Viriditas

on our morning commute
the newborn summer air rises
from honeysuckled thickets
and the roots of trees.
it mingles with the more
domesticated scents,
garden irises and dryer steam,
freshly hung laundry
from those who still believe
in the goodness of the outdoors.

driving, i cannot help
but thank God that this
is no passing glance at his creation:
for i am going to work in it,
to put flowers in earth
and sell them to openhanded gardeners.
i go to bury my hands in the soil,
to do nothing but give life a chance,
and by so doing preserve
this morning's holy pilgrimage
for the children, who will
play in creeks and snap twigs,
only later realizing that
they tread a hallowed temple,
one that resounds
with the rhythm of redemption.

(c.l.)

*viriditas: (latin) greenness, freshness, bloom

Running to Stand Still

I want to marry someone who loves this song.

Running to Stand Still
by U2

and so she woke up
woke up from where she was lying still
said i gotta do something
about where we're going

step on a steam train
step out of the driving rain maybe
run from the darkness in the night
singing ah la la la de day
ah la la la de day
ah la la de day

sweet the sin
bitter the taste in my mouth
i see seven towers
but i only see one way out

you've got to cry without weeping
talk without speaking
scream without raising your voice

you know i took the poison
from the poison stream
then i floated out of here
singing ah la la la de day
ah la la la de day
ah la la de day

she runs through the streets
with her eyes painted red
under black belly of cloud in the rain
in through a doorway she brings me
white gold and pearls stolen from the sea
she is raging
she is raging
and the storm blows up in her eyes

she will
suffer the needle chill
she's running to stand

still

One Day a Woman

by Miller Williams

One day a woman picking peaches in Georgia
lost her hold on the earth and began to rise.
She grabbed limbs but leaves stripped off in her hands.
Some children saw her before she disappeared
into the white cloud, her limbs thrashing.
The children were disbelieved. The disappearance
was filed away with those of other women
who fell into bad hands and were soon forgotten.
Six months later a half-naked man in Kansas
working on the roof of the Methodist Church
was seen by half a dozen well-known
and highly respected citizens to move
directly upward, his tarbrush waving,
until he shrank away to a point and vanished.
Nobody who knew about the first event
knew of the second, so no connection was made.
The tarbrush fell to earth somewhere in Missouri
unnoticed among a herd of Guernsey cows.

A Line-Storm Song

It stormed today while I was at work. The gales blew in the plastic walls of the greenhouse and at times we had to yell over the roar of the rain on the thin tin roofs. I heard rumors of five inches of rain in one hour in some regions, and half inches of hail. I glory in those times when it seems as if nature is feeling something, when it is unleashing its anger, or trying to calm the earth down, or radiating ecstasy.

Dedicated to my friends, who I miss, and who I fear do not miss me.

Come over the hills and far with me...

A Line-Storm Song
by Robert Frost

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift.
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.

The birds have less to say for themselves
In the wood-world's torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
Wild, earily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods, come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.

There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast
The rain-fresh goldenrod.

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea's return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when after doubt
Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.

The Waking

I have my B.A. in English. I have the whole world in front of me and large pieces of my heart missing, scattered all over the nation and world. I don't know when or if they will come back to me.

I know only this:

The Waking
by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Graduation (Leaving Love)

I know some people won't understand, but I've never voluntarily done something so difficult as this. I have to turn myself into a machine to get through; my flesh and bone are far too tender.

If today was not an endless highway
If tonight was not a crooked trail
If tomorrow wasn't such a long time
Then lonesome would mean nothing to me at all

Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting
If I could hear his heart softly pounding
Yes, and only if he was lying by me
Would I lie in my bed once again

I can't see my reflection in the waters
I can't speak the sounds that show no pain
I can't hear the echo of my footsteps
Or remember the sound of my own name

Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting
If I could hear his heart softly pounding
Yes, and only if he was lying by me
Would I lie in my bed once again

There's beauty in that silver singing river
There's beauty in that sunrise in the sky
But none of these and nothing else can touch the beauty
That I remember in my true love's eyes

Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting
If I could hear his heart softly pounding
Yes, and only if he was lying by me
Would I lie in my bed once again

(nickel creek)

I've Been Known

by Denise Duhamel

to spread it on thick to shoot off my mouth to get it off my chest
          to tell him where
          to get off
to stay put to face the music to cut a shine to go under to sell
          myself short to play
          myself down
to paint the town to fork over to shell out to shoot up to pull a
          fast one to go haywire
          to take a shine to
to be stuck on to glam it up to vamp it up to get her one better to
          eat a little higher
          on the hog
to win out to get away with to go to the spot to make a stake to
          make a stand to
          stand for something to stand up for
to snow under to slip up to go for it to take a stab at it to try out
          to go places to play
          up to get back at
to size up to stand off to slop over to be solid with to lose my
          shirt to get myself off
          to get myself off the hook

The Week Before College Graduation

She’s right—
it’s not apathy that flattens my brain
like one of her Frisbees
as it wings through each day,
rebounding from someone else’s hand,
flying on someone else’s throw.
It’s not apathy that has curdled
my craving for sweet knowledge
so that my stomach lurches when I sit down
to parse a Spanish verb,
to examine the starched silt of Victorian England
and write one more paper
to add to the ream I’ve written
in exchange for just one, in calligraphy.
This thing that has stolen sleep from me,
that pins open my eyes to stare at nothing,
that freezes my purpose, my motivation
into a blunt cube of mute apprehension—
no, it’s not apathy.
It’s impossible to not care. No.

Someone has their fingers tangled in my hair,
pulling back my head to stare at the stars.
Something has planted my feet in the mud
and held out my arms to catch all the rain.
Some force of being, some impulse for justice
has interrupted my continuum as it did for Joshua,
has stopped my sun over Gibeon, and is screaming,
“Too many times have your epochs gone unnoticed.
Too many times has your life undergone metamorphosis
in a slow and single moment that you
were traveling too fast to see.
No more will you be carefree,
no more will you skip around your life’s transformation.
Stand, lift up your head,
and watch your being supernova into newness.
Stand, look down at your earth
and watch the quake strip your life of what has been.
Stand. This time, you will watch your butterfly struggle
from faded cocoon to fresh quickening.
The old has gone, the new is coming.

4.27.06
crystal l.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
by Emily Dickinson

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

Selecting a Reader

Selecting a Reader
by Ted Kooser

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

Famous

A friend just brought to my attention the fact that I've been "published" on the Academy of American Poets web site. Well okay, not really. It's just a response to a project they're doing for National Poetry Month, in which people send in lines of poems that are very dear to them and explain why. Click here and look under April 8 to see my entry. This is the poem my lines come from:

Famous
by Naomi Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and is not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

One Art

My life is plummeting into the abyss of the past faster than I can shake a stick at. I thought I had just posted on this thing, and nay, I find out that it has been four whole days.

Right after Easter, I have my final project in English Senior Seminar due, and I'd like to expand on my theory that this is one of, if not the best time to write and appreciate poetry. I don't know if I can pull it off, but I'll certainly have fun trying, which is what counts when I'm finishing up 19 credit hours, a part-time job, and relationships with dear, dear people I won't see again for a long time.

I think we've come to a great place in poetry--we appreciate multiplicity in form and genre, we've brought about the happy marriage of realism and romanticism, and we rely just enough on sound and rhythm to create lovely poetry, but not so much that we lose readability in the attempt to design a perfect metric scheme. Granted, some of this newer, extremely experimental stuff, as well as the voyeuristic, sexual-politics-ridden refuse I could leave behind without qualm, but fortunately, that kind of poetry seems to be in the minority.

I just convinced our school library to purchase a wealth of new poetry anthologies and collections. Anything to make that sad, but cozy little building more relevant.

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Thursday Night

Thursday Night

Tell me who I am so I can be that person.
You've handed me the second fiddle--
just tell me what tune we're playing.
My sidekick suit fits;
I'd just rather not have to gasp
to keep up with you.
Tell me I am the ice in your glass
or the birds on your telephone pole.
I don't mind being unnecessary,
but it would be nice to be expected.

3.31.06
crystal l.

April is National Poetry Month!

Spring is like a perhaps hand
by e.e. cummings

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

A Selection of African-American Poetry

The Negro Speaks of Riversby Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
    flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
    went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
    bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Sympathy
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
  When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
  When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats its wing
  Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
  And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting--
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
  When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,--
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
  But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--
I know why the caged bird sings!

The Bean Eaters
by Gwendolyn Brooks

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.

And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
         is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
         tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

Love Poem with Toast

Sometimes poems come at the perfect time.

Love Poem with Toast
by Miller Williams

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.

Poetry

Poetry
by Don Paterson

In the same way that the mindless diamond keeps
one spark of the planet's early fires
trapped forever in its net of ice,
it's not love's later heat that poetry holds,
but the atom of the love that drew it forth
from the silence: so if the bright coal of his love
begins to smoulder, the poet hears his voice
suddenly forced, like a bar-room singer's -- boastful
with his own huge feeling, or drowned by violins;
but if it yields a steadier light, he knows
the pure verse, when it finally comes, will sound
like a mountain spring, anonymous and serene.

Beneath the blue oblivious sky, the water
sings of nothing, not your name, not mine.

Mad World

If you can find the Gary Jules version of this song, do. I believe it's on the Donnie Darko soundtrack.

Mad World

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head, I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow

And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad world, mad world

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher, tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad world, mad world
Enlarging your world
Mad world

Happy Valentine's Day

Poetry on a postcard.

God Says Yes To Me

A poem that will never cease to throw me off or make me think.

God Says Yes To Me
by Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

(from Poetry 180, arranged by Billy Collins)