Poetry – Page 7

Summer solstice

Summer morning, hot by nine.
Filling the water bucket
and the water hisses and flashes from the hose’s nozzle
like jagged, spiky rays from a sparkler,
then fizzles against the dark bucket’s black bottom,
boils awhile
settles into a steady simmer
before it abruptly
goes still
when the nozzle sinks below the surface.

The goats watch from the shaded side of the barn.

Some other summer morning
the girl, at four,
is told to nap until her pool is filled
–but not told how long that might take.

Outside the bedroom window,
her father puts the hose to the blue, plastic pool,
decorated with turtles and smiling seahorses.
The stream of water
beats harshly against the brittle plastic,
resonates
like tiny drumming fingers
then tempers to a steady thrum
before going silent.

All is still, but shimmering.
The light is July quiet.
Nearby, car wheels crunch on someone’s driveway.
A dragonfly buzzes past the window.
Somewhere in the house, there’s the muffled thump
of a cat’s paws touching down after a leap.

There is no napping.
Only waiting for the sound of full.

All the while
the pool
the bucket
the girl
the morning

are silently filling
until they are nearly brimming.

And one more for luck

Well, our month of poems is over.

As promised, I’ve posted a link to a different poem every day for April.

May is here, and that’s just as good a month for poetry, isn’t it, what with its budding flowers and showering storms?

And then there’s June, with its roses and graduation and brides. July’s picnics, parades, and strawberry shortcakes. August’s elongated days of warmth by the river.

And let’s not even talk about September and October, which are almost too poetic with their dwindling, slanted light, chilling evenings, and sparkling stars.

I’m sneaking one more in under the wire for April (pretend you read it yesterday). This poem’s got nothing to do with spring, but who cares?

I love the specific, recognizable details: the gravel and the sound of tires (in fact, a sound that always somehow evoked the scrape of horses hooves on a dirt road; a sound I adored as a child. I would slowly ride my bike over the gravelly ends of neighborhood driveways, over and over, just to hear it); the laundry list of chores that inevitably await at the end of any trip away, no matter how short; the stiff limbs unfolding from the car; that ticking engine, slowly cooling in the still evening air.

And I love the “and then”, that carries your gaze from the immediate mess of arrival, to the pear tree, in the tall grass of the meadow. The perfect pears. The gratitude for home. The chores can wait just a bit longer.

But mostly what I love is how the words in this brief poem—just fourteen lines long—take me from this wooden chair, in this chilly room, in this old house, on this cold, rainy, dark spring morning to the warm summer twilight in the writer’s imagination. I read it. I feel it. I’m there. Isn’t that what good writing—good art—is all about? Letting you live for fourteen lines, or three hundred pages, or a thousand brushstrokes in another time or place or in another person’s imagination?

Besides, I believe you just can’t have enough Jane Kenyon in your life.

Humor me.

Coming Home At Twilight in Late Summer

We turned into the drive,
and gravel flew up from the tires
like sparks from a fire. So much
to be done—the unpacking, the mail
and papers; the grass needed mowing . . .
We climbed stiffly out of the car.
The shut-off engine ticked as it cooled.

And then we noticed the pear tree,
the limbs so heavy with fruit
they nearly touched the ground.
We went out to the meadow; our steps
made black holes in the grass;
and we each took a pear,
and ate, and were grateful.

– Jane Kenyon

Morning rituals

Manys the time I’ve contemplated starting my day with a ritual.

I’ve marveled at people who begin each morning with thirty minutes of meditation, or yoga, or reading a book, or writing a book.

I want to be like those people.

I am, so far, decidedly not like those people.

Sure, I wake up early. The older I get, the earlier I wake up, still sleepy, still clinging to the last good dream, foggily awake, but only awake enough to know I need a trip to the bathroom. And on the rare mornings when I don’t wake up early on my own, the cats become my insistent alarm clocks.

But waking up is not the same as getting up. And getting up is not the same as doing something useful, or creative, or restorative, or even fun.

If I have morning rituals at all, they include a certain amount of grumbling and sighing, followed by feeding and tending to various living beings, and then making myself a cup of tea as quickly as possible.

I’m dimly aware that a morning ritual goes hand in hand with self-discipline. I’m not usually good at that. Not for a sustained period of time. And certainly not in the morning.

But, hey, anyone can improve, right? I’ve started two morning rituals this month that I haven’t shared with you yet, for no particular reason other than I hadn’t thought to do so. My early morning brain. It’s still a bit rusty.

Anyway… the first ritual is picking a favorite poem to read every morning in April in celebration of National Poetry Month. Here are the poems I’ve selected each day this month:

April 1 ~ Skunk Hour ~ by Robert Lowell
April 2 ~ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird ~ by Wallace Stevens
April 3 ~ Mama’s Promise ~ by Marilyn Nelson
April 4 ~ Aubade ~ by Philip Larkin
April 5 ~ The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter ~ by Ezra Pound
April 6 ~ The Poet’s Occasional Alternative ~ by Grace Paley
April 7 ~ I Knew a Woman ~ by Theodore Rothke
April 8 ~ Now We Are Six ~ by A. A. Milne
April 9 ~ Nevertheless ~ by Marianne Moore
April 10 ~ When Death Comes ~ by Mary Oliver
April 11 ~ Some People ~ by Wislawa Szymborska
April 12 ~ Crows ~ (nursery rhyme)
April 13 ~ Oysters ~ by Seamus Heaney (on his birthday!)
April 14 ~ The Convergence of the Twain ~ by Thomas Hardy
April 15 ~ Early Sunday Morning ~ by John Stone
April 16 ~ The Summer Day ~ by Mary Oliver
April 17 ~ The Lake Isle of Innisfree ~ by W.B. Yeats
April 18 ~ Love After Love ~ by Derek Walcott
April 19 ~ Hyla Brook ~ by Robert Frost
April 20 ~ Home to Roost ~ by Kay Ryan
April 21 ~ For You ~ by Carl Sandburg
April 22 ~ The Goose-Girl ~ by Edna St. Vincent Millay
April 23 ~ Sonnet XXIX ~ by William Shakespeare (on his birthday)
April 24 ~ Litany ~ by Billy Collins
April 25 ~ The Sentence ~ by Anna Akhmatova
April 26 ~ The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ~ by T.S. Eliot
April 27 ~ Foundation ~ by Edwin Morgan
April 28 ~ The Dong with a Luminous Nose ~ by Edward Lear (a favorite of H’s)
April 29 ~ Grongar Hill ~ Edward Dyer
April 30 ~ Happiness ~ by Jane Kenyon

After April 30, I won’t necessarily pick a new poem each day, but I plan to continue reading and, more importantly, writing poems after that, even if only a little bit each morning.

If you have a favorite poem (or two or twenty!), I’d love for you to share them in the comments of this post. I can always use new favorites to read and love.

My other new ritual is a set of daily photos, usually taken in the morning (but not always), from the two opposite corners of our deck. I’m posting these photos each day at this site, and will continue for a year (until April 8, 2013).

I have no goal for this ritual other than to take my camera outside each day, in all weather, and watch the slow, steady accumulation of photos turn into a blur of a year in our corner of the valley. We shall see what we shall see.

The hill will turn from brown to red to green to gold to brown to white.
The trees will grow taller.
The clouds will come and go.
Contrails will streak.
A rainbow might appear.
Orange sunrises.
Red sunsets.
Stars, planets, the moon.
Rain, fog, and snow.

A new day. Each day. Collected.