"I am offering this poem to you, since I have nothing else to give." ~Jimmy Santiago Baca
Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.
Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.
To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.
And however sharply
you are tested —
this sorrow, that great love —
it too will leave on that clean knife.
– Jane Hirshfield from The October Palace (Harper Perennial).
After an absence that was no one’s fault
we are shy with each other,
and our words seem younger than we are,
as if we must return to the time we met
and work ourselves back to the present,
the way you never read a story
from the place you stopped
but always start each book all over again.
Perhaps we should have stayed
tied like mountain climbers
by the safe cord of the phone,
its dial our own small prayer wheel,
our voices less ghostly across the miles,
less awkward than they are now.
I had forgotten the grey in your curls,
that splash of winter over your face,
remembering the younger man
you used to be.
And I feel myself turn old and ordinary,
having to think again of food for supper,
the animals to be tended, the whole riptide
of daily life hidden but perilous
pulling both of us under so fast.
I have dreamed of our bed
as if it were a shore where we would be washed up,
not this striped mattress
we must cover with sheets. I had forgotten
all the old business between us,
like mail unanswered so long that silence
becomes eloquent, a message of its own.
I had even forgotten how married love
is a territory more mysterious
the more it is explored, like one of those terrains
you read about, a garden in the desert
where you stoop to drink, never knowing
if your mouth will fill with water or sand.
“After an Absence” by Linda Pastan from The Imperfect Paradise. © W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.
Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange
sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches–
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead–
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging–
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted–
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.
“Morning Poem” by Mary Oliver, Dream Work.
Near the house that spills banjo music,
the one guarded by a porch stacked
with encyclopedias, ripped out car seats
and outmoded computer screens,
a smell like death stops me. A smell
of slow rot. Across the street, an old man
is mowing his lawn for the last time
before winter, but it isn’t the mix
of gasoline and cut grass I smell.
Searching the road for a mashed squirrel
or a drain seeping sewage onto the asphalt,
I find nothing. Nothing at the shotgun house
next door, where the former plot of sickly cabbage
has been uprooted and the soil turned over.
As church bells begin to call out the hour,
competing with the mower’s whine, a man–
tattooed face and knit cap worn in all weather–
appears on the porch, wringing the neck of a Miller Lite
in the young morning. I pretend to watch
a stray cat lick a length of calico fur along its spine,
envying the man his public display of freedom, of pain.
A flurry of leaves flies off the overarching maples,
and he tips his bottle at me, then takes a short, sharp swig.
It would be easy to climb the steps and join him,
to spend the day there, trading trips to the fridge
and meandering stories, and some roseate part
of my mind urges my body toward this. That piece of me
remembers rollicking nights in open fields, slurred vows
of happiness, stumbling promises of love,
and cannot understand why we have cast off
such things. That piece–I have to remind it
of the rooms with no windows, of waking
in pools of my own anger and remorse.
I nod back at the man, and head for the corner,
arriving as the bus stops and exhales. My token
chimes into the collection box, and when I find a seat
next to a boy–crowned with headphones
and bopping to a faintly audible beat–the bus
banks away from the curb and into the clear-headed day.
“The Straight and Narrow” by Iain Haley Pollock, from After Shocks, The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events
“Beautiful World” by Colin Hay
“I watch the sun as it comes up, I watch it as it sets, yeah this is as good as it gets…”
Gratefully celebrated nine years sobriety yesterday with a happy, healthy and mostly recovered Sadie dog (my Aussie Cattle Dog mix who was bit by a Copperhead last week). Thank you to everyone who sent us well-wishes and positive thoughts. So grateful for you, Christy
Dorianne Laux, “Dust” from What We Carry. Copyright © 1994 by Dorianne Laux.
*originally shared June 6, 2014
Words ... for the Time Being 