When they laid you in the crook
of my arms like a bouquet and I looked
into your eyes, dark bits of evening sky,
I thought, of course this is you,
like a person who has never seen the sea
can recognize it instantly.
They pulled you from me like a cork
and all the love flowed out. I adored you
with the squandering passion of spring
that shoots green from every pore.
You dug me out like a well. You lit
the deadwood of my heart. You pinned me
to the earth with the points of stars.
I was sure that kind of love would be
enough. I thought I was your mother.
How could I have known that over and over
you would crack the sky like lightning,
illuminating all my fears, my weaknesses, my sins.
Massive the burden this flesh
must learn to bear, like mules of love.
Tag Archives: Poem of the Week
Poem of the Week: To My Daughter on Her Twenty-First Birthday, by Ellen Bass
Filed under Book Reviews, Poem of the Week, Uncategorized
Tree Stump o’ Deep Thought You’re Not Usually Capable Of, by Stephan Pastis via Poetry Mistress Alison McGhee
Tree Stump o’ Deep Thought You’re Not Usually Capable Of, by Stephan Pastis
No one knows what we’re doing here.
Some have faith that they do, but no one knows.
So we are scared.
We are alone.
We end.
And we don’t know where we go.
So we cling to money for comfort.
And we chase awards for immortality.
And we hide in the routine of our days.
But then the night.
Always the night.
Which, when it has you alone, whispers that
maybe none of this has any significance.
So love everyone you’re with.
Because comforting each other
on this journey we neither asked for
nor understand
is the best we can do.
And laugh as much as you can.
Filed under Book Reviews, Poem of the Week, Uncategorized
Poem of the Week: Goldenrod, by Maggie Smith via Poetry Mistress Alison McGhee
Goldenrod, by Maggie Smith
I’m no botanist. If you’re the color of sulfur
and growing at the roadside, you’re goldenrod.
You don’t care what I call you, whatever
you were born as. You don’t know your own name.
But driving near Peoria, the sky pink-orange,
the sun bobbing at the horizon, I see everything
is what it is, exactly, in spite of the words I use:
black cows, barns falling in on themselves, you.
Dear flowers born with a highway view,
forgive me if I’ve mistaken you. Goldenrod,
whatever your name is, you are with your own kind.
Look—the meadow is a mirror, full of you,
your reflection repeating. Whatever you are,
I see you, wild yellow, and I would let you name me.
Thanks to Alison for finding and sharing these beautiful poems.
For more information on Maggie Smith, please click here.
Filed under Book Reviews, Poem of the Week, Uncategorized
Poem of the Week from “Work” by Mary Oliver via Poetry Mistress Alison McGhee
from “Work”
– Mary Oliver
All day I have been pining for the past.
That’s when the big dog, Luke, breathed at my side.
Then she dashed away then she returned
in and out of the swales, in and out of the creeks,
her dark eyes snapping.
Then she broke, slowly,
in the rising arc of a fever.
And now she’s nothing
except for mornings when I take a handful of words
and throw them into the air
so that she dashes up again out of the darkness,
like this–
this is the world.
Thank you Alison, for curating and sharing these lovely poems.
For more information on Mary Oliver, please click here.
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Poem of the Week: In the Middle of This Century, by Yehuda Amichai via Poetry Mistress Alison McGhee
This poem hurts, its so beautiful.
In the Middle of This Century, by Yehuda Amichai (translated by Assia Gutmann)
In the middle of this century we turned to each other
with half faces and full eyes
like an ancient Egyptian picture
and for a short while.
I stroked your hair
in the opposite direction to your journey,
we called to each other,
like calling out the names of towns
where nobody stops
along the route.
Lovely is the world rising early to evil,
lovely is the world falling asleep to sin and pity,
in the mingling of ourselves, you and I,
lovely is the world.
The earth drinks men and their loves
like wine,
to forget.
It can’t.
And like the contours of the Judean hills,
we shall never find peace.
In the middle of this century we turned to each other,
I saw your body, throwing shade, waiting for me,
the leather straps for a long journey
already tightening across my chest.
I spoke in praise of your mortal hips,
you spoke in praise of my passing face,
I stroked your hair in the direction of your journey,
I touched your flesh, prophet of your end,
I touched your hand which has never slept,
I touched your mouth which may yet sing.
Dust from the desert covered the table
at which we did not eat
but with my finger I wrote on it
the letters of your name
Thanks to Alison McGhee for sharing these beautiful poems.
*Transliterated Mandarin is not pronounced the way it looks in English. Phonetically, Liu’s name is pronounced more like this: Lee-yu Shee-yow Baw. His wife’s name is pronounced more like Lee-yu Shee-yah.
Filed under Book Reviews, Poem of the Week
Poem of the Week: The Mower by Philip Larkin via Poetry Mistress Alison McGhee
The Mower, by Philip Larkin
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
a hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
is always the same; we should be careful
of each other, we should be kind
while there is still time.
For more information about Philip Larkin, please click here.
Thanks to Alison for finding and sharing these beautiful poems.
Filed under Book Reviews, Poem of the Week, Uncategorized
Poem of the Week: Pulled Over in Short Hills, NJ, 8:00 AM, by Ross Gay
Pulled Over in Short Hills, NJ, 8:00 AM, by Ross Gay
It’s the shivering. When rage grows
hot as an army of red ants and forces
the mind to quiet the body, the quakes
emerge, sometimes just the knees,
but, at worst, through the hips, chest, neck
until, like a virus, slipping inside the lungs
and pulse, every ounce of strength tapped
to squeeze words from my taut lips,
his eyes scanning my car’s insides, my eyes,
my license, and as I answer the questions
3, 4, 5 times, my jaw tight as a vice,
his hand massaging the gun butt, I
imagine things I don’t want to
and inside beg this to end
before the shiver catches my
hands, and he sees,
and something happens.
Thank you Alison McGhee for posting these amazing poems.
For more information on Ross Gay, please click here.
Filed under Book Reviews, Poem of the Week, Uncategorized
Poem of the Week: The Blue Light by Tim Nolan via Poetry Mistress Alison McGhee
The Blue Light, by Tim Nolan
I asked her to come to me
in whatever way she chose
As the wind, as the ruffling
water, as the red maple leaf
So today I closed my eyes
halfway toward sleep
And she came in a blue light
blue as a tropical ocean
Turning toward a darker blue
as the Sun passed
Coming in blue waves coming
in from the side of my eyes
Somehow bathing me in blue—
a blue that seemed to be
Her gaze –turned to blue—
just as she was a few weeks ago
Her blue eyes and mine meeting
in that long long look
For more information on Tim Nolan, please click here.
Thank you as always Alison for selecting and sharing these beautiful poems.
Filed under Book Reviews, Poem of the Week, Uncategorized
Poem of the Week: Pass On by Michael Lee
Pass On, by Michael Lee
When searching for the lost remember 8 things.
1.
We are vessels. We are circuit boards
swallowing the electricity of life upon birth.
It wheels through us creating every moment,
the pulse of a story, the soft hums of labor and love.
In our last moment it will come rushing
from our chests and be given back to the wind.
When we die. We go everywhere.
2.
Newton said energy is neither created nor destroyed.
In the halls of my middle school I can still hear
my friend Stephen singing his favorite song.
In the gymnasium I can still hear
the way he dribbled that basketball like it was a mallet
and the earth was a xylophone.
With an ear to the Atlantic I can hear
the Titanic’s band playing her to sleep,
Music. Wind. Music. Wind.
3.
The day my grandfather passed away there was the strongest wind,
I could feel his gentle hands blowing away from me.
I knew then they were off to find someone
who needed them more than I did.
On average 1.8 people on earth die every second.
There is always a gust of wind somewhere.
4.
The day Stephen was murdered
everything that made us love him rushed from his knife wounds
as though his chest were an auditorium
his life an audience leaving single file.
Every ounce of him has been
wrapping around this world in a windstorm
I have been looking for him for 9 years.
5.
Our bodies are nothing more than hosts to a collection of brilliant things.
When someone dies I do not weep over polaroids or belongings,
I begin to look for the lightning that has left them,
I feel out the strongest breeze and take off running.
6.
After 9 years I found Stephen.
I passed a basketball court in Boston
the point guard dribbled like he had a stadium roaring in his palms
Wilt Chamberlain pumping in his feet,
his hands flashing like x-rays,
a cross-over, a wrap-around
rewinding, turn-tables cracking open,
camera-men turn flash bulbs to fireworks.
Seven games and he never missed a shot,
his hands were luminous.
Pulsing. Pulsing.
I asked him how long he’d been playing,
he said nine 9 years
7.
The theory of six degrees of separation
was never meant to show how many people we can find,
it was a set of directions for how to find the people we have lost.
I found your voice Stephen,
found it in a young boy in Michigan who was always singing,
his lungs flapping like sails
I found your smile in Australia,
a young girl’s teeth shining like the opera house in your neck,
I saw your one true love come to life on the asphalt of Boston.
8.
We are not created or destroyed,
we are constantly transferred, shifted and renewed.
Everything we are is given to us.
Death does not come when a body is too exhausted to live
Death comes, because the brilliance inside us can only be contained for so long.
We do not die. We pass on, pass on the lightning burning through our throats.
when you leave me I will not cry for you
I will run into the strongest wind I can find
and welcome you home.
Thanks to Alison McGhee for curating this beautiful poems.
Filed under Book Reviews, Poem of the Week, Uncategorized
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