1169. Three Mornings - Jane Hirshfield

 

In Istanbul my ears

three mornings heard the early call to prayer.

At fuller light, heard birds then,

waterbirds and tree birds, birds of migration.

Like three knowledges,

I heard them: incomprehension,

sweetened distance longing.

When the body dies, where will they go,

these migrant birds and prayer calls,

as heat from sheets when taken from a dryer?

With voices of the ones I loved,

great loves and small loves, train wheels,

crickets, clock-ticks, thunder-where will they,

when in fragrant, tumbled heat they also leave?

1168. Letter to the Person Who, During the Q&A Session After the Reading, Asked for Career Advice - Matthew Olzmann

The confusion you feel is not your fault.

When we were younger, guidance counselors steered us

toward respectable occupations: doctor, lawyer,

pharmacist, dentist. Not once did they say exorcist,

snake milker or racer helmet tester.

Always: investment banker, IT specialist, marketing associate.

Never: rodeo clown.

Never: air guitar soloist, chainsaw

juggler or miniature golf windmill maker.

In this country, in the year I was born,

some 3.1 million other people were also born, each

with their own destiny, the lines of their palms

predicting an incandescent future. Were all of them

supposed to be “strategy consultants” and “commodity analysts”?

Waterslide companies pay people to slide down

waterslides to evaluate their product.

Somehow that’s an actual job. So is naming nail polish colors.

Were these ever presented as options?

You need to follow your passion

as long as your passion is not poetry and is definitely a hedge fund.

If I could do it over, I’d suggest an entry level position

standing by a riverbank,

or a middle management opportunity

winding like fog through the sugar maples of New England.

There’s a catastrophic shortage 

of bagpipe players, tombstone sculptors and tightrope walkers.

When they tell you about the road ahead,

they forget the quadrillion other roads.

You’ll know which one belongs to you because

it fills you with astonishment or ends with you being reborn

as an alpine ibex—a gravity-defying goat, able to leap

seven feet in the air, find footholds where none exist,

and (without imagining it could ever be anything else)

scale a vertical sheet of solid rock

to find some branches, twigs, or wild berries to devour.

1167. A Maxim by Archy - Don Marquis

i once heard the survivors

of a colony of ants

that had been partially

obliterated by a cow’s hoof

seriously debating

the intention of the gods

towards their civilization

1166. No; 6 - Charles Bukowski

 

I’ll settle for the 6 horse

on a rainy afternoon

a paper cup of coffee

in my hand

a little way to go,

the wind twirling out

small wrens from

the upper grandstand roof,

the jocks coming out

for a middle race

silent

and the easy rain making

everything 

at once

almost alike,

the horses at peace with

each other

before the drunken war

and I am under the grandstand

feeling for

cigarettes

settling for coffee

then the horses walk by 

taking their little men

away—

it is funereal and graceful

and glad

like the opening 

of flowers. 

1165. On A Painting by Wang The Clerk of Yen Ling - Su Tung P’O (1036-1101)

The slender bamboo is like a hermit.

The simple flower is like a maiden.

The sparrow tilts on the branch.

A gust of rain sprinkles the flowers.

He spreads his wings to fly

and shakes all the leaves.

The bees gathering honey

Are trapped in the nectar.

What a wonderful talent

Can create an entire Spring

With a brush and a sheet of paper.

If he would try poetry

I know he would be a master of words

1164, My Weariness of Epic Proportions - Charles Simic

I like it when

Achilles

Gets killed

And even his buddy Patroclus-

And that hothead Hector-

And the whole Greek and Trojan

Jeunesse dorée

Are more or less

Expertly slaughtered

So there’s finally

Peace and quiet

(The gods having momentarily)

Shut up)

One can hear

A bird sing

And a daughter ask her mother

Whether she can go to the well

And of course she can

By that lovely little path

That winds through

The olive orchard

1163. A Plain Ordinary Steel Needle - Kay Ryan

     -Ripley’s Believe It Or Not?-

Who hasn’t seen

a plain ordinary

steel needle float serene

on water as if lying on a pillow?

The water curdles up like Jell-O.

Its a treat to see water

so rubbery a needle

so peaceful, the point encased

in the tenderest dimple

It seems so simple

when things or people

have modified each others qualities

somewhat:

we almost forget the oddity

of that.

1162. From Blossoms - Li-Young Lee

 A first! I enjoyed every poem in this book.

“Dancing With Joy” 99 Poems selected by Roger Housden

From laden boughs, from hands,

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

1161. Evening Ebb - Robinson Jeffers

The ocean has not been so quiet for a long while; five night-herons

Fly shoreline voiceless in the hush of the air

Over the calm of an ebb that almost mirrors their wings.

The sun has gone down, and the water has gone down

From the weed-clad rock, but the distant cloud-wall rises. The ebb     whispers.

Great cloud-shadows float in the opal water.

Through rifts in the screen of the world pale gold gleams, and the evening

Star suddenly glides like a flying torch.

As if we had not been meant to see her; Rehearsing behind

The screen of the world for another audience. 

1160. Snowstorm - Hayden Carruth

 

Everywhere men speak in whispers.

Tumult, many new ghosts. Storm

hurls itself across the valley

and careens from the ridges, swirls

of snow lapsing, leaping, colliding.

Outside on the highway a car

has rolled over the guard rail,

two pickups have stopped, men

stand hunched with their hands

in their pockets. We are looking

from our kitchen windows, we

have called the country sheriff

and the wrecker, we have asked

the men to come in for coffee.

But they have said no, somewhat

sullenly. Earlier we had been speaking

of war in the Persian Gulf, of

all the wars and how armies are

everywhere now, hardly one

peaceful corner remaining

in the world. In strange cities

and in wastelands, on mountains

and on islands, young men and women

in clumsy uniforms and in unease

stand hunched with their hands

in their pockets, or drink

as much beer as they can, or screw

themselves silly––but mostly

they stand hunched with their hands

in their pockets, scornful of the native

people. Now through the snow

the men on the highway are vague

distant figures in a veiled world,

the car’s lights are dim and unclear.

In our eaves and around our dormers

the wind cries and moans with increased

force, and the night comes on.