Are You Going to Stay?

Are You Going to Stay?

by Thomas Meyer

What was it I was going to say?

Slipped away probably because

it needn’t be said. At that edge

almost not knowing but second

guessing the gain, loss, or effect

of an otherwise hesitant remark.

Slant of light on a brass box. The way

a passing thought knots the heart.

There’s nothing, nothing to say.

What Came After

I found this buried in my Facebook Notes. The poem itself I wrote for a friend. The first part I have no idea why I wrote, but I'll keep it, since it's an original artifact. It's what I'm thinking most of the time.

What Came After

No one wants to read your melodramatic poetry with the awkward diction and nature metaphors. Also it's not very good; you've really been sucking at this lately. It's too personal to post. Everyone says "be honest," but no one actually thinks you should do that. It's like saying "we should hang out sometime." Oversharing is weird and only works in the movies. Don't do it don't do it don't do it.

You have to leave,

and I have to stand here and watch your heart break open.

I had to leave once,

so I too have leaned over that chasm.

And you're going to fall in, you know.

Somewhere between saying goodbye to your mother

and resigning yourself to never having spoken what was truly inside you,

your heart's going to turn into an open wound,

and I have to stand here and let you take it.

So in my heart I give you the sunrise in Alaska,

the sunset around the pier,

that May morning overflowing with resurrection.

I give you all of my What Came After,

all of the solace that healed me.

I will to you all of the undeserved beauty 

that taught me in the end

that it was worth it.

cls

When love beckons to you...

When love beckons to you...
by Khalil Gibran, from The Prophet

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height
and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots
and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire,
that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart,
and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness
and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh,
but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;

For love is sufficient unto love.

To a Friend

To a Friend

by unknown, public domain

I ask but one thing of you, only one,

that always you will be my dream of you;

that never shall I wake to find untrue

all this I have believed and rested on,

forever vanished, like a vision gone

out into the night. Alas, how few

there are who strike in us a chord we knew

existed, but so seldom heard its tone

we tremble at the half-forgotten sound.

The world is full of rude awakenings

and heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,

yet still our human longing vainly clings

to a belief in beauty through all wrongs.

O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

Sonku [what i want] & Haiku [for you]

Sonku [what i want]

by Sonia Sanchez

what i want

from you can

you give? what

i give to

you do you

want? hey? hey?

Haiku [for you]

by Sonia Sanchez

love between us is

speech and breath. loving you is

a long river running.

I was introduced to the Enneagram several years ago and have been reading more deeply on it recently. A favorite musical artist, Sleeping at Last, has also been interacting profoundly with the Enneagram and is currently writing songs to correspond with each of the nine types which comprise it. His most recent release was the song for the Six type. I am not a Six, but it is one of my wings, and I know several Sixes. Though I had recognized some of their major attributes, I was uncertain of their motivations for a long time. My reading, as well as this song, is helping me pull back the layers, and I have developed a well of compassion for my friends who are Sixes.

If I could distill the following lyrics into my own message for my friends who identify with this type, it would be: Please don't be so worried about making things safe for me. You are my safety.

Six
by Sleeping at Last

i had the most vivid dream...
my feet had left the ground, 
i was floating to heaven
but i could only look down.
my mind was heavy,
running ragged with worst case scenarios,
emergency exits and the distance below.
i woke up so worried that the angels let go.

oh God i’m so tired
of being afraid.

what would it feel like
to put this baggage down?
if i’m being honest,
i’m not sure i’d know how.
i want to take shelter but i’m ready, ready to fight
and somewhere in the middle i feel a little paralyzed-
but maybe i’m stronger than i realize

i want to believe
no, i choose to believe
that i was made to become 
a sanctuary.
fear won’t go away
but i can keep it at bay
and these invisible walls
just might keep us safe.
with vigilant heart,
i’ll push into the dark
but i’ll learn to breathe deep
and make peace with the stars.
is that courage or faith
to show up everyday?
to trust that there will be light
always waiting behind
even the darkest of nights

and no matter what,
somehow we’ll be okay.
don’t be afraid.

Her Grave, Again, pt. 7, (Matins)

Her Grave, Again, pt. 7, (Matins)
by Mary Oliver

Now we are awake
and now we are come together
and now we are thanking the Lord.

This is easy,
for the Lord is everywhere.

He is in the water and the air,
He is in the very walls.

He is around us and in us.
He is the floor on which we kneel.

We make our songs for him
as sweet as we can

for his goodness,
and, lo, he steps into the song

and out of it, having blessed it,
having recognized our intention,

having awakened us, who thought we were awake,
a second time,
having married us to the air and the water,

having lifted us in intensity,
having lowered us in beautiful amiability,

having given us
each other,
and the weeds, dogs, cities, boats, dreams
that are the world.

The Season of Phantasmal Peace

The Season of Phantasmal Peace
by Derek Walcott

Then all the nations of birds lifted together
the huge net of the shadows of this earth
in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues,
stitching and crossing it. They lifted up
the shadows of long pines down trackless slopes,
the shadows of glass-faced towers down evening streets,
the shadow of a frail plant on a city sill—
the net rising soundless as night, the birds' cries soundless, until
there was no longer dusk, or season, decline, or weather,
only this passage of phantasmal light
that not the narrowest shadow dared to sever.

And men could not see, looking up, what the wild geese drew,
what the ospreys trailed behind them in silvery ropes
that flashed in the icy sunlight; they could not hear
battalions of starlings waging peaceful cries,
bearing the net higher, covering this world
like the vines of an orchard, or a mother drawing
the trembling gauze over the trembling eyes
of a child fluttering to sleep;
                                                     it was the light
that you will see at evening on the side of a hill
in yellow October, and no one hearing knew
what change had brought into the raven's cawing,
the killdeer's screech, the ember-circling chough
such an immense, soundless, and high concern
for the fields and cities where the birds belong,
except it was their seasonal passing, Love,
made seasonless, or, from the high privilege of their birth,
something brighter than pity for the wingless ones
below them who shared dark holes in windows and in houses,
and higher they lifted the net with soundless voices
above all change, betrayals of falling suns,
and this season lasted one moment, like the pause
between dusk and darkness, between fury and peace,
but, for such as our earth is now, it lasted long.

Happiness

Happiness
by Raymond Carver

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They have on caps and sweaters,
and the one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs palely over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love
doesn't enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

Cracked Ice

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.

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.

Magdalene Poem

by John Taggart

Love enters the body

enters
almost
almost completely breaks and enters into the body

already beaten and broken

peaceful if breaking if breaking
and entering the already broken is peaceful

untouchable fortunately
untouchable.

if there are any heavens

for Connie

if there are any heavens
by e.e. cummings

if there are any heavens my mother will
(all by herself) have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses.

my father will be (deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my
(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face
with hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight
he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)

If There Is Something To Desire

If There Is Something To Desire, 9, 17, 18
by Vera Pavlova

9

I broke your heart.
Now barefoot I tread
on shards.


17

Why is the word yes so brief?
It should be
the longest,
the hardest,
so that you could not decide in an instant to say it,
so that upon reflection you could stop
in the middle of saying it.


18

—Sing me The Song of Songs.
—Don't know the words.
—Then sing the notes.
—Don't know the notes.
—Then simply hum.
—Forgot the tune.
—Then press my ear
to your ear
and sing what you hear.

National Poetry Month 2010

April is National Poetry Month! You can sign up for a poem-a-day by e-mail at the Academy of American Poets website. Last year, I posted a poem for every day in April, and though I may not have the time for such an undertaking this year, I'll try to be a little more active.

Happy poetry reading.