Category: poems

My kind of love poem is the kind that admits how messed up the world is and goes for it anyway. This is one to add to the collection. (Also, “intreasured” is a wonderful word.)

 

Fix
by Alice Fulton

There is no caring less
for you. I fix on music in the weeds,
count cricket beats to tell the temp, count
my breaths from here to Zen.
September does its best.
The Alaskan pipeline lacks integrity,
mineral fibers are making people dizzy,
we’re waiting for a major quake. Ultra-
violet intensity is gaining,
the ozone’s full of holes and

I can find no shade.
There is no caring less.
Without the moon the earth
would whirl us three times faster, gale-force
winds would push us down. Say
earth lost mass, a neighbor
star exploded — it’s if

and and and
but. The cosmos owns our luck.
Say under right and rare conditions,
space and time could oscillate.
I know what conditions
those would be for me.
I’d like to keep my distance,
my others, keep my rights reserved.
Yet look at you, intreasured,

where resolutions end.
No matter how we breathe
or count our breaths,
there is no caring less
for you for me. I have to stop myself

from writing “sovereign,” praising
with the glory words I know.
Glaciologists say changes
in the mantle, the planet’s vast
cold sheets could melt. Catastrophe
is everywhere, my presence
here is extra — yet —
there is no caring less.

 

Of Age
by Amit Majmudar

You’ve come of age in the age of migrations.
The board tilts, and the bodies roll west.
Fanaticism’s come back into fashion,
come back with a vengeance.
In this new country, there’s no gravitas,
no grace. The ancient Chevys migrate
west and plunge like maddened buffalo
into a canyon. Where the oil-slick geese go,
no one knows—maybe the Holland Tunnel
because they take it for the monstrous turbine
promised them in prophecy. I brought you
to this world, and I do not regret it.
The sky’s still blue, for now. I want to show you
an island where the trees are older than redwoods
ever since Prospero turned them
into books. You’ll meet him when you’re ready.
For now, though, study this list of endangered
species: it’s incomplete, of course, since all
species are in some danger nowadays.
This is the country I bequeath to you,
the country I bequeath you to. You’ve come
of age, and you’re inheriting the whole house,
busted pipes and splintered deck and all.
This is your people, this, the mythic West
your grandparents wished to reach, and reached.
The oceans surge, but the boat is up on blocks.
There’s no America to sail to anymore.

Just some pretty words for today.

 

 

All the warm nights
sleep in moonlight

keep letting it
go into you

do this
all your life

do this
you will shine outward
in old age

the moon will think
you are
the moon

Swampy Cree narrative poem
trans. Howard Norman (1972)

Another poem about self-care and sandwiches! I didn’t think there would be two. Now I wonder how many are out there (“collect them all!”).

VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God

Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you
could be cured with a hot bath,
says God through the manhole covers,
but you want magic, to win
the lottery you never bought a ticket for.
(Tenderly, the monks chant,
embrace the suffering.) The voice never
panders, offers no five-year plan,
no long-term solution, no edicts from a cloudy
white beard hooked over ears.
It is small and fond and local. Don’t look for
your initials in the geese honking
overhead or to see through the glass even
darkly. It says the most obvious shit,
i.e. Put down that gun, you need a sandwich.

 

Mary Karr (2018)

I can’t get photos to upload this week so here’s a poem to start things off. After The Writer’s Almanac folded, I found Matthew Ogle’s “Pome” newsletter that sends out a short modern one every day and subscribed to that. This is from there and is delightful (I’ve always wondered what the world must look like as a bird hops along).

 

Walking Like a Robin
Bernadette Mayer (2016)

take 3 or 4 steps then stop
look smell taste touch & hear
is there anything to eat?
oh look, there’s some caviar
it must be my birthday, thanks
i must be very old, like seventy
i guess i’m falling apart, i’ll just
sew myself back together but will it last?
please take a piece of me back home, each piece
is anti-war and don’t pay your rent, in fact
remember: property is robbery, give everybody
everything, other birds walk this way too

 

There is no end of poems about spring and now that the leaves are coming out on the trees, I’m going to post them all. (This was mentioned on kottke.org this week.)

 

Instructions on Not Giving Up

Ada Limón, 1976

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

The Trees

by Philip Larkin

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.

Bad News Good News

by Marjorie Saiser

***

 

(Keep my mom and my family in your thoughts, if you have some good vibes to spare. Posts may be a little lighter going forward but I’ll still be here.)