1037. Missing the Boat - Naomi Shihab-Nye

.

It is not so much that the boat passed 

and you failed to notice it.

It is more like the boat stopping

directly outside your bedroom window, 

the captain blowing the signal-horn,

the band playing a rousing march.

The boat shouted, waving bright flags,

its silver hull blinding in the sunlight.

But you had this idea you were going by train.

You kept checking the time-table,

digging for tracks.

And the boat got tired of you,

so tired it pulled up the anchor

and raised the ramp.

The boat bobbed into the distance,

shrinking like a toy—

at which point you probably realized 

you had always loved the sea.

1036. Unloading The Elephants - David Wagoner

.

Out of the sliding doors

Of steel-gray boxcars

The trunks come groping

Through the gray morning.

Where are we now?

The greatest show

Is on earth, trumpeting

Down the steep ramps and bracing

Forelegs against the heavy

Heavenly bodies

They so carefully balance

Like the commandments 

Shouted to massive heads, to ears

Pondering old orders,

Older than canvas.

Why are you keeping us?

In a huge row, seventeen

Elephants. Why must we learn

From you? What have we done

To be so weighted down?

Trunks raised, they shuffle forward

To the long parade.

1035. Ruins - Linda Pastan

.

We picnic by these bleached ruins

a few miles from the village

where we bought this rough

bread and cheese, this bottle

of wine shaped

like a Cycladic goddess.

Nearby is Homer’s Aegean

where bathers in their sculpted

flesh, their beauty, might have been

the models for the limbs

now broken, the faces

fallen from the frieze

of this temple whose ruins

we love because they show

how life is both continuous

and brief and must

be honored with good wine,

with bread and cheese.

1034. I Love To See You - James Laughlin

in the box of paperclips on by desk

it’s a good place for you because I

can look at you when I’m telephoning

or typing a poem or putting poems in-

to the copy machine to send to maga-

zines that don’t want them    I tried

putting you in the little ormolu

frame where the daguerreotype of

great-grandmother Henrietta used to

be but it didn’t suit    you looked

too formal (you have lovely manners

but thank heaven you aren’t formal)

so I pushed up the paperclips in the 

box and leaned you against the heap

it can’t be very comfortable ( paper-

clips are harder than hay) but you’re

smiling away as if you loved it    I

hope you’re also smiling because you

love me so much you don’t care where

I keep you even in the paperclip box.

Her Reply

I like my picture to be in the box

where you keep your paperclips    I

imagine that when you reach for a

clip you are reaching out for me

it’s a gesture you’ve made a thou-

sand times (whenever you’ve needed

a clip) but now I hope it has be-

come different    given a new mean-

ing by my image    does the movement

of your hand now plead more for me

than thought or memory can    even

at this distance I feel the touch

of your fingers    do they feel they

are touching me    or must I become

again only the icon of my everyday

self as ordinary as your paperclips?

1033. It Happens To Those Who Live Alone - David Whyte

It Happens To Those Who Live Alone - David Whyte

It happens to those

who live alone

that they feel sure

of visitors

when no one else

is there,

until the one day 

and one particular

hour

working in the 

quiet garden,

when they realize

at once, that all along 

they have been 

an invitation

to everything

and every kind of trouble

and that life

happens by

to those who inhabit

silence

like the bees

visiting

the tall mallow

on their legs of gold,

or the wasps

going from door to door

in the tall forest 

of the daisies.

I have my freedom

today

because

nothing really happened

and nobody came

to see me.

Only the slow

growing of the garden 

in the summer heat

and the silence of that

unborn life

making itself

known at my desk,

my hands

still

dark with the

crumbling soil

as I write 

and watch 

the first lines

of a new poem,

like flowers

of scarlet fire,

coming to fullness

in a new light.

1032. Mindful - Mary Oliver

.

Every day

I see or I hear

something

that more or less

kills me

with delight 

that leaves me

like a needle.

in the hay stack

of light. 

It is what I was born for—

to look, to listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world—

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking

about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful

the very extravagant—

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these—

the untrimmable light

of the world,

the ocean’s shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

1031. Block - Linda Pastan

.

I place one word slowly

in front of the other.,

like learning to walk again

after an illness.

But the blank page

with its hospital corners

tempts me.

I want to lie down

in its whiteness

and let myself drift

all the way back

to silence.

1030. EXERCISE - W. S. Merwin

.

First forget what time it is

for an hour

do it regularly every day

then forget what day of the week it is

do this regularly for a week

then forget what country you are in

and practice doing it in company

for a week

then do them together

for a week

with a few breaks as possible

follow these by forgetting how to add

or to subtract

it makes no difference 

you can change them around

after a week

both will help you later

to forget how to count

forget how to count

starting with your own age

starting with how to count backward

starting with even numbers

starting with Roman numerals

starting with fractions of Roman numerals

starting with the old calendar

going on to the old alphabet

going on to the alphabet

until everything is continuous again

go on to forgetting elements

starting with water

proceeding to earth

rising in fire  

forget fire

1029. Swift Things Are Beautiful - Elizabeth Coatsworth

.

Swift things are beautiful:

Swallows and deer,

And lightning that falls

Bright-veined and clear,

Rivers and meteors,

Wind in the wheat,

The strong-withered horse,

And runner’s sure feet.

And slow things are beautiful:

The closing of day,

The pause of the wave

That curves downward to spray,

The ember that crumbles,

The opening flower,

And the ox that moves on

In the quiet of power.

1028. For The Traveler - John O'Donohue

.

Every time you leave home,

another road takes you

into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.

new places that have never seen you

will startle a little at your entry.

Old places that you know well

will pretend nothing

changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself

alone in a different way,

more attentive now

to the self you bring along,

Your more subtle eye watching

you abroad; and how what meets you

touches that part of the heart

that lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune

to the timbre in some voice,

opening a conversation

you want to take in

to where your longing

has pressed hard enough

inward, on some unsaid dark,

to create a crystal of insight

you could not have known

you needed 

to illuminate 

your way.

When you travel,

a new silence

goes with you,

and if you listen,

you will hear

what your heart would

love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:

make sure, before you go,

to take the time

to bless your going forth,

to free your heart of ballast

so that the compass of your soul

might direct you toward

the territories of spirit

where you will discover

more of your hidden life,

and the urgencies

that deserve to claim you.

May you travel 

in an awakened way,

gathered wisely 

into your inner ground; 

that you may not waste 

the invitations which 

wait along the way 

to transform you.

May you travel safely, 

arrive refreshed, 

and live your time away 

to its fullest; 

return home more enriched, 

and free to balance 

the gift of days 

which call you. 

From: To Bless the Space Between Us

1027. Song For The First People - David Wagoner

.

When you learned that men were coming, you changed into rocks.

Into fish and birds, into flowers and rivers in despair of us.

The tree under which I bend may be you,

That stone by the fire, the nighthawk swooping

And crying out over the swamp reeds, the reeds themselves.

Have I held you too lightly all my mornings?

I have broken your silence, dipped you up

Carelessly in by hands and drunk you, burnt you,

Carved you, slit your calm throat and danced on your skin,

Made charms of your bones. You have endured

All of it, suffering my foolishness

As the old wait quietly among clumsy children.

Now others are coming, neither like you nor like men.

I must change, First People. How do I change myself?

If no one can teach me the long will of the cedar,

Let me become Water Dog, Bitteroot, or Shut Beak.

Change me. Forgive me. I will learn to crawl, stand, or fly

Anyshere among you, forever, as though among great elders.

1026. Photograph - Cynthia Rylant

From: Something Permanent 

Photo by Walker Evans

He washed his feet for the picture,

even his knees,

and wondered about that man

who cared enough to want him to sit there

for a photograph

even though he didn’t have

nothing good to hold in his hands,

nor even a dog to sit by his chair.

It gave him, briefly,

some sort of feeling

of just being

enough.

1025. The Old Poets of China - Mary Oliver

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.

It offers me its busyness. It does not believe

that I do not want it. Now I understand

why the old poets of China went so far and high

into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

1024. A Small Eternity - Robert Penn Warren

.

The time comes when you count the names—whether

dim or flaming in the head’s dark, or whether

In stone cut, time-crumbling or moss-glutted.

You count the names to reconstruct yourself.

But a face remembered may blur, even as you stare

At a headstone. Or sometimes a face, as though from air,

Will stare at you with a boyish smile—but, not

Stone-moored, blows away like dandelion fuzz.

It is very disturbing. It is as though you were

The idiot boy who ventures out on pond-ice

Too thin and hears here—hears there—the creak

And crackling spread. That is the sound Reality

Makes as it gives beneath your metaphysical

Poundage. Memory dies. Or lies. Time

Is a wind that never shifts air. Pray only

That, in the midst of selfishness, some

Small act of careless kindness, half-unconscious, some

Unwitting smile or brush of lips, may glow

In some other mind’s dark that’s lost your name, but stumbles

Upon that momentary Eternity.

1023. A Cup Of Coffee - Gene Fowler

From: A Solo In Tom-Toms - Gene Fowler

Such a small and homely and peasant-like thing

seems a cup of coffee.

Still, some of us know that nothing really is small

and nothing actually large, but of an entity,

and of no dimensions whatsoever except as our

imaginations make it seem large or small.

For everything is one thing and of one thing.

And the thing is not a thing at all, but an idea.

Perhaps this idea is both the creator and the created, 

Timeless, endless, and inscrutable.

1022. Harvey Ellis - Harvey Ellis

Harvey Ellis - Harvey Ellis

my ancestors surround me

like walls of a canyon

quiet

stone hard

their ideas drift over me

like breezes at sunset

we gather sticks

and make settlements

what we do is only partly

our own

and partly continuation

down through the chromosomes

my son

my baby sleeps behind me

stirring in the night

for the touch

that lets him continue

he is arranging 

in his small form the furniture

and windows of his home

it will be a lot like mine

it will be a lot like theirs

1021. To The Son - Jorge Luis Borges

Translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid

It was not I who begot you. It was the dead—

my father, and his father, and their forebears,

all those who through a labyrinth of loves

descend from Adam and the desert wastes

of Cain and Abel, in a dawn so ancient

it has become mythology by now,

to arrive, blood and marrow, at this day

in the future, in which I now beget you.

I feed their multitudes. They are who we are,

and you among us, you and the the sons to come

that you will beget. The latest in the line

and in red Adam’s line. I too am those others.

Eternity is present in the things

of time and its impatient happenings

1020. The Bed by the Window - Robinson Jeffers

.

I chose the bed downstairs by the sea-window for a good death-bed

When we built the house, it is ready waiting.

Unused unless by some guest in a a twelvemonth, who hardly  suspects

Its later purpose. I often regard it,

With neither dislike nor desire; rather with both, so equaled

That they kill each other and a crystalline interest

Remains alone. We are safe to finish what we have to finish,

And then it will sound rather like music

When the patient daemon behind the screen of sea-rock and sky

Thrumps with his staff, and calls thrice: “Come,  Jeffers

1019. Figment at the Beginning of Something. . . - David Watts

My son brings me a stone and asks

which star it fell from,

he is serious

and so I must be careful, even though

I know he will place it

among those things that will leave him

someday, and he

will go on gathering. For this

is one of those moments

that turns suddenly towards you, opening

as it turns, as if for a moment

we paused on the edge

of a heart beat, conscious

of the fear that runs beside us

and how lovely it is to be with each other

in the long resilient mornings.

1018. Poema - Maria Teresa Horta

Poema by Maria Teresa Horta

Translated from the Portuguese by Lesley Saunders

I let him come.

He sneaks on tiptoe

right up to my ear;

under its ribs my heart

quivers, quickens

as the excitement mounts:

first the forest appears,

then the woodland-sequel,

more mist than snow to the touch –

from the new poem’s

very first line the paper sucks up

every waif-word

and an ugliness steals in,

a cunning hungry thing

crouching there incognito,

pretending to be tame and yet so wolfish

that he’s the kernel of light

and then the noise of its cracking;

he’s lithe on the path,

doubling back on himself,

running with the pack, loping alone;

pussy-footing through the night

he trails moonlight behind him

like a mink coat.

I feel him when the hairs on my skin

lift, and in the delicious dizziness

of my private pulse –

in the midst of my writing, in my dream-life,

I slip all his clothes slowly off

and slide him down beside me.