"I am offering this poem to you, since I have nothing else to give." ~Jimmy Santiago Baca
I wish I could say I was the kind of child
who watched the moon from her window,
would turn toward it and wonder.
I never wondered. I read. Dark signs
that crawled toward the edge of the page.
It took me years to grow a heart
from paper and glue. All I had
was a flashlight, bright as the moon,
a white hole blazing beneath the sheets.
Dorianne Laux, from Facts About the Moon
How hard it is to take September
straight—not as a harbinger
of something harder.
Merely like suds in the air, cool scent
scrubbed clean of meaning—or innocent
of the cold thing coldly meant.
How hard the heart tugs at the end
of summer, and longs to haul it in
when it flies out of hand
at the prompting of the first mild breeze.
It leaves us by degrees
only, but for one who sees
summer as an absolute,
Pure State of Light and Heat, the height
to which one cannot raise a doubt,
as soon as one leaf’s off the tree
no day following can fall free
of the drift of melancholy.
“Absolute September” by Mary Jo Salter, from A Kiss in Space. © Knopf, 1999.
“bless the daughter raised by a voice in her head.” ~ warsan shire
Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,
And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,
And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I’ve destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,
Remember them. I beg you to remember them
When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death’s bare branches.
“A Short Testament” by Anne Porter from Living Things. © Zoland Books, 2006
***
Interesting note (via PoetryFoundation.org):
When (Porter’s) husband died in 1975, she began to write poetry much more seriously. As she told the Wall Street Journal: “I remember realizing that I was alone, and I’d have to be more organized. I had these poems, and I thought that it would be worthwhile working on them. I started to write.” Her first collection, An Altogether Different Language (1994), published when she was 83, was named a finalist for the National Book Award.
#It’sNeverTooLate
It was March. I’d just turned twelve
two weeks before, so I was finally
old enough to think about having
sex with somebody outside
my family. Somebody not male,
and not too much older. Somebody
like Coco from Nasella Park.
She was everything I wanted
to be (smart & strong & very tough).
She smoked Lucky Strike nonfilters
and could spit as far as any guy.
Already thirteen, so I told her I was
too, pressing my biceps tight
against my sides, trying to make
my breasts appear bigger. Hers were
stretching out her too-tight sweater
(the sweater soft and blue
like her eyes). Catching me staring,
she boldly stared back. She grinned,
and then she winked at me.
I was afraid maybe she was
teasing me, afraid maybe she wasn’t.
My heart swelled up till it almost
hurt. In the past, wanting touch
had only brought pain, but I knew that
I could trust someone who purred
with stray cats. Late at night,
on the swing set in Nasella Park,
she opened up two Michelobs,
and asked, “Have you ever
gotten drunk?” “Of course! A lot
of times,” I lied. I wanted her
to think I was cool. She was
so hot. My mouth was dry.
I sucked down the beer, then
following her lead, I threw the empty
into the bushes. My mouth still dry,
I pulled a Certs from the pocket
of my Levi’s, then popped
it into my mouth with relief.
Coco asked, “Ya got any more?” then
seemed all disappointed to hear it was
my last. Without thinking, I offered
her the one in my mouth. “Sure,”
she said as she jumped off the swing.
Instantly her hands were on mine,
the chains of the swing digging into
my palms. I was sweating,
though the night air was crisp.
My heat beat so wild
I could hardly hear.
Coco commanded, “Give it up,”
opening her mouth before mine.
The swing no longer moving, still
everything was swirling
as our lips caressed and our tongues shared
the Certs and our first kiss.
Source: Queeney, Liz 1996, ‘Kissing Coco’, in L Elder (ed.), Early Embraces, Alyson publications.
Words ... for the Time Being 