Category: Poetry

“Lead” by Mary Oliver

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry3 Comments

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing.,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

 

Mary Oliver, (New and Selected Poems Volume Two), Beacon Press.

 

“Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard” by Kay Ryan

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry2 Comments

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small —
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn’t
be so hard.

“Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard” by Kay Ryan, from The Niagara River, (Grove/Atlantic, Inc. 2005)

“Ordinary Days” by Stephen Dunn

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

The storm is over; too bad, I say.
At least storms are clear
about their dangerous intent.

Ordinary days are what I fear,
the sneaky speed
with which noon arrives, the sun

shining while a government darkens
a decade, or a man
falls out of love. I fear the solace

of repetition, a withheld slap in the face.
Someone is singing
in Portugal. Here the mockingbird

is a crow and a grackle, then a cat.
So many things
happening at once. If I decide

to turn over my desk, go privately wild,
trash the house,
no one across town will know.

I must insist how disturbing this is–
the necessity
of going public, of being a fool.

“Ordinary Days” by Stephen Dunn, from New and Selected Poems 1974-1994, (W.W. Norton and Company, 1995)

“At Seventy-Five: Re-Reading An Old Book” by Hayden Carruth

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry4 Comments

My prayers have been answered, if they were prayers. I live.
I’m alive, and even in rather good health, I believe.
If I’d quit smoking I might live to be a hundred.
Truly this is astonishing, after the poverty and pain,
The suffering. Who would have thought that petty
Endurance could achieve so much?
And prayers –
Were they prayers? Always I was adamant
In my irreligion, and had good reason to be.
Yet prayer is not, I see in old age now,
A matter of doctrine or discipline, but rather
A movement of the natural human mind
Bereft of its place among the animals, the other
Animals. I prayed. Then on paper I wrote
Some of the words I said, which are these poems.

“At Seventy-Five: Re-Reading An Old Book” by Hayden Carruth, from Doctor Jazz, Copper Canyon Press.

“Mrs. God” by Connie Wanek

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry3 Comments

Someone had to do the dirty work,
spading the garden, moving mountains,
keeping the darkness out of the light,
and she took every imperfection personally.

Mr. Big Ideas, sure,
but someone had to run the numbers.
Then talk about babies: he never imagined
so many.

That was part of his charm, of course,
his frank amazement at consequences.
The pretty songs he gave the finches:
those spoke to his

innocence, his ability to regard
every moment as fresh. “Let’s give them
free will and see what happens,”
he said, ever the optimist.

“Mrs. God” by Connie Wanek from Consider the Lilies: Mrs. God Poems. Will o’ the Wisp Books, 2018.