abigail Rorer.
——-
Posted October 5, 2008 by Gayle
A Certain Swirl
by Mary Ruefle
The classroom was dark, all the desks were empty,
and the sentence on the board was frightened to
find itself alone. The sentence wanted someone to
read it, the sentence thought it was a fine sentence, a
noble, thorough sentence, perhaps a sentence of
some importance, made of chalk dust, yes, but a sen-
tence that contained within itself a certain swirl not
unlike the nebulous heart of the unknown universe,
but if no one read it, how could it be sure? Perhaps it
was a dull sentence and that was why everyone had
left the room and turned out the lights. Night came,
and the moon with it. The sentence sat on the board
and shone. It was beautiful to look at, but no one
read it.
“A Certain Swirl” by Mary Ruefle from The Most Of It.© Wave Books, 2007. Reprinted with permission.
——–
Posted September 1, 2008 by Gayle
The Origin of Myth
by Ed Ochester
That summer I was drinking
apple cider vinegar because I read
in an obscure book it was good
for my health. A tablespoon or two
in a glass of spring water, with a bit
of honey or raw sugar. Controls weight,
the book said, flushes harmful toxins
from joints, tissues and organs.
“Doctor George Blodgett drank it
every day, and remained vigorous
until his death at age 94.”
One reads
and perhaps believes almost anything
when one has lived alone for a while.
I felt good, doing it, though perhaps
that was because I walked on the beach
every day, swam, then walked again,
collected beach glass smoothed by the waves.
Pale blue and green, like solidified air,
dark green like emeralds, very rarely
sapphire blue and once a tiny piece
of red round as the pupil of an eye.
No one was on the beach because it was
September, and I had a white cabin
to myself. I swam and walked and read
and ate sparingly. I had come there
to be alone, and to think things through.
Every morning I drank my vinegar.
I read that the soldier who gave Jesus
vinegar on a sponge did so not in mockery
but in pity, to offer a restorative.
After a week I set the “red eye” on my desk
so we could watch one another. At dusk
the mist far out over the water looked like
distant hills, and I understood how
an earlier inhabitant might have thought
these were mountains that rose at nightfall
and disappeared with the dawn.
From Unreconstructed: Poems Selected and New. (c) Autumn House Press, 2007.
Ed Ochester’s most recent books are The Land of Cockaigne (Story Line Press, 2001), Cooking in Key West (chapbook, Adastra Press, 2000), and Snow White Horses: Selected Poems 1973-1988 (Autumn House Press, 2000). He edits the Pitt Poetry Series and is a member of the core faculty of the Bennington MFA Writing Seminars.
- – - – - – - – -
Posted July 6, 2008 by Gayle
The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
——–
Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of
Wendell Berry. Copyright (c) 1998. Published and reprinted by
arrangement with Counterpoint Press, a member of the Perseus Books
Group (www.perseusbooks.com). All rights reserved.
——–
Posted June 8, 2008 by Gayle
i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart) c
by e. e. cummings
from e.e. cummings a selection of poems
published by Harcourt
——–
Posted May 4, 2008 by Gayle
Percy and Books (Eight)
Percy does not like it when I read a book.
He puts his face over the top of it and moans.
He rolls his eyes, sometimes he sneezes.
The sun is up, he says, and the wind is down.
The tide is out and the neighbor’s dogs are playing.
But Percy, I say, Ideas! The elegance of language!
The insights, the funniness, the beautiful stories
that rise and fall and turn into strength, or courage.
Books? says Percy. I ate one once, and it was enough.
Let’s go.
Red Bird by Mary Oliver
Copyright © 2008 by Mary Oliver
Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston
——————-
Posted April 1, 2008 by Gayle
Gift-Shop Lady
Door that stuck, needing
a second shove, then, chiming,
opened. Mewing, mottled
orange-black shop kitten
that became a feline in prime,
then old dozing cat.
For fifteen years,
heading to work or taking
an office break -- manic
after a good class; unsettled
from a drawn-out, divisive
tenure meeting; oppressed
by long papers to grade,
recommendation requests --
I’d stop by in all weathers
for the cat, her owner’s
easy-going, graying hippie
presence, and for the chance
I’d find (depending
on that day’s mood and need)
some small thing for my partner,
a friend, myself.
Or the right card: “Blank”
(with paired birds, or maybe
a private dreamscape),
to celebrate our unsanctioned
anniversary; simple, vivid
“Birthday” for a friend;
“Congratulations” on a student’s thesis,
grad-school acceptance;
or (with increasing frequency)
a non-religious “Sympathy.”
When I’d come in
she’d be there
with her cheerful
leftist and health complaints,
her un-intrusive questions,
restaurant recommendations.
Rummaging in a drawer,
she found the earrings I wore
-- silver and shell-pink drops --
to my daughter’s second wedding.
(We’re in group photos with
his dark son and her blond son;
great-grandmother, knee-highs
bunching, in her chair;
the brimming-with-certainty bride;
the middle-aged groom,
grateful, stalwart, stunned.)
The shop closed last week,
and I’m nearing retirement.
What are we here for?
Which students (Three?
None? Ten?) will make
long-lasting use of something
I don’t remember I said?
How many customers
did she connect with
someone so that something
un-guessable that matters
will someday happen?
A small shop,
full of inexpensive things.
We traded views on movies.
I don’t think we exchanged names.
—–
Posted March 1, 2008 by Gayle
Outside of Richmond, Virginia, Sunday
It’s the kind of mid-January afternoon-
the sky as calm as an empty bed,
fields indulgent,
black Angus finally sitting down to chew-
that makes a girl ride her bike up and down the same muddy track of road
between the gray barn and the state highway
all afternoon, the black mutt
with the white patch like a slap on his rump
loping after the rear tire, so happy.
Right after Sunday dinner
until she can see the headlights out on the dark highway,
she rides as though she has an understanding with the track she’s opened up in
the road,
with the two wheels that slide and stutter in the red mud
but don’t run off from under her,
with the dog who knows to stay out of the way but to stay.
And even after the winter cold draws tears,
makes her nose run,
even after both sleeves are used up,
she thinks a life couldn’t be any better than this.
And hers won’t be,
and it will be very good.
——–
Posted February 1, 2008 by Gayle
The Change
The season turned like the page of a glossy fashion magazine.
In the park the daffodils came up
and in the parking lot, the new car models were on parade.
Sometimes I think that nothing really changes—
The young girls show the latest crop of tummies,
and the new president proves that he’s a dummy.
But remember the tennis match we watched that year?
Right before our eyes
some tough little European blonde
pitted against that big black girl from Alabama,
cornrowed hair and Zulu bangles on her arms,
some outrageous name like Vondella Aphrodite—
We were just walking past the lounge
and got sucked in by the screen above the bar,
and pretty soon
we started to care about who won,
putting ourselves into each whacked return
as the volleys went back and forth and back
like some contest between
the old world and the new,
and you loved her complicated hair
and her to-hell-with-everybody stare,
and I,
I couldn’t help wanting
the white girl to come out on top,
because she was one of my kind, my tribe,
with her pale eyes and thin lips
and because the black girl was so big
and so black,
so unintimidated,
hitting the ball like she was driving the Emancipation Proclamation
down Abraham Lincoln’s throat,
like she wasn’t asking anyone’s permission.
There are moments when history
passes you so close
you can smell its breath,
you can reach your hand out
and touch it on its flank,
and I don’t watch all that much Masterpiece Theatre,
but I could feel the end of an era there
in front of those bleachers full of people
in their Sunday tennis-watching clothes
as that black girl wore down her opponent
then kicked her ass good
then thumped her once more for good measure
and stood up on the red clay court
holding her racket over her head like a guitar.
And the little pink judge
had to climb up on a box
to put the ribbon on her neck,
still managing to smile into the camera flash,
even though everything was changing
and in fact, everything had already changed—
Poof, remember? It was the twentieth century almost gone,
we were there,
and when we went to put it back where it belonged,
it was past us
and we were changed.
—–
Posted October 13, 2007 by Gayle
Friends sent me these two poems. Thought them both worth passing on–one’s political, one’s a fairy tale. Poetry can be so energizing; well chosen words that convey so much and take only a few minutes to read. Garrison Keillor’s daily “The Writer’s Almanac” is my ‘reward’ when I finish my morning workout at the Y. There is nothing like starting my day with a good poem.
Amy Goodman recently interviewed Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the 88 year old founder of City Lights Bookstore in SF. He read a new poem of his about which he said, “I really want to get this out”.
Pity The Nation (After Khalil Gibran)
Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.
- – - – - – - -
Carol Ann Duffy is a Scottish poet and a friend of mine heard her read in Ireland. One of her books, is called, The World’s Wife, monologues of long-suffering wives of famous men.
Mrs Midas
It was late September. I’d just poured a glass of wine, begun
to unwind, while the vegetables cooked. The kitchen
filled with the smell of itself, relaxed, its steamy breath
gently blanching the windows. So I opened one,
then with my fingers wiped the other’s glass like a brow.
He was standing under the pear-tree snapping a twig.
Now the garden was long and the visibility poor, the way
the dark of the ground seems to drink the light of the sky,
but that twig in his hand was gold. And then he plucked
a pear from a branch, we grew Fondante d’Automne,
and it sat in his palm like a light-bulb. On.
I thought to myself, Is he putting fairy lights in the tree?
He came into the house. The doorknobs gleamed.
He drew the blinds. You know the mind; I thought of
the Field of the Cloth of Gold and of Miss Macready.
He sat in that chair like a king on a burnished throne.
The look on his face was strange, wild, vain; I said,
What in the name of God is going on? He started to laugh.
I served up the meal. For starters, corn on the cob.
Within seconds he was spitting out the teeth of the rich.
He toyed with his spoon, then mine, then with the knives, the forks.
He asked where was the wine. I poured with a shaking hand,
a fragrant, bone-dry white from Italy, then watched
as he picked up the glass, goblet, golden chalice, drank.
It was then that I started to scream. He sank to his knees.
After we’d both calmed down, I finished the wine
on my own, hearing him out. I made him sit
on the other side of the room and keep his hands to himself.
I locked the cat in the cellar. I moved the phone.
The toilet I didn’t mind. I couldn’t believe my ears:
how he’d had a wish. Look, we all have wishes; granted.
But who has wishes granted? Him. Do you know about gold?
It feeds no one; aurum, soft, untarnishable; slakes
no thirst. He tried to light a cigarette; I gazed, entranced,
as the blue flame played on its luteous stem. At least,
I said, you’ll be able to give up smoking for good.
Separate beds. In fact, I put a chair against my door,
near petrified. He was below, turning the spare room
into the tomb of Tutankhamen. You see, we were passionate then,
in those halcyon days; unwrapping each other, rapidly.
like presents, fast food. But now I feared his honeyed embrace,
the kiss that would turn my lips to a work of art.
And who, when it comes to the crunch, can live
with a heart of gold? That night, I dreamt I bore
his child, its perfect ore limbs, its little tongue
like a precious latch, its amber eyes
holding their pupils like flies. My dream-milk
burned in my breasts. I woke to the streaming sun.
So he had to move out. We’d a caravan
in the wilds, in a glade of its own. I drove him up
under cover of dark. He sat in the back.
And then I came home, the woman who married the fool
who wished for gold. At first I visited, odd times,
parking the car a good way off, then walking.
You knew you were getting close. Golden trout
on the grass. One day, a hare hung from a larch,
a beautiful lemon mistake. And then his footprints,
glistening next to the river’s path. He was thin,
delirious; hearing, he said, the music of Pan
from the woods. Listen. That was the last straw.
What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed
but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness. I sold
the contents of the house and came down here.
I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,
and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead. I miss most,
even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch.
