Category: poems

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.

Sometimes an Instagram poem just hits right. Maybe I need to write that last line on my hand so I can remember it–as my therapist says, “If you’re going to spend your energy imagining the future, why not imagine the best possible outcome?”

 

In Aggressive Pursuit of Joy
for Lesley

by Danielle Coffyn

Andrea Gibson once said joy is a muscle
you build by dancing when you’re inclined
to stay in bed. My friend survives a blood clot
& falls in love with living. Welcomes wrinkles
& silver strands. Bench presses sunshine,
azalea, stargazing in the desert. Some seasons
we cannot escape biopsy results, bad bosses
& unpaid bills, sobbing every morning
in the shower. Pain is the currency of existence.
If each new day is unknown, why not spend
our time in aggressive pursuit of joy?

This might be the best thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, I love a parody but I also sincerely love how reassuring this is.  Thanks, random Tumblr user! (and friend Mike who shared the link.)

 

EVERYTHING’S FINE 🙂
By W.B. Yeats

Tracing a neat straight line, adept and sure,
The falcon heeds the calling falconer;
Things hang together, and the center holds;
Mere symmetry is ordering the world,
The sea-bright tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence proceeds;
The best have strong convictions, while the worst
Are full of resignation and are sad.

Surely no revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming’s far away.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When an indifference borne of stable comfort
Leaves my sight clear: somewhere in sands of the desert
A lion with lion body and the head of a lion,
A gaze calm and leonine, as is usual,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all around it
Reel shadows of the normal desert birds.
What a nice lion, right? And now I know
That twenty centuries have gone along
And things were bad sometimes, and things were good,
And if a lion slouches toward Bethlehem,
That’s ’cause it’s native to the Levant.

I’ve been missing Toby and my mom and how things were ten years ago. I love the title on this one, and the green motif that goes from fields to bruises to hope. Something to remember:  “Every wound closes. Repair comes with sweetness,/ Come spring. Every empire will fall:/ I must believe this.”

 

Greensickness
by Laurel Chen

after Gwendolyn Brooks

My wild grief didn’t know where to end.
Everywhere I looked: a field alive and unburied.
Whole swaths of green swallowed the light.
All around me, the field was growing. I grew out
My hair in every direction. Let the sun freckle my face.
Even in the greenest depths, I crouched
Towards the light. That summer, everything grew
So alive and so alone. A world hushed in green.
Wildest grief grew inside out.

I crawled to the field’s edge, bruises blooming
In every crevice of my palms.
I didn’t know I’d reached a shoreline till I felt it
There: A salt wind lifted
The hair from my neck.
At the edge of every green lies an ocean.
When I saw that blue, I knew then:
This world will end.

Grief is not the only geography I know.
Every wound closes. Repair comes with sweetness,
Come spring. Every empire will fall:
I must believe this. I felt it
Somewhere in the field: my ancestors
Murmuring Go home, go home—soon, soon.
No country wants me back anymore and I’m okay.

If grief is love with nowhere to go, then
Oh, I’ve loved so immensely.
That summer, everything I touched
Was green. All bruises will fade
From green and blue to skin.
Let me grow through this green
And not drown in it.
Let me be lawless and beloved,
Ungovernable and unafraid.
Let me be brave enough to live here.
Let me be precise in my actions.
Let me feel hurt.
I know I can heal.
Let me try again—again and again.

The opening three lines of this delighted me but this line is the clear winner of them all: “Not even moths in the spell of the flame/ Can want it to be warmer so much as I do!” Amen, Kenneth.

 

Desire For Spring
by Kenneth Koch

Calcium days, days when we feed our bones!
Iron days, which enrich our blood!
Saltwater days, which give us valuable iodine!
When will there be a perfectly ordinary spring day?
For my heart needs to be fed, not my urine
Or my brain, and I wish to leap to Pittsburgh
From Tuskegee, Indiana, if necessary, spreading like a flower
In the spring light, and growing like a silver stair.
Nothing else will satisfy me, not even death!
Not even broken life insurance policies, cancer, loss of health,
Ruined furniture, prostate disease, headaches, melancholia,
No, not even a ravaging wolf eating up my flesh!
I want spring, I want to turn like a mobile
In a new fresh air! I don’t want to hibernate
Between walls, between halls! I want to bear
My share of the anguish of being succinctly here!
Not even moths in the spell of the flame
Can want it to be warmer so much as I do!
Not even the pilot slipping into the great green sea
In flames can want less to be turned to an icicle!
Though admiring the icicle’s cunning, how shall I be satisfied
With artificial daisies and roses, and wax pears?
O breeze, my lovely, come in, that I mayn’t be stultified!
Dear coolness of heaven, come swiftly and sit in my chairs!