pest or miracle?

I just noticed, after posting this, that I started National Poetry Month poems with John Updike. How fitting to close with another. Hope you enjoyed these daily poems. Creeper by John Updike With what stoic delicacy does Virginia creeper let go: the feeblest tug brings down a sheaf of leaves kite-high, as if to say, To live is good but not to live—to be pulled down with scarce a ripping sound, still flourishing, still stretching toward the sun— is good also, all photosynthesis abandoned, quite quits. Next spring the hairy rootlets left unpulled snake out a leafy afterlife up that same smooth-barked oak.

It's always a good day for a snow poem.

The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.

Tunesday

A friend of mine celebrates Tunesday, listing what's he's listening to on a website. Just trying out this playlist thing....here are some songs for a hot Tunesday. Quite the smattering (and some songs not for the faint of heart).

shake the grass

And the Days Are Not Full Enough
by Ezra Pound

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.

another story

On Our Eleventh Anniversary
by Susan Browne

You’re telling that story again about your childhood,
when you were five years old and rode your blue bicycle

from Copenhagen to Espergaerde, and it was night
and snowing by the time you arrived,

and your grandparents were so relieved to see you,
because all day no one knew where you were,

you had vanished. We sit at our patio table under a faded green
umbrella, drinking wine in California’s blue autumn,

red stars of roses along the fence, trellising over the roof
of our ramshackle garage. Too soon the wine glasses will be empty,

our stories told, the house covered with pine needles the wind
has shaken from the trees. Other people will live here.

We will vanish like children who traveled far in the dark,
stars of snow in their hair, riding to enchanted Espergaerde.

Best use of "zither" in a poem

Only up for an hour or so & I've read or heard three Neruda poems already. Here comes four.... The Separate Rose: I
by Pablo Neruda Translated by William O'Daly
Today is that day, the day that carried a desperate light that since has died. Don’t let the squatters know: let’s keep it all between us, day, between your bell and my secret. Today is dead winter in the forgotten land that comes to visit me, with a cross on the map and a volcano in the snow, to return to me, to return again the water fallen on the roof of my childhood. Today when the sun began with its shafts to tell the story, so clear, so old, the slanting rain fell like a sword, the rain my hard heart welcomes. You, my love, still asleep in August, my queen, my woman, my vastness, my geography kiss of mud, the carbon-coated zither, you, vestment of my persistent song, today you are reborn again and with the sky’s black water confuse me and compel me: I must renew my bones in your kingdom, I must still uncloud my earthly duties.

Does it explode?

Harlem
by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

"My toes are dictionaries. Need any words?"

Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets & this reading is well worth a minute of your time:

One Boy Told Me <--- click!

Enjoy!

...was the art, was the love

Autopsy in the Form of an Elegy

by John Stone

In the chest
in the heart
was the vessel

was the pulse
was the art
was the love

was the clot
small and slow
and the scar
that could not know

the rest of you
was very nearly perfect.

walk slowly, and bow often

When I Am Among the Trees

by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness,

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

paper & cloud

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud there will be no water; without water, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, you cannot make paper. So the cloud is in here. The existence of this page is dependent upon the existence of a cloud. Paper and cloud are so close.

by Thich Nhat Hahn

Sorry, what was that?

Earbud
by Bill Holm

Earbud—a tiny marble sheathed in foam
to wear like an interior earring so you
can enjoy private noises wherever you go,
protected from any sudden silence.
Only check your batteries, then copy
a thousand secret songs and stories
on the tiny pod you carry in your pocket.
You are safe now from other noises made
by other people, other machines, by chance,
noises you have not chosen as your own.
To get your attention, I touch your arm
to show you the tornado or the polar bear.
Sometimes I catch you humming or talking to the air
as if to a shrunken lover waiting in your ear.

the scarlet tide

in memory of my late uncle tj...

Remembering TJ After the Funeral

We are as confused as the season.

The calendar insists on January,

depicts sparkling, icy-blue scenes.

But snow sags into pitted grey lumps,

runoff pooling into slick driveway bogs

and freezing into deep ruts

while we toss and turn through long starless nights.

Only the wind yields some sympathy,

whirling mercifully into unexpected empty spaces

that should still be warm from your busy body.

It curls around our numb shoulders

and reminds us that this is how things go.

HMMooreNiver

February 2006

Lou's chicks update

Lou's chicks are getting featherier by the day! Took these on April 15th.

A poem for those who love a good storm

Storm by Brooks Haxton Cattle egrets in the dry grass waded like white clerics at the hooves of brood cows, heifers, and new calves. Forked lightning. Calm. The darkness in the cattle tank welled up and flooded the reflection of the trees. Turkey vultures wheeled, and wheeled away. No swifts, no swallows, children gone indoors. Rain seethed into the willowtops, sky flashing, while the black bull under the water locust glowed with an inward surge of darkness.

power of blue

Blueberry

by Diane Lockward

Deep-blue hue of the body, silvery bloom
on its skin. Undersized runt of a fruit,
like something that failed to thrive, dented top
a fontanel. Lopsided globe. A temperate zone.
Tiny paradox, tart and sweet, homely
but elegant afloat in sugar and cream,
baked in a pie, a cobbler, a muffin.

The power of blue. Number one antioxidant fruit,
bantam-weight champ in the fight against
urinary tract infections, best supporting actor
in a fruit salad. No peeling, coring or cutting.
Lay them out on a counter, strands of blue pearls.
Pop one at a time, like M&M's, into your mouth.
Be a glutton and stuff in a handful, your tongue,
lips, chin dyed blue, as if feasting on indigo.
Fruit of the state of New Jersey.
Favorite fruit of my mother.

Sundays she scooped them into pancake batter,
poured circles onto the hot greased griddle, sizzled
them gold and blue, doused with maple syrup.

This is what I want to remember: my mother
and me, our quilted robes, hair in curlers,
that kitchen, that table,
plates stacked with pancakes, blueberries sparkling
like gemstones, blue stars in a gold sky,
the universe in reverse,
the two of us eating blueberry pancakes.

small pleasures in laundry

Catching April

I hang out linens

on a bright raw morning.

The sun sneers,

unwilling to warm up to me

or the season,

so I retreat with moist numb thumbs.

All day I hear the sharp snap of sheets

whipping in the cold spring wind

that tries to rip them from the line.

Dark stick silhouettes

claw along tangled cotton,

but orange cases roundly pillow

with the season’s spite and glow

in a row of summer moons.

In the afternoon I bring them inside,

dry and warm,

and fold up the sweet clear air

caught within their threads.

by HMMooreNiver

There should be more such odes . . .

Ode to Pepper Vinegar
by Kevin Young

You sat in the tomb

of our family fridge
for years, without

fail. You were all

I wanted covering
my greens, satisfaction

I’ve since sought

for years in restaurants
which claimed soul, but neither

knew you nor

your vinegar prayer.
Baby brother

of bitterness, soothsayer,

you taught
me the difference between loss

& holding on. Next to the neon

of the maraschino cherries,
you floated & stayed

constant as a flame

on an unknown soldier’s grave—
I never did know

how you got here

you just were. Adrift
in your mason jar

you were a briny bit of where

we came from, rusty lid
awaiting our touch

& tongue—you were faith

in the everyday, not rare
as the sugarcane

my grandparents sent north

come Christmas, drained
sweet & dry, delicious, gone

by New Year's—

no, you were nearer,
familiar, the thump

thump of an upright bass

or the brass
of a funeral band

bringing us home.

fall into those flowers

The Widow's Lament in Springtime
by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)

Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.

Filling Station
by Elizabeth Bishop
Oh, but it is dirty! --this little filling station, oil-soaked, oil-permeated to a disturbing, over-all black translucency. Be careful with that match! Father wears a dirty, oil-soaked monkey suit that cuts him under the arms, and several quick and saucy and greasy sons assist him (it's a family filling station), all quite thoroughly dirty. Do they live in the station? It has a cement porch behind the pumps, and on it a set of crushed and grease- impregnated wickerwork; on the wicker sofa a dirty dog, quite comfy. Some comic books provide the only note of color-- of certain color. They lie upon a big dim doily draping a taboret (part of the set), beside a big hirsute begonia. Why the extraneous plant? Why the taboret? Why, oh why, the doily? (Embroidered in daisy stitch with marguerites, I think, and heavy with gray crochet.) Somebody embroidered the doily. Somebody waters the plant, or oils it, maybe. Somebody arranges the rows of cans so that they softly say: ESSO--SO--SO--SO to high-strung automobiles. Somebody loves us all.

bad language

The Naughty Preposition
Morris Bishop

I lately lost a preposition:
It hid, I thought, beneath my chair.
And angrily I cried: "Perdition!
Up from out of in under there!''

Correctness is my vade mecum,
And straggling phrases I abhor;
And yet I wondered: "What should he come
Up from out of in under for?''

can poetry save the world?

Heard this on NPR this morning . . .

The Well Rising

by William E. Stafford

The well rising without sound,
the spring on a hillside,
the plowshare brimming through deep ground
everywhere in the field—

The sharp swallows in their swerve
flaring and hesitating
hunting for the final curve
coming closer and closer—

The swallow heart from wingbeat to wingbeat
counseling decisions, decision:
thunderous examples. I place my feet
with care in such a world.

spring beauties

Spring Song II by Jean Garrigue (1914-1972) And now my spring beauties, Things of the earth, Beetles, shards and wings of moth And snail houses left From last summer's wreck, Now spring smoke Of the burned dead leaves And veils of the scent Of some secret plant, Come, my beauties, teach me, Let me have your wild surprise, Yes, and tell me on my knees Of your new life.

second thoughts....

Rondelet
by Anonymous

I never meant
For you to go. The thing you heard
I never meant
for you to hear. The night you went
away I knew our whole absurd
sweet world had fallen with a word
I never meant.

needles of rain

Two Sewing
by Hazel Hall (1886-1924)

The wind is sewing with needles of rain.
With shining needles of rain
It stitches into the thin
Cloth of earth. In,
In, in, in.
Oh, the wind has often sewed with me.
One, two, three.

Spring must have fine things
To wear like other springs.
Of silken green the grass must be
Embroidered. One and two and three.
Then every crocus must be made
So subtly as to seem afraid
Of lifting colour from the ground;
And after crocuses the round
Heads of tulips, and all the fair
Intricate garb that Spring will wear.
The wind must sew with needles of rain,
With shining needles of rain,
Stitching into the thin
Cloth of earth, in,
In, in, in,
For all the springs of futurity.
One, two, three.

Turning Quietly Into Night

Artist Carolyn Hutchings Edlund & I collaborated again for a National Poetry Month exhibit, "PAINTING = POETRY - ut pictura poesis": Realism in Paintings and Sculptures

Carolyn Hutchings Edlund

Turning Quietly Into Night

2009 Oil on canvas

Here You Are

All day you waited, trudged

along city blocks

past the hard shoulders of strangers,

thinking only of this bend in the path.

Your feet disappear beneath amber ripples

as you sink to the grass. Whorls

of mud silt over your toes and up

to the surface. Sun lingers along the clouds,

sly, keeping your secrets.

The oak must have thickened its bark here

for a hundred years,

season after season

against the weather,

against the deer,

against crimson vines

coiling around its base

and cloaking the trunk.

But it still spreads

its branches

wide and airy

into the sky.

The creek tucks into the meadow,

then ripples and twists into the grove.

This is where you stretch your reach.

Breathe deep.

Let go.

Here, you are.

Heather M. Moore Niver

sifted from the sieve of space

From the Plane
by Anne Marie Macari

It is a soft thing, it has been sifted
from the sieve of space and seems
asleep there under the moths of light.

Cluster of dust and fire, from up here
you are a stranger and I am dropping
through the funnel of air to meet you.

lou's cute chicks!

Yesterday my friend Lou invited me over to meet her newly arrived barred (plymouth) rock chicks.

loam

Touch-Me-Nots by Jill Bialosky She brought a little of the country into the city in the pots of impatiens she had planted. The petals white, pure, the opposite of color. She had transferred the impatiens from the garden, digging her hands into soil two parts fibrous loam, one part leaf mold and peat moss and pushing the roots into the earth. Despite the quality of the soil—its rich decomposition of life— still they would not last. The plants were hardy and tender, with thick stems and dark green leaves, the seedpods inside waiting to release, the air awash in pollen. She looked into the flower as into a pair of beckoning eyes offering sustenance independent of a body, free floating and regenerative and wholly belonging to what was impossible ever to touch.

star magnolia update

The star magnolia is getting blossoms that even I can reach to photograph...

I smile and bow, and the world is loud.

Ludwig Van Beethoven's Return to Vienna
by Rita Dove


Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn,
or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me....
The Heiligenstadt Testament

Three miles from my adopted city
lies a village where I came to peace.
The world there was a calm place,
even the great Danube no more
than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape
by a girl's careless hand. Into this stillness

I had been ordered to recover.
The hills were gold with late summer;
my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen,
situated upstairs in the back of a cottage
at the end of the Herrengasse.
From my window I could see onto the courtyard
where a linden tree twined skyward —
leafy umbilicus canted toward light,
warped in the very act of yearning —
and I would feed on the sun as if that alone
would dismantle the silence around me.

At first I raged. Then music raged in me,
rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough
to ease the roiling. I would stop
to light a lamp, and whatever I'd missed —
larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd's
home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and I
would rage again.

I am by nature a conflagration;
I would rather leap
than sit and be looked at.
So when my proud city spread
her gypsy skirts, I reentered,
burning towards her greater, constant light.

Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you,
every tenderness I have ever known
has been nothing
but thwarted violence, an ache
so permanent and deep, the lightest touch
awakens it. . . . It is impossible

to care enough. I have returned
with a second Symphony
and 15 Piano Variations
which I've named Prometheus,
after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god
who knew the worst sin is to take
what cannot be given back.

I smile and bow, and the world is loud.
And though I dare not lean in to shout
Can't you see that I'm deaf? —
I also cannot stop listening.

rush my poem

A Summer Outing by Du Fu 1 How nice to board the barge as the sun meets the horizon the breeze picks up the water ripples we sail past groves of thick bamboo and anchor in the cool of water lilies the young men mix some icy drinks the girls are slicing lotus roots but the clouds right overhead grow black rain makes me rush my poem. 2 The shower wets the benches we were sitting on the wind blows hard and rocks the boat the southern girls' red skirts drenched the northern beauties seem to have ruined their makeup the mooring line saws and cuts the willow the barge's curtains are soaked from breaking waves our going home will be wet and chilly as if we were having autumn right in the heart of summer.

small waters seeping upward

Not the Roethke poem I was looking for but still a good one.

Cuttings (Later) by Theodore Roethke This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks, Cut stems struggling to put down feet, What saint strained so much, Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life? I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it -- The small waters seeping upward, The tight grains parting at last. When sprouts break out, Slippery as fish, I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.

Waiting On Elvis, 1956

Waiting On Elvis, 1956
by Joyce Carol Oates

This place up in Charlotte called Chuck's where I
used to waitress and who came in one night
but Elvis and some of his friends before his concert
at the Arena, I was twenty-six married but still
waiting tables and we got to joking around like you
do, and he was fingering the lace edge of my slip
where it showed below my hemline and I hadn't even
seen it and I slapped at him a little saying, You
sure are the one aren't you feeling my face burn but
he was the kind of boy even meanness turned sweet in
his mouth.

Smiled at me and said, Yeah honey I guess I sure am.

April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Spring
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redress of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The Sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself
Is nothing
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs,
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

spring is making an appearance

Took some time yesterday to make the rounds at the Old Dingman Place to see what buds and blooms were showing up! Even the Star Magnolia is about to bloom.

blackbird singing

To One Dead
by Francis Ledwidge (1887-1917)

A blackbird singing
On a moss-upholstered stone,
Bluebells swinging,
Shadows wildly blown,
A ship on the sea.
The song was for you
And the ship was for me.

A blackbird singing
I hear in my troubled mind,
Bluebells swinging
I see in a distant wind.
But sorrow and silence
Are the wood’s threnody,
The silence for you
And the sorrow for me.

For what is moon, that it haunts us?

Half Moon, Small Cloud

by John Updike

Caught out in daylight, a rabbit’s

transparent pallor, the moon

is paired with a cloud of equal weight:

the heavenly congruence startles.

For what is the moon, that it haunts us,

this impudent companion immigrated

from the system’s less fortunate margins,

the realm of dust collected in orbs?

We grow up as children with it, a nursemaid

of a bonneted sort, round-faced and kind,

not burning too close like parents, or too far

to spare even a glance, like movie stars.

No star but in the zodiac of stars,

a stranger there, too big, it begs for love

(the man in it) and yet is diaphanous,

its thereness as mysterious as ours.