Category: poems

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

The light in the mornings and evenings is so good these days, the valley like a bowl filling up with clear water. Am I thinking about getting a dog so I can go on more walks to admire the light? Yes, yes I am.

 

The Light Continues
by Linda Gregg

Every evening, an hour before
the sun goes down, I walk toward
its light, wanting to be altered.
Always in quiet, the air still.
Walking up the straight empty road
and then back. When the sun
is gone, the light continues
high up in the sky for a while.
When I return, the moon is there.
Like a changing of the guard.
I don’t expect the light
to save me, but I do believe
in the ritual. I believe
I am being born a second time
in this very plain way.

In “honor” of the Bezos Met Gala this week, here’s a poem (found in the Ordinary Plots newsletter) about working in a warehouse. Poems! They apply to everything!

 

Logistics
by William Ward Butler

We were young sharks, boxcutters at our hips,
we worked overtime shifts, took ten-minute
nicotine breaks, quick hits, joked about buying

a guillotine for the boss as a Christmas present.
That winter was the worst for us, orders piling up,
a non-zero amount of blood allowed in the packages—

we all joked about dying young, DUIs among us
like a bouquet of orchids. Pablo would be in prison
in a year’s time. Most of us will have quit by then.

Back then, we were content to clock out and in,
rhythm and myth of what is called unskilled labor,
golden hours spent talking who else could do

what we’re doing, wondering if robots would take this
job too, not that we wanted to keep it, but we all had
rent to pay—some days, it didn’t feel like a bad gig.

I dreamed of sabotage (grabbing the PA, shouting
stop work now) but that was selfish;
I couldn’t keep myself from wanting a war

whenever the cause was just. I knew I had to leave
when I emerged from a sixty-hour week, saw all
the people outside, and thought, civilians.

It was a wet weekend here, which was honestly kind of nice–I got to putter around the house and take naps. No complaints.

 

To the Rain
by Ursula LeGuin

Mother rain, manifold, measureless,
falling on fallow, on field and forest,
on house-roof, low hovel, high tower,
downwelling waters all-washing, wider
than cities, softer than sisterhood, vaster
than countrysides, calming, recalling:
return to us, teaching our troubled
souls in your ceaseless descent
to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the root,
to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the sea.