Anne Porter: "Living Things"

Our poems
Are like the wart-hogs
In the zoo
It's hard to say
Why there should be such creatures

But once our life gets into them
As sometimes happens
Our poems
Turn into living things
And there's no arguing
With living things
They are
The way they are

Our poems
May be rough
Or delicate
Little
Or great

But always
They have inside them
A confluence of cries
And secret languages

And always
They are improvident
And free
They keep
A kind of Sabbath

They play
On sooty fire escapes
And window ledges

They wander in and out
Of jails and gardens
They sparkle
In the deep mines
They sing
In breaking waves
And rock like wooden cradles.




"Living Things" by Anne Porter. Text as published in Living Things: Collected Poems (Steerforth Press, 2006).

Art credit: "Warthog," photograph by Layzeboy Photography.

Anne Porter: "Looking at the Sky"

                                               I never will have time
                                               I never will have time enough
                                               To say
                                               How beautiful it is
                                               The way the moon
                                               Floats in the air
                                               As easily
                                               And lightly as a bird
                                               Although she is a world
                                               Made all of stone.

                                               I never will have time enough
                                               To praise
                                               The way the stars
                                               Hang glittering in the dark
                                               Of steepest heaven
                                               Their dewy sparks
                                               Their brimming drops of light
                                               So fresh so clear
                                               That when you look at them
                                               It quenches thirst.



"Looking at the Sky" by Anne Porter. Text as published in Living Things: Collected Poems (Steerforth Press, 2006). 

Art credit: "Bright future for Eagle Mountain’s dark sky lovers," photograph by Associated Press (October 17, 2014).

Anne Porter: "Getting Up Early"

Just as the night was fading
Into the dusk of morning
When the air was cool as water
When the town was quiet
And I could hear the sea

I caught sight of the moon
No higher than the roof-tops
Our neighbor the moon

An hour before the sunrise
She glowed with her own sunrise
Gold in the grey of morning

World without town or forest
Without wars or sorrows
She paused between two trees

And it was as if in secret
Not wanting to be seen
She chose to visit us
So early in the morning.

"Getting Up Early" by Anne Porter, from An All Together Different Language. © Zoland Books, 1994.

Photography credit: "Full moon rises over rooftops in New York," by Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images. "The full moon rises over rooftops March 19, 2011 in this view from the east side of Manhattan in New York. The full moon coincided with its closest approach to the Earth, 221,565 miles (356,575 km), making the so-called `super moon' look slightly larger than average" (originally color).