-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.
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.
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.
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.
from there to gaze and come down:
the ocean was performing;
we contributed our climb.
Waves leapfrogged and came
straight out of the storm.
What should our gaze mean?
Kit waited for me to decide.
Standing on such a hill,
what would you tell your child?
That was an absolute vista.
Those waves raced far, and cold.
“How far could you swim Daddy
in such a storm?”
“As far as was needed,” I said,
and as I talked I swam.
I praise the brightness of hammers pointing east
like the steel woodpeckers of the future,
and dozens of hinges opening brass wings,
and six new rakes shyly fanning their toes,
and bins of hooks glittering into bees,
and a rack of wrenches like the long bones of horses,
and mailboxes sowing rows of silver chapels,
and a company of plungers waiting for God
to claim their thin legs in their big shoes
and put them on and walk away laughing.
In a world not perfect but not bad either
let there be glue, glaze, gum, and grabs,
caulk also, and hooks, shackles, cables, and slips,
and signs so spare a child many read them,
Men, Women, In, Out, No Parking, Beware The Dog.
In the right hands, they can work wonders
Translated from the Chinese by Sam Hamill
The birds have vanished
and now the last cloud drains away
We sit together, the mountain and me
until only the mountain remains.
April, and the last of the plum blossoms
scatters on the black grass
before dawn. The sycamore, the lime,
the struck pine inhale
and first pale hints of sky. The iron day,
I think, yet it will come
dazzling, the light
rise from the belly of leaves and pour
burning from the cups
of poppies. The mockingbird squawks
from his perch, fidgets,
and settles back. The snail, awake
for good trembles from his shell
and sets sail for China. My hand dances
in the memory of a million vanished stars.
A man has every place to lay his head
Translated by Sam Hamill
Searching for Gathered Fragrance Temple:
miles of mountains rise into clouds,
ancient trees darken the narrow trail.
Where is that mountain temple bell?
Snow melt crashes down on boulders,
the sun grows cold in the pines before
it drowns in the lake. Keep your karma
in good working order: many dragons lie in wait.
In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth.
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen—
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That’s the way it was
Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,
who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,
you come
to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests,
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.
