1002. Meeting Point - Louis MacNeice

(?)

Time was away and somewhere else,

There were two glasses and two chairs

And two people with the one pulse

(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):

Time was away and somewhere else,

And they were neither up nor down;

The stream’s music did not stop,

Flowing through heather, limpid brown,

Although they sat in a coffee shop

And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air

Holding its inverted poise –

Between the clang and clang a flower,

A brazen calyx of no noise:

The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand

That stretched around the cups and plates;

The desert was their own, they planned

To portion out the stars and dates:

The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.

The waiter did not come, the clock

Forgot them and the radio waltz

Came out like water from a rock:

Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash

That bloomed again in tropic trees:

Not caring if the markets crash

When they had forests such as these,

Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good

Be praised that time can stop like this,

That what the heart has understood

Can verify in the body’s peace

God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here

And life no longer what it was,

The bell was silent in the air

And all the room a glow because

Time was away and she was here.

1001. The Dog Itself - Helen Farish

.

Memory rounds this up, breathless,

like the dog herding sheep

below the bedroom window:

dropped at my feet are smells –

wool in the rain, my aunt’s

cigarette smoked on the hoof,

gorse also, firs making green

(and what it all means,

that too has a smell).

Not forgetting the dog itself,

so pleased with its work,

I must pen it in quick.

1,000 !!!!! Burning the Old Year - Naomi Shihab Nye

.

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,

lists of vegetables, partial poems.

Orange swirling flame of days,

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,

only the things I did’t do

crackle after the blazing dies.