Category: Poetry

“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 

***

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

*

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

 

“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.

“Poplar Street” by Chen Chen

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment

Oh. Sorry. Hello. Are you on your way to work, too?
I was just taken aback by how you also have a briefcase,

also small & brown. I was taken by how you seem, secretly,
to love everything. Are you my new coworker? Oh. I see. No.

Still, good to meet you. I’m trying out this thing where it’s good
to meet people. Maybe, beyond briefcases, we have some things

in common. I like jelly beans. I’m afraid of death. I’m afraid
of farting, even around people I love. Do you think your mother

loves you when you fart? Does your mother love you
all the time? Have you ever doubted?

I like that the street we’re on is named after a tree,
when there are none, poplar or otherwise. I wonder if a tree

has ever been named after a street, whether that worked out.
If I were a street, I hope I’d get a good name, not Main

or One-Way. One night I ran out of an apartment,
down North Pleasant Street — it was soft & neighborly

with pines & oaks, it felt too hopeful,
after what happened. After my mother’s love

became doubtful. After I told her I liked a boy & she wished
I had never been born. After she said she was afraid

of me, terrified I might infect my brothers
with my abnormality. Sometimes, parents & children

become the most common strangers. Eventually,
a street appears where they can meet again.

Or not. I’ve doubted my own love for my mother. I doubt.
Do I have to forgive in order to love? Or do I have to love

for forgiveness to even be possible? What do you think?
I’m trying out this thing where questions about love & forgiveness

are a form of work I’d rather not do alone. I’m trying to say,
Let’s put our briefcases on our heads, in the sudden rain,

& continue meeting as if we’ve just been given our names.

 

Chen Chen, via Poetry (June 2015).

“Lines for Winter” by Mark Strand

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

for Ros Krauss

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

Mark Strand, “Lines for Winter” from Selected Poems. Copyright © 1979 by Mark Strand.