Sometimes a poem

Sometimes a poem comes out of nowhere and speaks to me.

Last night this one from Rilke found me via a podcast I was listening to. The translation here is particularly wonderful.

Here it is, from Sonnets to Orpheus II:

"Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower"

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Rainer Maria Rilke


I like listen to podcasts at night, just as I'm falling asleep. This beautiful Rilke poem was read by the philosopher and translator Joanna Macy, as part of her interview on Krista Tippet's On Being. You can listen to her read her translation here. Or the entire podcast, here. Both are worth the time.

I hope the poem speaks to you. What else finds you when you need to hear it?

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Greening

I woke up last week to see the trees in the yard tinted pink and dusty green, on the very brink of bursting into buds. It literally happened in the space between dusk and dawn, it seemed. Spring always sneaks up on me that way, and as much as I try to resist it (and I do, for some perverse reason), I end up giving into a not-quite-but-almost insidious joy that blows in on the warm breeze along with the pine pollen and the scent of green unfurlings.

Poems sneak up on me, too. With perfect timing, this one by Phillip Larkin found me on Sunday.



The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

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Remembering my friend

Remembering, always, my dear friend Kim, who died a year ago today.

Our family had a lovely few days with her family this past summer. At one point during the visit, D. was looking through one of my favorite collections of poems, and it fell open to this one. We all shared an emotion-laden pause, and then read the poem. Ah Kim, I miss you.

Caroline

She wore

her coming death

as gracefully

as if it were a coat

she'd learned to sew.

When it grew cold enough,

she'd simply button it

and go.

Linda Pastan, from Carnival Evening

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Grateful for what might not have been

It's a time of reflection and thanksgiving, and I remind myself again: it might have been otherwise. I wrote this poem at a time when I was almost consumed with longing and anxiety. Among my desires then: to have a child, to transcend my own childhood and be a grownup, to find some way into what I dreamed my life could be.

Doppelganger

We meet between the glass of frames
And photo paper
And the thirty years
That separate us.

And mostly, you seem
transparent--
Blue eyes looking out
from plans and details
and preoccupations with, premonitions of
long and good
days to come.

In your winter coat and muckluks, you are
bright with snow light
on your cheeks and in your eyes.
And I--
I am there, too.
on my sled,
small and red, veloured and fat-fisted,
not yet a miniature you,
not yet aware of the camera
or the spring that follows.

2
There is a chemistry of shadow and light
on certain nights
when the fan above my bed starfishes
itself across the ceiling,
past the rattling cage of
minutia mind
to the rocky beach
of memory.

I stand on the shore
skipping thoughts along the flashing lake
singing in clean strokes across the water
until they sink
like obsidian into oil.

And here you are again,
but opaque to me
This time.
And it's clear to me that
those captured, auspicious moments
left a world of questions
out
of the frame.

What must you have thought,
worried over, as your own night-
beach tumbled into your room
and roared you awake with its waves?


3
I have learned that
if I touch the glass, or
ruffle through papers
or sing stones over water 30 years deep,
I can imagine you as
Another me.
And for a moment,
I can see the world outside the lens.

And as for the me that was then, well,
She
is lost at the bottom of the oily lake,
Waiting
(for now)
for a tide.

K.R.

originally published in Red River Review

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Poem for a Wednesday

For today, I present you with a poem about juxtaposition by Fleur Adcock from her collection  Poems 1960-2000.

It's the sort of thought that I've been preoccupied with lately:  how can kindness and cruelty dwell so closely in the same spaces in our hearts?  What do we conceal of our baser natures to prove our goodness?  What does our "goodness" cost us?  How does one accept the ruder truths of self?    

I turn these age-old questions over and over in my mind like a well-worn stone.  

“For a Five-Year-Old” 

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
It might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful had,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
four closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
and we are kind to snails.

--Fleur Adcock

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Because bread alone is not enough

We attended a dinner party last night. And because bread alone is not enough, we brought....poetry.

I really did bring a loaf of sourdough bread that I baked in the afternoon, but my husband and I both felt like it was a great idea to give something that would last. Plus, it was the first day of National Poetry month, and what better way to kick that off. Our Argentine hosts appreciated the gesture and the significance, and we had some lovely conversations last night.


Here is a poem that's been wandering around in my head lately. It's from Linda Pastan's recent collection Queen of a Rainy Country, which is filled with poems as rich as this one.

Rereading Frost

Sometimes I think all the best poems 

have been written already,

and no one has time to read them,

so why try to write more?

At other times though,

I remember how one flower

in a meadow already full of flowers

somehow adds to the general fireworks effect

as you get to the top of a hill

in Colorado, say, in high summer

and just look down at all that brimming color.

I also try to convince myself

that the smallest note of the smallest

instrument in the band,

the triangle, for instance,

is important to the conductor

who stands there, pointing his finger

in the direction of the percussions,

demanding that one silvery ping.

And I decide not to stop trying,

at least not for a while, though in truth

I'd rather just sit here reading 

how someone else has been acquainted

with the night already, and perfectly.

Linda Pastan

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An Irish poem for the day

In honor of St. Patrick's day, here is a selection from a fantastic collection I have called 1000 Years of Irish Poetry: The Gaelic and Anglo-Irish Poets from Pagan Times to the Present.  

This one is by a poet named Valentin Iremonger (1918-1991).  His poetry has a decidedly different feel from the ballad-type poems so often associated with Irish poetry.   His profession was official that of a diplomat, though his life as a poet was significant.  One source I found credited him (along with Samuel Beckett) with introducing modernism to Irish poetry.  I am so taken with this poem, and with several others of his in this anthology, that I am going to be on the search for his collection, Horan's Field, and Other Reservations, which is out of print.  

Here is his poem, "Spring Stops Me Suddenly," a poem full of sound, light, and layers.  I was so taken with the melancholy playing behind it, like a lilting Irish voice over the mournful pipes.    

Spring Stops Me Suddenly

Spring stops me suddenly like ground

Glass under a door, squeaking and gibbering,

I put my hand to my cheek and the tips 

Of my fingers feel blood pulsing and quivering.

A bud on a branch brushes the back

Of my hand and I look, without moving, down.

Summer is there, screwed and fused, compressed,

Neat as a bomb, its casing a dull brown.

From the window of a farther tree I hear

A chirp and a twitter; I blink.

A tow-headed vamp of a finch on a branch

Cocks a roving eye, tips me the wink

And, instantly, the whole great hot-lipped ensemble

Of buds and birds, of clay and glass doors,

Reels in with its ragtime chorus, staggering

The theme of the time, a jam-session's rattle and roar

With drums of summer jittering in the background

Dully, and deeper down and more human, the sobbing

Oboes of autumn falling across the track of the tune, 

Winter's furtive bassoon like a sea-lion snorting and bobbing.

There is something here I do not get,

Some menace that I do not comprehend,

Yet, so intoxicating is the song,

I cannot follow its thought right to the end.

So up the garden path I go with Spring

Promising sacks and robes to rig my years

And a young girl to gladden my heart in a tartan

Scarf and freedom from my facile fears.

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Yet Another Call to Now

My blogging is off schedule, as I am thick into several projects these days.   Amidst it, I've been reading a book by Kim Stafford, Early Morning. Kim Stafford is the son of poet William Stafford, and his book is a rich narrative of the very complex relationship between the two writers. I am enjoying it no end.  

Sometime next week I'll write much more about Kim Stafford's book, but for today, I give you a particularly buoyant poem by his father, William Stafford. He is one of my absolute favorite poets, because so many of his poems sing as well as this one:

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened 

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry 

whereever you go right now? Are you waiting 

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry into evening 

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life--

What can anyone give you greater than now, 

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

William Stafford, from The Way It Is

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If you've read more than a few posts here, you know how much I love poetry.  When I was teaching, I was adamant that I wasn't "teaching poetry," but rather introducing some poems to people who hadn't read much poetry for pleasure--my students.   

While most of my students had a good sense of poetry, some of them really believed that poetry was written with the intention to confound kids in school.  They believed that most poems existed in some weird vacuum, useful to "artsy teachers" and maybe a few overly sensitive people.  

My mission became focused: I had to debunk these assumptions about poetry and the intended audience.  So I started bringing in poetry from current sources, from songs, from contemporary anthologies.  Little by little, some of my misbelieving  students woke up to it.  

One of my favorite moments in the classroom centered around some poems I brought in for Valentine's Day.  I taught English at a university where the student population is overwhelmingly male, and a few of these young men had asked me for suggestions of good poems for a girlfriend.   So I created my own little anthology of love poems, some of which we read aloud in class.  Among them was the poem "Variation on the Word Sleep" by Margaret Atwood.

When I finished reading this, there was a palpable hush in the room. I looked up from the paper and saw some of the guys shaking their heads slowly, or nodding in appreciation. As class ended, a few of them asked me if they could keep the copy of that poem. And I knew that some of them had felt the living, moving force of a poem that spoke directly to them.

Here is that poem, in a new context, powerful and important as ever. Happy Valentine's Day Weekend!

Variation on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

Margaret Atwood

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A poem for Monday

An old favorite of mine, all the better when read aloud:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, and have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can food fell, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights of the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent 

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright

wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins


This is a good poem, I think, for midwinter, for a time of difficult economy, for a conflicted heart.

Hopkins himself was a complicated man--manic, simultaneously anguished and joyful, isolated and longing for connection. Some of his poems virtually sing, as this one does, with the internal sounds shimmering through it like water. Others capture the deep melancholy he felt so often toward his later years. I think the flux in his life translated into something almost tangible in his writing. I love this poem for its alchemy of juxtaposition. What do you think?

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Praise Song for the Day

Because I could not wait for the official transcript, with proper breaks, etc. as written by Elizabeth Alexander, I am posting this lovely inaugural poem as it was transcribed to Congressional Quarterly this morning. I'll update with the newer version once Ms. Alexander makes it available. The next version will be even better--the breaks say so much... but this is great for now.

I, for one, think this hit all the right notes. What do you think? Here it is:

Praise Song for the Day

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, 

catching each others’ eyes or not, 

about to speak or speaking. 

All about us is noise. 

All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, 

each one of our ancestors on our tongues. 

Someone is stitching up a hem, 

darning a hole in a uniform, 

patching a tire, 

repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere 

with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum

with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer consider the changing sky; 

A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, 

Words spiny or smooth, 

whispered or declaimed; 

Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone

and then others who said, 

“I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, 

that many have died for this day. 

Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, 

who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, 

picked the cotton and the lettuce, 

built brick by brick 

the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. 

Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, 

love beyond marital, filial, national. 

Love that casts a widening pool of light. 

Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Elizabeth Alexander, delivered on January 20, 2009
at the inauguration of President Barack Obama 

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Inauguration poetry

Inauguration day is almost upon us, and what an exciting ceremony it is bound to be, all of it. In particular, I've been reading with interest about Elizabeth Alexander, the poet chosen to write the inaugural poem for President Obama. 

She is an exciting choice for an inaugural poet. She's an embodiment of connections between multiple disciplines. Not only is she a poet, but also a playwright. She's a professor of African American Studies at Yale. She's written on education, poetry, identity, art. She's taught in many venues, from both high school and college. She knows how to connect the dots. That Mr. Obama chose her shows that he values poetry, that he knows how to connect the dots, too. He "does nuance."

Politics aside, I am thrilled that Obama is including a poet at his inauguration. Ms. Alexander will be only the fourth poet to participate in an inaugural ceremony, a fact that leaves me disappointed, but not surprised.


I'm going to stop here and say that this is the third draft of this post, the others all ending up in a vitriolic snit lamenting that that Americans don't generally read or enjoy poetry. That we have had only four inaugurations with a poet to mark the occasion is a sad thing. But someplace in the second version of this post, I decided that I'm not going to dwell on that (at least not today).

Today I'm going to celebrate that poetry is going to be present tomorrow at the ceremony. Of course, the day is about so very much more; but the presence of a poet says a great deal about the changes that are bound to come.


As way leads to way so often, I recently stumbled across a poem that speaks to the excitement ushered in with the inauguration of another President, in another time not so long ago.

I give you Linda Pastan's "Remembering Frost at Kennedy's Inauguration," from her book, Queen of a Rainy Country

Remembering Frost at Kennedy's Inauguration

Even the flags seemed frozen

to their poles, and the men

stamping their well-shod feet

resembled an army of overcoats.

But we were young and fueled 

by hope, our ardor burned away

the cold. We were the president's,

and briefly the president would be ours.

The old poet stumbled

over his own indelible words,

his breath a wreath around his face:

a kind of prophecy.

--Linda Pastan

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I've been up in the night this past month--insomnia, mine and Esme's, alternately.

Esme sometimes whispers to me in the dark, "Mommy, I'm scared. Protect me."  I rock her and tell her in reassuring tones that the day and the night are exactly the same, and the morning light will reveal that.

But I will tell you the whole truth, one I can't express to her yet--I do think the night is a different from the daytime.  I'd go so far as to say it's like different country sometimes.  Not scary, but mysterious, secret.    Being awake when the rest of your world sleeps around you is to feel like a fugitive from your regular life.    After a long night like that, the next day surprises me with its normal rhythms.  Doesn't it know my secret, nighttime life?   Doesn't it see how different *I* am for having been awake so long?

Sleep-deprived, I wade through the day's routines, stopping from time to time to marvel at the difference the daylight makes.   Sometimes I even feel as though the lack of sleep sharpens my feeling for the day, for its ordinariness. 

A wonderful poem that evokes some of this is Debra Spencer's "Day Bath," from her collection Pomegranate.  The last line in particular captures the feeling that resonates with me after a long night....

Day Bath 

for my son

Last night I walked him back and forth,

his small head heavy against my chest,

round eyes watching me in the dark,

his body a sandbag in my arms.

I longed for sleep but couldn't bear his crying

so bore him back and forth until the sun rose

and he slept.  Now the doors are open,

noon sunlight coming in,

and I can see fuchias opening.

Now we bathe.  I hold him, the soap 

makes our skins glide past each otehr.

I lay him wet on my thighs, his head on my knees,

his feet dancing against my chest,

and I rinse him, pouring water 

from my cupped hand.

No matter how I feel, he's the same,

eyes expectant, mouth ready,

with his fat legs and arms,

his belly, his small solid back.

Last night I wanted nothing more 

than to get him out of my arms.

Today he fits neatly

along the hollow my thighs make,

and with his fragrant skin against mine

I feel brash, like a sunflower.

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Hearts in the snow

On my way downstairs yesterday morning, I caught a glimpse of something unusual in the driveway.



I have love and hearts on my mind lately, and not just because of the upcoming Valentine's Day. I love how our minds manifest things--perception is everything. Yesterday the world offered me hearts entwined, and I accepted them!

On this day, I give you a poem of connection--like these hearts, like my love and I, like the world and all of us...

You Are Me

You are me and I am you. 

It is obvious that we are inter-are. 

You cultivate the flower in 

yourself so that I will be beautiful. 

I transform the garbage in myself so 

that you do not have to suffer. 

I support you you support me. 

I am here to bring you peace 

you are here to bring me joy.

- Thich Naht Hahn

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Poetry for a Winter Sunday

The outside is a-swirling with snow today, and the girls and I are cuddled up on the couch. While they play with their new puppet toys and watch tv, I'm thick into Linda Pastan's new collection of poems, Queen of a Rainy Country. My praise for her is nothing less than effusive, and if you read a few of these poems for yourself, you'll see why.

Here is one that is perfect for my mood this afternoon:

Parting the Waters

Nothing is lost.

The past surfaces

from the salted tide pool

of oblivion over

and over again,

and here it is now--

complete

with ironed sheets, old sins,

and pewter candlesticks.

My mother and aunt approach,

shaking the water from 

their freshly washed hair

like aging mermaids.

They have been here

all along, sewing

or reading a book, waiting

for the wand of memory

to touch them.

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Invoking Janus

Looking foward, looking backward.   Like Janus, we stand at the gate of the new year, and reflect while gazing ahead.

Here are two poems that make me think about that certain kind of retrospection that makes you look ahead with hope, too.  

The first is by William Stafford, from his collection Even in Quiet Places.  

You Reading This: Stop

Don't just stay tangled up in your life.

Out there in some river or cave where  you

could have been, some absolute, lonely

dawn may arrive and begin the story

that means what everything is about.

So don't just look, either:

let your whole self drift like a breath and learn

its way down the trees.  Let that fine 

waterfall-smoke filter its gone, magnified presence

all through the forest.  Stand here till all that

you were can wander away and come back slowly,

carrying a strange new flavor into your life.

Feel it?  That's what we mean.  So don't just 

read this.  rub your thought over it.

Now you can go on.

The second poem is by Linda Pastan, from her collection Carnival Evening.

The Happiest Day

It was early May, I think

a moment of lilac or dogwood

when so many promises are made

it hardly matters if a few are broken.

My mother and father still hovered

in the background, part of the scenery

like the houses I had grown up in,

and if they would be torn down later

that was something I knew

but didn't believe.  Our children were asleep 

or playing, the youngest as new 

as the smell of the lilacs,

and how could I have guessed 

their roots would be shallow

and would be easily transplanted.

I didn't even guess that I was happy.

The small irritations that are like salt

on melon were what I dwelt on,

though in truth they simply

made the fruit taste sweeter.

So we sat on the porch

in the cool morning, sipping

hot coffee.  Behind the news of the day--

strikes and small wars, a fire somewhere--

I could see the top of your dark head

and thought not of public conflagrations

but of how it would feel on my bare shoulder.

If someone could stop the camera then...

if someone could only stop the camera

and ask me: are you happy?

perhaps I would have noticed

how the morning shone in the reflected 

color of the lilac.  Yes, I might have said

and offered a steaming cup of coffee.

With each of these poems, my thoughts skip like a stone across the pond to a future me.  My mind whirls when I imagine the bright rings left behind in the skittering path of years, glittering like the sun on the water.   

Wishing you a bright new year.  May your 2009 be filled with hope and light and bright shining moments.

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A poem for Christmas

little tree

by: e.e. cummings

Little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower
who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly
i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid
look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,
put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy
then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud
and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"




Merry Christmas!

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Poetry for a Thursday

On my "treasure plan," I'm finding treasure all over, every day. One of the best places to look is in my collections of poetry. Here's a gem by Debra Spencer in her collection Pomegranate.  

"First Decade"

Water is not always warm.

If you lean too far out of the high chair, the floor will hit you in the head.

The leaves of geraniums smell better than the flowers.

The safest place to be is in my father's arms.

Every word has its own color.

Singing is like flying.

If you tell Candace Fields a secret, she keeps it.

Sometimes there's nothing to eat but turkey soup.

When they fall into the bathtub, library books make a big splash.

It takes a lot longer to fill a coffee can with shelled walnuts than it does to eat them.

It's worth walking all the way around the block to avoid Timmy Weems.

A baseball card over the hole in your shoe keeps your sock clean.

Everybody else asks their mom first.

No everybody wears the same kind of underwear.

No matter how stuck the bread is, you can't stick your knife in the toaster.

A baloney sandwich smells like lunch at breakfast and garbage at lunch.

If you're only as big as Taro Inoke, they can sew the finger back on.

If you beg hard enough, you'll get the white Keds.

Michael Gilroy's lips feel good against my cheek.

Even Taymor Johnson gets sunburned.

If you're one of the Schumtzes, you have to spit out your pomegranate seeds.

Boys like Louis Trachtenberg make fun of you but give you their cupcake.

I can think anything I like, and no one will ever know.

I'm going to die.

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Crossing to another shore

For Kim. 

When a Friend Dies

When a friend dies

the salmon run no fatter.

The wheat harvest will feed no more bellies.

Nothing is won by endurance

but endurance.

A hunger sucks at the mind

for gone color after the last bronze 

chrysanthemum is withered by frost.

A hunger drains the day,

a homely sore gap

after a tooth is pulled,

a red giant gone nova,

an empty place in the sky

sliding down the arch

after Orion in night as wide

as a sleepless staring eye.

When pain and fatigue wrestle

fatigue wins.  The eye shuts.

Then the pain rises again at dawn.

At first you can stare at it.

Then it blinds you.

--Marge Piercy, from The Moon is Always Female

You Know Who You Are: This is for You, My Friend

You went west to where the mountains stop,

and did not stop, but built a home

a whole new life that was not new

to you but real as Kansas loam.

Always in you mind was that far 

place whence you came and that far place

where you  were.  Distance you would bridge

--root trunk limb--all the ways

you could say Friend and mean it such

a way no stream could be denied.

The door stands open in that home,

the special chair for us reserved.

Friend, take this small token, if you

will, as tribute from all of us 

who have too long remained silent

about your heart and human trust.

--Jim Barnes, from The Sawdust War

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Tuesday Treasure: A Gift of a Poem

In keeping with my Tuesday treasure hunts, I'm going to show you another treasure I found this week.  But unlike most of my "hunts," I didn't look for this one.  Rather, it found me.  I've been walking on air all week because of it.

My friend Irene at wordloversunite gave me this poem on Sunday.   I literally swooned with delight at it.   It shimmers and glitters and thrills--a real treasure.   Allow me to hold it up for you to admire:  

Simplicity 8953

- for Kirie

The pattern promises to make a princess

so I gather together tulle, organza,

duchess satin and dupioni silk

to spin a girl’s dream: flouncy slip

beneath shimmering skirt, puffy sleeves,

bodice edged with beaded rosette trim.

I don’t warn her about the clock

or tell her how glass slippers sometimes shatter.

I stay up till dawn, add a tuck

so that it fits just right

and later as she prances and twirls

I vow to hold her close

should white steeds dissolve into skittering mice,

the royal coach to a rotting pumpkin,

the prince lost in moonlight, then

caught dancing with someone else.

- Irene Latham

You can read more of Irene's work on her blog, http://wordloversunite.blogspot.com/, and in her book, What Came Before .  I am so honored that she would be inspired to write something so lovely for me.   I treasure it.   Thank you, Irene!!

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