Poetry – Page 6

52 Weeks ~ Flash Photo (50/52)

We Grow Accustomed to the Dark

We grow accustomed to the Dark —
When light is put away —
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye —

A Moment — We uncertain step
For newness of the night —
Then — fit our Vision to the Dark —
And meet the Road — erect —

And so of larger — Darkness —
Those Evenings of the Brain —
When not a Moon disclose a sign —
Or Star — come out — within —

The Bravest — grope a little —
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead —
But as they learn to see —

Either the Darkness alters —
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight —
And Life steps almost straight.

–Emily Dickinson

52 Weeks ~ Family (49/52) and Fire (51/52)

I wanted to write
about the great grandmother
who bought the menorah
(in Poland perhaps?)
whose face I never knew
about the grandmother
who loved us with a wide heart
and kept the menorah hidden
among other silvery things
in the china cabinet
so we never saw it there
about the mother
who, when cleaning out
her parents’ home,
claimed the menorah,
to keep it in the family
about the daughter
who feels the reverberations
of generations in the
solidness of it,
though has no memory of it
about the grand daughter
who places the candles in it
and says the blessing
while she lights it
lights the candle
lights the fire
and will remember

Paper or plastic? Fire or Ice?

I’m posting this today, in case none of us are here tomorrow.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

–Robert Frost

It’s a cold, bone-chilling kind of day here. Not a late January, blue sky, fresh snow kind of cold. No, it’s a raw-feeling, cloudy, storm’s-a-comin’ cold.

So I vote for fire.

52 Weeks ~ Brown (43/52)

A Late Walk

When I go up through the mowing field,
The headless aftermath,
Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
Half closes the garden path.

And when I come to the garden ground,
The whir of sober birds
Up from the tangle of withered weeds
Is sadder than any words

A tree beside the wall stands bare,
But a leaf that lingered brown,
Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
Comes softly rattling down.

I end not far from my going forth
By picking the faded blue
Of the last remaining aster flower
To carry again to you.

–Robert Frost

The quiet, the words, and Grace

I’ve been thinking about Grace Paley all week.

Born in 1922, she would have be 90 years old this past Tuesday.

She pops into my mind for quick visits all year round, when making a warm drink on a cold morning, or stopping by the post office up on the hill, or trying to bend a written line to my will, gently and forcefully.

But when her birthday rolls around each year, I pull out copies of her books, dive into her words, look at her picture, think, What would Grace write on a chilly, cloud-blown day in Vermont like this?

I don’t remember when we first met. Sometime after we moved to this little Vermont town that she also called home. I don’t think we were ever officially introduced. Someone probably pointed her out to me, from a distance. I simply came to know that that short-statured, wild-white-haired presence was Grace. At town meeting, at the village store, at the daycare that our daughter and her granddaughter attended,

While waiting for the kids to come out to the coat room at the end of the day, she and I would chat idly about the weather, or an upcoming town event, my heart beating wildly, amazed that this vibrant, tender, fierce poet was standing just a foot away from me, in her long winter coat, hair flying out from under her knit cap.

In person, we knew each other as acquaintances, neighbors. In private, I knew her words, her stories, and I admired her endlessly.

Grace wrote about war, and peace, and justice. She wrote about mothers, and fathers, and children. She wrote about youth and age. She seemed quiet and mild on the surface, but read her poems and stories and you’ll know she was anything but. And she didn’t just write: she protested, she marched, she spoke out.

Once, at a peace vigil at the local church at the top of the hill, her lone voice broke the long meditative silence, quietly singing “Down By the Riverside”.

Gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Ain’t gonna study war no more.

The rest of us joined her.

That’s the way it was.

She was quietly loud.

When we were together, our two quietnesses were a knitted afghan that warmed us but kept us insulated from each other. My quiet was shyness and a worry of offending. Hers? I can’t say, but I assumed it was contentedness. No need to talk. Just be.

I sometimes regret that I never told her how much I admired her. But she was probably used to people saying things like that. She might have laughed, or, more likely, shrugged modestly. I don’t know.

I would have gone home, and thought about being a writer. She would have gone home, and willed words onto the page that we would all read years later. Grounding, truthful words about how hard and sad this life is, and how wonderful, too.

I tried to find a short video of her reading some poems, but couldn’t find anything I really loved. If you have the time, though, there’s this wonderful, long video of Grace reading several of her stories and poems in her gorgeous New York accent. Her part of the video starts about 18 minutes in.

Take some time with her. She’ll make you laugh. And surprise you. And give you hope.

This Hill

this hill
crossed with broken pines and maples
lumpy with the burial mounds
of uprooted hemlocks (hurricane
of ‘thirty-eight) out of their rotting hearts
generations rise trying once more
to become the forest

just beyond them
tall enough to be called trees
in their youth like aspen a bouquet
of young beech is gathered

they still wear last summer’s leaves
the lightest brown almost translucent
how their stubbornness decorates
the winter woods

on this narrow path
ice holds the black undecaying
oak leaves in its crackling grip
oh    it’s become too hard to walk
    a sunny patch   I’m suddenly
in water to my ankles    April

–Grace Paley (from Fidelity, 2008)

Maybe I should hand her the keys?

Rebecca: What should I write today?

Hyla: Write an ode to the fire.
R: That’s a good idea. What defines an “ode”?
H: I can show you one I wrote about Oyster.
R: Please do.

. . .

R: Oh, I like this! Can we post this today instead of something I write?
H: Sure!

Ode To A Cat

The gentle
cat
sits regally,
surveys his jungle-kingdom
and draws the curtain of
his private war chamber.
Sitting on the velvet cushion,
surrounded by his family, loyal courtiers,
the mighty cat sends out orders
to move this regiment here,
to send a gift to this nation.
Going through his daily routine,
he feels weary.
And one evening,
he meows to his faithful page, Hudson;
“I am hungry,”
the powerful rumble
of his voice fills the room.
His page offers;
“Anything, King Oyster.
I will go to the market
and buy it for you.”
The royal cat
shakes his head,
and his long white whiskers shine.
He wants to go to the market himself.
And so,
as the king wished,
they go to the market,
on foot,
the wind rips at their faces,
tearing up the feathery snow and dusting it
over their faces.
At the market,
the people stare and whisper:
“The king!”
And Oyster laughs;
leaping up to play with the kittens,
giving hard-earned rewards to their parents
and kin.
They pass large wealthy buildings,
bursting with delicious food,
and Hudson suggests them all.
The king shakes his head and walks on.
At the end of the path,
they come to a bleak hovel,
in which a wife cooks what she has.
The king orders the page to buy good milk,
cheese and meat, and to
bring them to him. Meanwhile,
he slips into the small house.
The wife does not recognize him,
and offers him some soup.
The king thanks her and laps it up slowly.
Hudson knocks at the door,
and Oyster opens it.
The kind cat and her family
revel in the delicious gifts
and thank the king
again and
again.
The king and page buy a cheese
and go home.
He enters his palace again
and curls up by the crackling fire
my father stokes.

–Hyla Maddalena

52 Weeks ~ Football (37/52)

A Man in Blue

Under the French horns of a November afternoon
a man in blue is raking leaves
with a wide wooden rake (whose teeth are pegs
or rather, dowels). Next door
boys play soccer: “You got to start
over!” sort of. A round attic window
in a radiant gray house waits like a kettledrum.
“You got to start . . .” The Brahmsian day
lapses from waltz to march. The grass,
rough-cropped as Bruno Walter’s hair,
is stretched, strewn and humped beneath a sycamore
wide and high as an idea of heaven
in which Brahms turns his face like a bearded thumb
and says, “There is something I must tell you!”
to Bruno Walter. “In the first movement
of my Second, think of it as a family
planning where to go next summer
in terms of other summers. A material ecstasy,
subdued, recollective.” Bruno Walter
in a funny jacket with a turned-up collar
says, “Let me sing it for you.”
He waves his hands and through the vocalese-shaped spaces
of naked elms he draws a copper beech
ignited with a few late leaves. He bluely glazes
a rhododendron “a sea of leaves” against gold grass.
There is a snapping from the brightwork
of parked and rolling cars.
There almost has to be a heaven! so there could be
a place for Bruno Walter
who never needed the cry of a baton.
Immortality—
in a small, dusty, rather gritty, somewhat scratchy
Magnavox from which a forte
drops like a used Brillo Pad?
Frayed. But it’s hard to think of the sky as a thick glass floor
with thick-soled Viennese boots tromping about on it.
It’s a whole lot harder thinking of Brahms
in something soft, white, and flowing.
“Life,” he cries (here, in the last movement),
“is something more than beer and skittles!”
“And the something more
is a whole lot better than beer and skittles,”
says Bruno Walter,
darkly, under the sod. I don’t suppose it seems so dark
to a root. Who are these men in evening coats?
What are these thumps?
Where is Brahms?
And Bruno Walter?
Ensconced in resonant plump easy chairs
covered with scuffed brown leather
in a pungent autumn that blends leaf smoke
(sycamore, tobacco, other),
their nobility wound in a finale
like this calico cat
asleep, curled up in a breadbasket,
on a sideboard where the sun falls.

–James Schuyler

Thanksgiving: Sweetness and peace to you all

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

–Wendell Berry

The peaceful choice of all

Election Day

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and
show,
‘Twould not be you, Niagara–nor you, ye limitless prairies–nor
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite–nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic
geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones–nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes–nor
Mississippi’s stream:
–This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name–the still
small voice vibrating–America’s choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen–the act itself the main, the
quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous’d–sea-board and inland–
Texas to Maine–the Prairie States–Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West–the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling–(a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:) the
peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity–welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
–Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify–while the heart
pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.

–Walt Whitman