Author: Christina's Words

“The darkness around us is deep.” ~ William Stafford

“When William Stafford Died” by Robert Bly

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry, Video1 Comment

Well, water goes down the Montana gullies.
“I’ll just go around this rock and think
About it later.” That’s what you said.
When death came, you said, “I’ll go there.”

There’s no sign you’ll come back. Sometimes
My father sat up in the coffin and was alive again.
But I think you were born before my father,
And the feet they made in your time were lighter.

One dusk you were gone. Sometimes a fallen tree
Holds onto a rock, if the current is strong.
I won’t say my father did that, but I won’t
Say he didn’t either. I was watching you both.

If all a man does is to watch from the shore,
Then he doesn’t have to worry about the current.
But if affection has put us into the stream,
Then we have to agree to where the water goes.

~ Robert Bly, from Stealing Sugar From the Castle: Selected Poems, 1950 to 2013

William Edgar Stafford (January 17, 1914 – August 28, 1993)

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Listen to Robert Bly read select Stafford pieces in the video below. Bly reads his own poem, “When William Stafford Died,” at timestamp 11:11.

From Minnesota Men’s Conference‘s YouTube description:

Robert Bly reads selected poems by William Stafford shortly after his passing, discussing in personal terms exactly what made him a legend, culminating in a powerful poem written to his late friend. Recorded at the 1993 Minnesota Men’s Conference.

 

“The Summer Ends” by Wendell Berry

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry2 Comments

The summer ends, and it is time
To face another way. Our theme
Reversed, we harvest the last row
To store against the cold, undo
The garden that will be undone.
We grieve under the weakened sun
To see all earth’s green fountains dried,
And fallen all the works of light.
You do not speak, and I regret
This downfall of the good we sought
As though the fault were mine. I bring
The plow to turn the shattering
Leaves and bent stems into the dark,
From which they may return. At work,
I see you leaving our bright land,
The last cut flowers in your hand.

“The Summer Ends” by Wendell Berry, from A Timbered Choir. © Counterpoint Press, 1999.

“Happiness” by Jane Kenyon

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

—Jane Kenyon, from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems, 2005. Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, MN. Copyright 2005 by Jane Kenyon.

“Be Nobody’s Darling” by Alice Walker

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

Be nobody’s darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.
Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.
Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous
Fools.

Make a merry gathering
On the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.

But be nobody’s darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.

~ Alice Walker, from Revolutionary Petunias

“Ars Poetica” by Linda Pastan

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry9 Comments

Ars Poetica
for Billy Collins

As I sit reading your book of poems,
page after page
of ordinary things
but with a twist– the kind of flavor
a twist of lime can give
a gin and tonic,

I wonder why I can’t
write poems like that, melancholy
but not sad exactly,
instead of writing the way
I always do
under a darkening cloud.

And so I take pencil to paper
and try to describe your book,
why it makes me happy.
But here comes that cloud again,
no larger at the moment
than a man’s hand.

–Linda Pastan
from The Gettysburg Review, Summer 2015