Cracked Ice

Still getting at the meaning of this poem, but I LOVE the way it sounds.

Cracked Ice
by Julie Sheehan

When I return, I'll come in clapboard, stained
chestnut, with lead-based paint on radiators,
old-fashioned, and a little bit insane

but sturdy to a fault. A spalting grain
on punky myrtle and no refrigerator
when I return. I'll come in clapboard, stained

shake shingles skittering on skewed roof planes
that snarl the corner lot like unpaid panders,
old-fashioned and a little bitten, saying,

"Leave our sightlines sharp. Let dormers train
what angles water sheds." They congregate for
when I return. I'll come in clapboard, stained

with varnished truth: you ran me down. You caned
old rockers with prefab splints, hack renovator
refashioning me bit by bit, insane

to strip as spilth fine bulrush. I'll maintain
myself, then. There will be no mediators
when I return. I'll come in clapboard. Stained,
old-fashioned, I'll come a little bit insane.

Summer Stars

Summer Stars
by Carl Sandburg

Bend low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
So near you are, summer stars,
So near, strumming, strumming,
So lazy and hum-strumming.

Water

Water
by Wendell Berry

I was born in a drought year. That summer
my mother waited in the house, enclosed
in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind,
for the men to come back in the evenings,
bringing water from a distant spring.
veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.
And all my life I have dreaded the return
of that year, sure that it still is
somewhere, like a dead enemy's soul.
Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me,
and I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.
I am a dry man whose thirst is praise
of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.
My sweetness is to wake in the night
after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.

Favorite Lines

My poems often start with a few lines stuck in my head. Inevitably, these end up being the best lines of the poem, and most of my writing effort is spent trying to make the rest of the piece live up to them. Consequently, I don't think most of my whole poems are all that great, but I do love some of the lines I've written. I also tend to love bits and pieces of poems by others even more than the whole poem itself. There's something about the perfect word choice that is like music.

Here are some of my favorite lines, first that I've written, and second, much better ones, from the greats.

delusion: we believe our mouths only speak
forgotten: the feast of the senses,
the unwitting articulation of the body
--from "Walking Poems"

the first leap of body within body,
of soul within body,
akin to the breath of Adam
filling a lung that conducted
the first clay heart to beat into flesh,
when divine breath bore spirit out of dust.
--from "The Quickening"

i am the dust speck
in this oyster of a universe
and it means that someday i will dwell
in the heart of the great luminous pearl
of redemption
--from "Some Nights I Am Glad"

If only they were right.
If only, by effort, we could leave nothing undone.
For example, if I told you your love
was at the end of this road
how fast would you run?
--from "Single Young Adult"

I pretend not to be the sweet
collateral damage of your magic,
to not have fallen in love accidentally,
on the sidelines.
--from "Let Me Love Your Songs"

You’re the blood that runs through the veins of my daydreams
The flesh that cleaves to the whispers of my childhood heart
--from "Incarnation"

go ahead, be a little reckless
better to be breathless from speaking the truth,
relentlessly kind, better than flying blind
through the great blue sky of your heart
--from "Go Ahead"

everything you could mean
is the falsetto note
that turns my heart
into a ringing well.
--from "Dancing Around You"

In the lamplight, your chords
would be deep wells of quiet.

And in the evening
you could sing me home.
--from "A Secret"

It's late...lines from others coming soon!

The Excavation

The Excavation

It’s not like flying higher,
she said—but love does give you
wings, I still believe that—
it’s like going deeper,
an unearthing of every level
you thought was the foundation
of your ability to love,
of your capacity for vulnerability.

I feel the excavation
in the small earthquakes of your heartbeat
when I lie next to you,
when your eyes like surveyors
measure my landscape,
noting landmarks even I have not seen.

The comfort comes after every demolition,
when the dust settles
and the sparrow flies
and we two are rebuilt
into one house
with the same materials.

7.30.10
cll

Rest.

Rest.
by Richard Jones

It's so late I could cut my lights
and drive the next fifty miles
of empty interstate
by starlight,
flying along in a dream,
countryside alive with shapes and shadows,
but exit ramps lined
with eighteen wheelers
and truckers sleeping in their cabs
make me consider pulling into a rest stop
and closing my eyes. I've done it before,
parking next to a family sleeping in a Chevy,
mom and dad up front, three kids in the back,
the windows slightly misted by the sleepers' breath.
But instead of resting, I'd smoke a cigarette,
play the radio low, and keep watch over
the wayfarers in the car next to me,
a strange paternal concern
and compassion for their well being
rising up inside me.
This was before
I had children of my own,
and had felt the sharp edge of love
and anxiety whenever I tiptoed
into darkened rooms of sleep
to study the small, peaceful faces
of my beloved darlings. Now,
the fatherly feelings are so strong
the snoring truckers are lucky
I'm not standing on the running board,
tapping on the window,
asking, Is everything okay?
But it is. Everything's fine.
The trucks are all together, sleeping
on the gravel shoulders of exit ramps,
and the crowded rest stop I'm driving by
is a perfect oasis in the moonlight.
The way I see it, I've got a second wind
and on the radio an all-night country station.
Nothing for me to do on this road
but drive and give thanks:
I'll be home by dawn.

Back Yard

Back Yard
by Carl Sandburg

Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.

An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion.
A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month;
to-night they are throwing you kisses.

An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a
cherry tree in his back yard.

The clocks say I must go—I stay here sitting on the back porch drinking
white thoughts you rain down.

Shine on, O moon,
Shake out more and more silver changes.

Adjectives of Order

I remember teaching my own order of adjectives lesson in the Czech Republic.

Adjectives of Order
by Alexandra Teague

That summer, she had a student who was obsessed
with the order of adjectives. A soldier in the South
Vietnamese army, he had been taken prisoner when

Saigon fell. He wanted to know why the order
could not be altered. The sweltering city streets shook
with rockets and helicopters. The city sweltering

streets. On the dusty brown field of the chalkboard,
she wrote: The mother took warm homemade bread
from the oven. City is essential to streets as homemade

is essential to bread . He copied this down, but
he wanted to know if his brothers were lost before
older, if he worked security at a twenty-story modern

downtown bank or downtown twenty-story modern.
When he first arrived, he did not know enough English
to order a sandwich. He asked her to explain each part

of Lovely big rectangular old red English Catholic
leather Bible. Evaluation before size. Age before color.
Nationality before religion. Time before length. Adding

and, one could determine if two adjectives were equal.
After Saigon fell, he had survived nine long years
of torture. Nine and long. He knew no other way to say this.