Yellow

Yellow Bowl

If light pours like water
into the kitchen where I sway
with my tired children,

if the rug beneath us
is woven with tough flowers,
and the yellow bowl on the table

rests with the sweet heft
of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,
if my body curves over the babies,

and if I am singing,
then loneliness has lost its shape,
and this quiet is only quiet.

--Rachel Contreni Flynn

National Poetry Month 2014

Sonnet

The way the world is not Astonished at you It doesn’t blink a leaf When we step from the house Leads me to think That beauty is natural, unremarkable And not to be spoken of Except in the course of things The course of singing and worksharing The course of squeezes and neighbors The course of you tying back your raving hair to go out And the course of course of me Astonished at you The way the world is not By Bill Knott

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs

A poem should be equal to:
Not true

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean
But be

 

--Archibald MacLeish

 

Thanks for joining me on this journey! Until next year.

A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown— A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. * A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs, Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night-entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind— A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs. * A poem should be equal to: Not true. For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf. For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea— A poem should not mean But be. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15222#sthash.v3GK3Rny.dpuf

A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown— A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. * A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs, Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night-entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind— A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs. * A poem should be equal to: Not true. For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf. For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea— A poem should not mean But be. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15222#sthash.v3GK3Rny.dpuf

Sometimes poems are short...

I'll love you with words
and kiss you in sentences.
Our love will write us.

--Tyler Knott Gregson

Sunday Song

The lovely Ella Fitzgerald singing the alliterative ditty, "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered."

ee cummings

“i love you much (most beautiful darling)
more than anyone on the earth and i
like you better than everything in the sky
—sunlight and singing welcome your coming
although winter may be everywhere
with such a silence and such a darkness
noone can quite begin to guess
(except my life) the true time of year—
and if what calls itself a world should have
the luck to hear such singing (or glimpse such
sunlight as will leap higher than high
through gayer than gayest someone’s heart at your each
nearness) everyone certainly would (my
most beautiful darling) believe in nothing but love”

--ee cummings

Spent

Late August morning I go out to cut
spent and faded hydrangeas--washed
greens, russets, troubled little auras

of sky as if these were the very silks
of Versailles, mottled by rain and ruin
then half-restored, after all this time...

When I come back with my handful
I realize I've accidentally locked the door,
and can't get back into the house.

The dining room window's easiest;
crawl through beauty bush and spirea,
push aside some errant maples, take down

the wood-framed screen, hoist myself up.
But how, exactly, to clamber across the sill
and the radiator down to the tile?

I try bending one leg in, but I don't fold
readily; I push myself up so that my waist
rests against the sill, and lean forward,

place my hands on the floor and begin to slide
down into the room, which makes me think
this was what it was like to be born:

awkward, too big for the passageway...
Negotiate, submit?
                          When I give myself
to gravity there I am, inside, no harm,

the dazzling splotchy flowerheads
scattered around me on the floor.
Will leaving the world be the same

--uncertainty as to how to proceed,
some discomfort, and suddenly you're
--where? I am so involved with this idea

I forget to unlock the door,
so when I go to fetch the mail, I'm locked out
again. Am I at home in this house,

would I prefer to be out here,
where I could be almost anyone?
This time it's simpler: the window-frame,

the radiator, my descent. Born twice
in one day!
                In their silvered jug,
these bruise-blessed flowers:

how hard I had to work to bring them
into this room. When I say spent,
I don't mean they have no further coin.

If there are lives to come, I think
they might be a littler easier than this one.

--Mark Doty