Month: December 2015

“The Journey” by Mary Oliver

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry9 Comments

It seems fitting to end pause our journey as we began it two years ago . . . with Mary Oliver. Thank you all for an enriching and rewarding two years, and for choosing to spend your days with us.

Small-Blue-RGB-National-Poetry-Month-LogoWords for the Year will be back after a short break. I’m planning an April 1 return, just in time for the twentieth anniversary of National Poetry Month, though we may be back sooner. We may even have a few surprises lined up for you in the interim.

If you have a favorite poem you’d like to see featured on Words for the Year, please let me know via the contact page or on our recent post, “On the Future of Words for the Year.” Hopefully we can share it with our readers. 

Thank you for your support, your interest, and your words. ~ Christy 

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The Journey

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver, from Dream Work

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Poet David Whyte on Mary Oliver’s “The Journey”

 

“Salvation Song” by The Avett Brothers

On By Christina's WordsIn Music

We came for salvation
We came for family
We came for all that’s good that’s how we’ll walk away
We came to break the bad
We came to cheer the sad
We came to leave behind the world a better way

And I would give up everything
And if you were to come up clean
And see you shine so bright in a world of woe
And they may pay us off in fame
But that is not why we came
And if it compromises truth then we will go

We came for salvation
We came for family
We came for all that’s good that’s how we’ll walk away
We came to break the bad
We came to cheer the sad
We came to leave behind the world a better way

~ The Avett Brothers, “Salvation Song“

“Stories never really end … (Funke, Kerouac, Rumi, and Greene)

On By Christina's WordsIn Quote3 Comments

“Stories never really end … even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don’t end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.” ~ Cornelia Funke, Inkspell

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“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” ~ Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

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“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” ~ Jack Kerouac, On the Road

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“Rise up nimbly and go on your strange journey to the ocean of meanings. Leave and don’t look away from the sun as you go, in whose light you’re sometimes crescent, sometimes full. … Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” ~ Rumi, The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

 

“No Ice” by Ruby Browne

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry2 Comments

Maybe I should just write poetry, I think.
As if saying more with less is easy
and words can make sense of
the ache still clinging to my chest.

Like we can sculpt emotions
out of a dictionary,
lay it out in front of us and say,
“Oh yes, now I see.”

It was like any other summer night
when we sat on the steps of my parents’ house.
Smoking Marlboro cigarettes and
drinking bourbon. No ice.

I didn’t know it was the
last time we’d be there
before you wandered
into the woods with a gun.

But I wonder if you did.
If, when we hugged good night,
you held on just a little tighter
than you would have otherwise.

What I’ve been trying to say is–
in poetry and empty howls to the universe–
“I’m sorry you didn’t know,
but I saw you. I did.”

 

ruby book“No Ice” by Ruby Browne. Ruby shares creative nonfiction and poetry on her blog RubyBrowne.com. Ruby recently published Unrailed: A collection of poetry and creative nonfiction, available now on Amazon. (I’ve read Unrailed, and highly recommend it.)

“Want” by Carrie Fountain

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment

The wasps outside
the kitchen window
are making that
thick, unraveling sound
again, floating in
and out of the bald head
of their nest,
seeming not to move
while moving,
and it has just occurred
to me, standing,
washing the coffeepot,
watching them hang
loosely in the air—thin
wings; thick, elongated
abdomens; sad, down—
pointing antennae—
that this
is the heart’s constant
project: this simple
learning; learning
how to hold
hopelessness
and hope together;
to see on the unharmed
surface of one
the great scar
of the other; to recognize
both and to make
something of both;
to desire everything
and nothing
at once and to desire it
all the time;
and to contain that desire
fleshly, in a body;
to wash it and rest it
and feed it; to learn
its name and from whence
it came; and to speak
to it—oh, most of all
to speak to it—
every day, every day,
saying to one part,
“Well, maybe this is all
you get,” while saying
to the other, “Go on,
break it open, let it go.”

“Want” by Carrie Fountain from Burn Lake. © Penguin, 2010.