Category: Poetry

“Mowing” by Ada Limón

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry5 Comments

The man across the street is mowing 40 acres on a small lawn mower.
It’s so small, it must take him days, so I imagine that he likes it. He
must. He goes around each tree carefully. He has 10,000 trees; it’s
a tree farm, so there are so many trees. One circle here. One circle
there. My dog and I’ve been watching. The light’s escaping the sky,
and there’s this place I like to stand, it’s before the rise, so I’m invis-
ible. I’m standing there, and I’ve got the dog, and the man is mow-
ing in his circles. So many circles. There are no birds or anything, or
none that I can see. I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden,
disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It’s not
sadness, though it may sound like it. I’m thinking about people
and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than
anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine,
and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let
the savage grass grow.

“Mowing” by Ada Limón, from Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2015). Copyright © 2015 by Ada Limón.

Visit Poets & Writers to listen to (and to read) this and three more pieces by Limón.

“Utopia” by Louise Glück

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

When the train stops, the woman said, you must get on it. But how will I
know, the child asked, it is the right train? It will be the right train, said the
woman, because it is the right time. A train approached the station; clouds
of grayish smoke streamed from the chimney. How terrified I am, the child
thinks, clutching the yellow tulips she will give to her grandmother. Her hair
has been tightly braided to withstand the journey. Then, without a word,
she gets on the train, from which a strange sound comes, not in a language
like the one she speaks, something more like a moan or a cry.

“Utopia” by Louise Glück, from Faithful and Virtuous Night. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

“Not Anyone Who Says” by Mary Oliver

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Not anyone who says, “I’m going to be
careful and smart in matters of love,”
who says, “I’m going to choose slowly,”
but only those lovers who didn’t choose at all
but were, as it were, chosen
by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable
and beautiful and possibly even
unsuitable —
only those know what I’m talking about
in this talking about love.

from: Felicity: Poems by Mary Oliver, Penguin Press.

“Old Men” by Ken Hada

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

I make it a point now
to wave to old men I pass
old men standing in shade
of a yard, maybe
a daughter’s place
where now he’s just a tenant
trying to understand role reversal.

I raise my forefinger
As I steer country roads or pass
Through tired neighborhoods.
Most return a wave or nod Howdy.
Driving gives you some perspective,
shows you how you might end up.

We allow something
now, especially those of us sitting
on porch swings, those
who never got around to going
somewhere, those
who still feel like something
somehow is missing.

“Old Men” by Ken Hada from Spare Parts. © Mongrel Empire Press, 2010.

“Untold” by W.S. Merwin

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry

The taste of falling is something we
ignore but that we never forget
we do not know how many animals
we share it with or what creatures
at every moment die away from it
without ever saying a word about it
they are gone they are gone but we go on
breathing it breathing it but without
ever knowing it without ever saying it
this very moment it has come and gone
without ever having had a name
how can we address it as long as we live
why would we want to as long as we live
besides all the nothings we say
between shining and laughing
sometimes we even forget silence
but silence forgets us at every breath

— W.S. Merwin, from his newest book Garden Time (Copper Canyon Press, 2016).  Copyright © 2016 by W. S. Merwin.