Category: poems

Anne Carson just won the Nobel Prize in literature. I don’t know her work very well but if it’s all like this, I should fix that. Because what a way to describe someone you love!

 

O Small Sad Ecstasy of Love
by Anne Carson

I like being with you all night with closed eyes.
What luck—here you are
coming
along the stars!
I did a road trip
all over my mind and heart
and
there you were
kneeling by the roadside
with your little toolkit
fixing something.

Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.

The kitty boys have a routine now of getting on the bed together about 5:00 a.m. and just purring and rolling around and flopping down (still only on me though) and getting pets. I saw this Mary Oliver poem about her dog but it’s so appropriate for any little creature you have in your house.

 

Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night
by Mary Oliver

He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I’m awake, or awake enough

he turns upside down, his four paws in
the air and his eyes dark and fervent.

“Tell me you love me,” he says.
“Tell me again.”

Could there be a sweeter arrangement?
Over and over he gets to ask.
I get to tell.

Here’s one for the autumnal equinox, with an excellent use of “unstinting” in it.

 

Roses, Late Summer
by Mary Oliver

What happens
to the leaves after
they turn red and golden and fall
away? What happens

to the singing birds
when they can’t sing
any longer? What happens
to their quick wings?

Do you think there is any
personal heaven
for any of us?
Do you think anyone,

the other side of that darkness,
will call to us, meaning us?
Beyond the trees
the foxes keep teaching their children

to live in the valley.
so they never seem to vanish, they are always there
in the blossom of the light
that stands up every morning

in the dark sky.
And over one more set of hills,
along the sea,
the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.
if I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn’t mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question.

He died Monday at the age of 92. Looking back through the archives here, I’m surprised I never posted this one–arguably his most famous and very much up my alley.

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

There’s the joke that poets only talk about spring but I think late summer is really the season they love best. The longing! The foreshadowing! “Always, this hunger for more.”

 

How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River
by Barbara Crooker

how you can never reach it, no matter how hard you try,
walking as fast as you can, but getting nowhere,
arms and legs pumping, sweat drizzling in rivulets;
each year, a little slower, more creaks and aches, less breath.
Ah, but these soft nights, air like a warm bath, the dusky wings
of bats careening crazily overhead, and you’d think the road
goes on forever. Apollinaire wrote, “What isn’t given to love
is so much wasted,” and I wonder what I haven’t given yet.
A thin comma moon rises orange, a skinny slice of melon,
so delicious I could drown in its sweetness. Or eat the whole
thing, down to the rind. Always, this hunger for more.

I usually try to space out the poem posts a little more but I saw this last week and “Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that donkey” has been going around in my head so here you go. Don’t mind if I do.

 

Goodtime Jesus
by James Tate

Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How ’bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

This seems fitting for all work on the house lately. Those last couple lines!

 

Domesticity
by Catherine Pierce

Sometimes everything hurts with how desperately
I love it, and I do mean desperately. Like I want
to hold tight to every tender object, the gifted rock,

the basketball sneakers. Everywhere, piles
of undone, the tangle of should and will and want.
So many hours blurred to the necessity of sleep,

and how is any corner supposed to stay uncobwebbed
when also I need to consider mortality, love
the word gloaming, tweeze a tick from behind a knee?

How am I supposed to keep safe everyone
in this house while holding open the door
and saying have fun, make good choices, know the world?

Outside the wind has kicked up and the trees shush
even the leaf blowers. The hunger in my chest
could nearly lift me off the ground. Once I thought

domesticity was a gentle trap, a bed soft with quicksand.
Now I know it is a wild place, toothed and flowering.
Unnavigable, and not for the tenderhearted.

Here’s one from Poetry Instagram by Lyndsay Rush, aka Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin. I also swear it was just April and now it’s 98 degrees and everything is going, going, going.

 

Soaking it Up
by Lyndsay Rush

Is it June already?
Honey, I swear it was just April
I swear the sun just came out and we remembered
why our ancestors worshiped it
I swear my peonies and iris and wisteria
just opened their eyes
I swear it was only yesterday that I wasn’t swearing
every time I stepped outside
But now we’re in the thick heat of it
The bare feet of it
The thudding heartbeat of it
They love to remind me that I only get 18 summers
with you
But if time is such a petty thief,
why are my arms so full?

This is a new one to me and so nice (and giving echoes of William Carlos Williams). Also, the next time I outgrow another pair of pants, I’m going to say, “My hips are ripening” instead and then it will be poetic. 

 

Tomatoes
by Joy Sullivan

I waited so long for love
and suddenly, here it is
standing in the garden, hands full
of heirlooms hot from the sun.

Soon, we’ll make a supper of them.
Salted slabs between slices of bread.
Your beard silvers. My hips ripen.
The mail piles up.

Phone calls go unanswered. Forgive us.
Our mouths are full of tomatoes.
We are so busy
being small and hungry and alive