“A thousand years seem like a day…”
Holiday
Time pulls the final portal fast,
Grey curtains out the stains of yesteryear,
The word that shoulders grief is cast.
From salty flats an arid blast
Clears threshing floors of any careless tear
Time pulls. The final portal fast
Is made, the closing sentence passed.
The protests start, rich faces slick with fear.
The word that shoulders grief is cast.
Ten thousand thick they stand aghast,
Each red-rimmed moon, as, solemn in its sphere,
Time pulls the final portal. Fast
For feast and feasting unsurpassed,
The climb for rest, the twisted heart to hear
The word that shoulders. Grief is cast
Into the flame, and gladness will outlast
Affliction’s chains and forge a brave frontier.
Time pulls the final portal fast.
In gold the word that shoulders grief is cast.
How low can you go?
The Scale of the Universe
I slung a saddle, withered none the worse
across the shoulders of the universe
then crept below to wade with parasites
through wrinkled halls and low-hung needle lights,
saw organisms whir, heard slushy beats
in rhythmic metal walls and caverned streets
a yoctometer wide, and then a sound
dragooned me deep and furled me around.
So amplified I cupped my head to know
the vastness of the bulbs, how far to throw
the tent-lines of the earth. The uncliffed edge
of airy space, gas mountains fully fledged
with sulfurous clouds croon litanies in verse
and gesture, but the distant songs disperse
before my voice can scale the universe.
Who cares about that old wheelbarrow anyway?
so much depends
upon
Krispy Kreme
doughnuts
glazed with warm
icing
inside the white
package.
“Truth is, I’ve always been a fool.”
Step(s)
First snapshots, headshots, glimmers
here a hint a wonder there.
Crosses arms, bends to the page,
tilts her voice of no concern.
There are trees that were pushed up
from the ground through the snow caps.
There is earth kneaded into
mountains. Houses stacked on the
sides of the hills, backed by trees,
only woods between home and
the wild wild. There are no men here.
Roads lead off through the trees, signs
for towns somewhere who knows how
far away. We make it through
the dark grasslands in the night.
Almost no one on the road,
but the stars hang in the sky
like fruit. The high city spills
out like a box of marbles.
The sun has sails, the sky roars,
it soars, white clouds bellied out.
There are ink drops scattered in
a bucket of blue. Every
handful of trees, so precise,
so beautiful. There’s more, I’ll say,
there’s always more.
We—she and I—crawl for three
thousand miles to be there where
she looks at me sideways, says
something with her eyebrow, like
the sun on a broken day
hiding behind the bangs of
the country. Always, I’ll say,
it’s never too long. And both
are just waiting to come back, just waiting.
Did she see her shadow?
Assignment: write a poem modeled after Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Requiem.” Preserve the original meter and rhyme. Grammar and subject matter do not need to be copied.
Excitata
Up from the sod and dripping down,
Fingers light and leafy crown,
Foliage flung in green and brown,
And the breath alive in the chest.
Gone is the shroud from sun and sky,
Dusted reds in the tresses lie,
Spinning her ankle, flashing her eye,
And her rigor released from its rest.
What is the steel of your will?
Early in my life I determined not to teach because I like teaching very much. I thought if I was going to be a real poet – that is, write the best poetry I possibly could – I would have to guard my time and energy for its production, and thus I should not, as a daily occupation, do anything else that was interesting. Of necessity I worked for many years at many occupations. None of them, in keeping with my promise, was interesting.
Among the things I learn in those years were two of special interest to poets. First, that one can rise early in the morning and have time to write (or, even, to take a walk and then write) before the world’s work schedule begins. Also, that one can live simply and honorably on just about enough money to keep a chicken alive. And do so cheerfully.
This I have always known – that if I did not live my life immersed in the one activity which suits me, and which also, to tell the truth, keeps me utterly happy and intrigued, I would come someday to bitter and mortal regret.
Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook
Telling God to wait?
Food and sleep meter our lives. By eating and sleeping, we mark the days as they pass. Captain Hilts in the cooler, Crusoe on the island, every prisoner in solitary confinement, they lose all sense of time except the regular crust and water, the opening and shutting of eye-lids. In the absence of a clock, a healthy stomach will do. We even mark holidays with special meals, turkey or lamb or (if you’re from the South) pork and black-eyed peas.
Fasting is a denial of time. It’s a refusal to move forward with life. When we fast – if we ever do – we do it for a specific reason: there is something that we desire, that we want God to give us, and the world has no business moving forward until He has fulfilled our request. We simply refuse to accept the way things are. May the sun stand still, Lord, until this is finished. I will not bring sleep to my eyes until I have completed this task.
Time is a great mystery, a great blessing from God. Gollum says, “This thing all things devours,” and yet, it can be a mercy. But by refusing to eat, we deny time the chance to heal our pains. To eat is to accept the present circumstances. When we eat, we sit because the work is done. We set up a table in the midst of our enemies because God has already promised that He will take care of them. And so we raise the glass and slice the bread. But fasting is a cry. “I won’t let you go unless you bless me.” I refuse to eat until You have listened. And so a risen Christ eats fish for breakfast and the world ends with a feast.
Since when does He play nice?
Once upon a time, there was a boy. The world was too big for him, too hot to handle, too holy to touch. He ran through life with his eyes open, but more often than not, he lay on his back and stared at the sky. God picked him up and threw him in the air, and the sky was all around him and he was helpless in space, and it was hard to tell whether it was the Hands or the ground that caught him. God pulled out his baby teeth, urging the new ones forward. God cracked him open and laid him on the kitchen table, scooping out the fat, dividing joints and marrow. What cost for a heart of flesh? God demands that, too, digs deep for it. God split his bones and carved his scalp, rinsed the red and hung him upside-down to drain. “No more grace,” the boy pleaded. “No more grace, no more grace.”
“My grace,” said the Lord, “Is sufficient for you. For my strength is made perfect in weakness. And you are not nearly weak enough.”
Where are the men in the arts?
If somebody were to come up to me and say, I know somebody who speaks 15 languages, I would say, If you told me that person was left-handed, I wouldn’t be surprised. If you told me that person didn’t drive a car and got lost very easily, that wouldn’t surprise me. If you told me they were male, that wouldn’t surprise me. If you told me this person was [introverted, pragmatic and independent], that wouldn’t surprise me either. The other part that is potentially controversial is the link with homosexuality. If they told me that person was gay, that wouldn’t surprise me either.
Michael Erard, author of Babel No More, in a recent interview
leave a comment