William Kloefkorn: Untitled ["I am a dirt farmer"]

I am a dirt farmer
Who dreams of poetry.
Is that so strange? Is anything?
I have bent myself thankfully
Over the heat of cowchips.
When the lespedeza flowers
I breathe its blooms.
The calf I winch to birth
Grows legs like oaks to graze on,
And stuck hogs bleed for breakfasts.
This morning at milking
I kissed the cow’s warm flank
And she kicked the milk to froth beneath my knees.
I forgave her,
Then cried with the cats.
Now the manure is in bloom,
Thistles defend the driveway,
And corncobs gird the mud beneath my boots.
Plotting harvests,
I roam my acreage like a sweet spy.



Untitled ["I am a dirt farmer"] by William Kloefkorn, an excerpt from Alvin Turner as Farmer, as published in Swallowing the Soap: New and Selected Poems, edited by Ted Genoways (Bison Books, 2010).

Art credit: Details from untitled image taken in 1954 during milking at Art Badertscher's dairy farm near Fresno, California (USA), by LIFE photographer Nat Farbman.

 

Mary Oliver: "The Fist"

There are days

when the sun goes down

like a fist,

though of course

if you see anything

in the heavens

in this way

you had better get

your eyes checked

or, better, still,

your diminished spirit.

The heavens

have no fist,

or wouldn't they have been

shaking it

for a thousand years now,

and even

longer than that,

at the dull, brutish

ways of mankind—

heaven's own

creation?

Instead: such patience!

Such willingness

to let us continue!

To hear,

little by little,

the voices—

only, so far, in

pockets of the world—

suggesting

the possibilities

of peace?

Keep looking.

Behold, how the fist opens

with invitation.



"The Fist" by Mary Oliver. Text as published in Thirst: Poems (Beacon Press, 2007).

Art credit: "Hand of Peace," photograph taken on September 12, 2009, by Aidan McRae Thomson. Caption: "Peace sculpture on the seafront in Kusadasi [Turkey] town centre in the form of a giant white concrete hand releasing birds."

Anonymous: Untitled ["When the wind blows"]

When the wind blows
        that is my medicine

When it rains
        that is my medicine

When it hails
        that is my medicine

When it becomes clear after a storm
        that is my medicine




Untitled ["When the wind blows"] by an anonymous source. Text as published in Prayers for Healing: 365 Blessings, Poems, & Meditations from Around the World, edited by Maggie Oman (Conari Press, 2000).

Curator's note: Following Oman, the attribution is anonymous, but this might be a Blackfoot (American Indian) song. The stories behind it vary. For example, this eyewitness account presents it as a collection of four songs sung during a Blackfoot ceremony by "the Thunder Medicine Man" in the presence of James White Calf, in 1901. In this account it is described as the song of Holy Woman, granted in the medicine vision of a man named Wolf Collar, in 1870.  

Art credit: Untitled photograph of a storm clearing over a patch of beargrass in Glacier National Park, Montana (USA), the traditional homeland of the Blackfeet Indians. Photographer unknown.

Sharron Crowson: "Prayer for Another Sunday"

For all that changes
Seasons, a glad morning,
Sliver of moon, red sun
Give thanks

For all that changes
Silence, shifting clouds,
Squabbling jays, white iris
Give thanks

For all that changes
Wind sound of the bay
Cut grass, cheeky squirrels
Give thanks

For all that changes
The everyday heart
The mind of questions
Give thanks

For all that changes
Is everything we have
All we want all we are
Give thanks
For all that changes.

"Prayer for Another Sunday" by Sharron Crowson. Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: "Macro Timelapse," timelapse video by Daniel Csobot on Vimeo. Music credit: "Digital Heartbeat," by Daniel Gautreau at audionetwork.com.

Raymond Carver: "Rain"

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.



"Rain" by Raymond Carver. Text as published in All of Us: The Collected Poems (Vintage, 1996).

Art credit: "Raindrops on the windowpane," photograph by Louis Gill. From the caption: "I woke this morning to the glittering sight of raindrops on the bedroom window pane backlit by the early morning sun."

Sara Teasdale: "May Day"

  

A delicate fabric of bird song

   Floats in the air,

The smell of wet wild earth

   Is everywhere.

Red small leaves of the maple

   Are clenched like a hand,

Like girls at their first communion
   The pear trees stand.

Oh I must pass nothing by

   Without loving it much,

The raindrop try with my lips,

   The grass with my touch;

For how can I be sure

   I shall see again

The world on the first of May

   Shining after the rain?

"May Day" by Sara Teasdale. Text as published in The Collected Poems (Digireads, 2012).

Art credit: "Ladybug after the Rain," photograph by jens kolk. 

Eavan Boland: "Patchwork"

I have been thinking at random
on the universe
or rather, how nothing in the universe
is random—

(there’s nothing like presumption late at night.)

My sumptuous
trash bag of colors—
Laura Ashley cottons—
waits to be cut
and stitched and patched

but there’s a mechanical feel
about the handle
of my secondhand sewing machine,
with its flowers
and Singer painted orange on it.
And its iron wheel.

My back is to the dark.
Somewhere out there
are stars and bits of stars
and little bits of bits.
And swiftness and brightness and drift.

But is it craft or art?

I will be here
till midnight,
cross-legged in the dining-room,
logging triangles and diamonds,
cutting and aligning,
finding greens in pinks
and burgundies in whites
until I finish it.

There’s no reason in it.

Only when it’s laid
right across the floor,
sphere on square
and seam on seam,
in a good light—
a night-sky spread—
will it start to hit me.

These are not bits.
They are pieces.

And the pieces fit.

"Patchwork" by Eavan Boland, from Outside History: Selected Poems, 1980-1990 (W. W. Norton & Company, 2001). Text as posted at this link on the website of the Irish Studies program at Evergreen State College.

Art credit: Detail of a Night Sky quilt being assembled by Meli,
photographer unknown.

Ned Balbo: "Fire Victim"

Once, boarding the train to New York City,
The aisle crowded and all seats filled, I glimpsed
An open space—more pushing, stuck in place—
And then saw why: a man, face peeled away,
Sewn back in haste, skin grafts that smeared like wax
Spattered and frozen, one eye flesh-filled, smooth,
One cold eye toward the window. Cramped, shoved hard,
I, too, passed up the seat, the place, and fought on
Through to the next car, and the next, but now
I wonder why the fire that could have killed him
Spared him, burns scarred over; if a life
Is what he calls this space through which he moves,
Dark space we dared not enter, and what fire
Burns in him when he sees us move away.

"Fire Victim" by Ned Balbo, from Lives of the Sleepers (University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).

Art credit: "Empty BC subway car," image by unknown photographer, posted on NYC the Blog (09/30/08).

Willow Harth: Untitled ["This poem is not meant for you"]

This poem is not meant for you
unless you too have been underground
choking on your life's debris, and
playing peek-a-boo with death seriously

then the surprise of ten thousand buttercups
out of nowhere on every side where they'd
never been before on my daily walk
might have had the effect on you it did on me

because suddenly

I wanted to understand how these particular
flowers came to be—the whole evolutionary
history of mosses, ferns and angiosperms,
the miracle of photosynthesis and DNA, not

to mention the longings of the Milky Way
to reflect itself in the form called flowers and
in these buttercups, which seemed like a
visitation from the sun, urging me to tell you, in
case like me you had forgotten

we are the universe's latest way of blooming.

Untitled ["This poem is not meant for you"] by Willow Harth. Text as posted on On Being with Krista Tippett (07/23/14).

Art credit: Photograph by PA in the Daily Mail (06/02/2013). Caption: "At long last: A vast carpet of buttercups glisten in the sunshine in fields close to the River Wharfe near Bolton Percy in North Yorkshire [England] this morning."

Wendell Berry: "The Peace of Wild Things"

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry. Text as published in New Collected Poems (Counterpoint Press, 2012).

Curator's note: So many tragedies in the world. I can't acknowledge them all with a poem. But I can't let pass the earthquake and aftershocks that have recently terrorized countless people in Nepal, India and Tibet. May memory hold in its golden cup all those who have perished. May the survivors somehow rest in the peace they need to go on. May we on the outside help bear them up, help carry them to still waters.

Art credit: Untitled photograph by Omar Havana/Getty Images. Caption: "A Buddha statue is surrounded by debris from a collapsed temple in the UNESCO world heritage site of Bhaktapur on April 26, 2015 in Bhaktapur, Nepal."

Caroline Johnson: "Blue Sky"

Close the doors.
You’ve already paid your dues.
Light the candles. Breathe
the Lilly of the Valley, the lilacs
in the vase. Reach for a pen.
Take a couple sheets of
parchment paper. Stretch.
Do Chi Gong. It seems obvious,
but sit down. Close your eyes.
Reach into the abyss. Tap into
the divinity, the Oversoul,
the Muse of the Mind. Let
your thoughts spill onto paper.

Let’s pretend you are the newest star.
Rescue your mind from a ditch.
Be aware a certain absurdity attends
outside the door. Awaken.
You are the healing waters.
Close the door, but don’t close
your mind. Come find your
own blue sky.

"Blue Sky" by Caroline Johnson. Text as published in The Prairie Light Review (2012). Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: "Blue Sky Doors," oil painting on canvas, by Michael Chambers.

Ed Pilolla: "Favorite Mug"

Your day is like your favorite mug.

You fill it with the necessary stuff

to survive in this world.

Those days

let me be the seasoning.

Other days I get to fill it with your favorite brew

as well as mine,

vanilla and chai leaves and

inside jokes

and a dollop of raw honesty

and honey.

I will gently blow on your day

when it's too hot,

cup my hands to share in the warmth

and fill it with spirits along the way.

Never will I leave your mug

on the countertop with coffee grounds

at the bottom for days.

Don't judge me by my propensity to blast Van Halen

or how I casually enter the bathroom

to brush my teeth while you're peeing

and not pick up on that unhappy look on your face.

Judge me instead by how I thread my fingers through the handle

of your day,

lift the rim of your world to my lips

and drink in your story.

"Favorite Mug" by Ed Pilolla. Text as published in Dragonfly: A Book of Love Letters (CreateSpace, 2010).

Art credit: "Red Coffee Mug," oil painting on canvas, by Kit Hofer.

Hannah Stephenson: "The Box Is the Toy"

The river is moving
but the meadow is still.

That is what we think

which is why we forget about
how big of a box the planet is in
and how big of a box
with no sides
that box is in.

"The Box Is the Toy" by Hannah Stephenson. © Hannah Stephenson. Text as presented on The Storialist, the poet's blog (09/26/13). Reprinted by permission of the poet.

Art credit: "Meadow Parsley, Gunderson National Forest, Colorado," image by unknown photographer.


 

Hafiz: "What Happens"

What happens when your soul
Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?

First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears

And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep.

But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint.

What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world

To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend?

O the Beloved

Will send you
One of His wonderful, wild companions—

Like Hafiz.

"What Happens" by Hafiz. Text as published in I Heard God Laughing: Renderings of Hafiz (Sufism Reoriented, 1996). Purported to be translated from the original Persian (Farsi) by Daniel Ladinsky.

Please note that Ladinsky's "translations" are controversial, considered by many to be less Hafiz than Ladinsky himself.

Art credit: "White Dove landing on hand," image by unknown photographer with Getty Images.

Juditha Dowd: "Conversing with an Orange"

Yüksel taught us the right way

to eat the Turkish portakal.

You do it slowly, talking with friends,

attentive to the task.

I saw that preparation

can be an aspect of taste,

as time may often be of place,

and I memorized the rule:

Slice off the stem,

work your knife in carefully

under the pebbled skin.

Score it in six vertical lines.

An orange can last all evening

with a glass of sweetened tea,

talk melding with the fruit,

the stacked elliptical peel.

You climb the honey-scented hills

of Izmir or Mersin,

build a small white fortress

from the wrinkled seeds.

"Conversing with an Orange" by Juditha Dowd, from Back Where We Belong (Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press, 2012). Text as posted on Your Daily Poem (4/11/2013).

Art credit: "Orange with Leaf," oil on hardboard, painting by Faith Te.

William Stafford: "Any Morning"

Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can't

monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven

left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People won't even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.

You can shake your head. You can frown.

 
"Any Morning" by William Stafford, from Ohio Review (Volume 50, 1993). Text as posted on The Writer's Almanac (11/26/2012).

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer (digitally altered by curator).

W. S. Merwin: "Parts of a Tune"

One old man keeps humming the same few notes
of some song he thought he had forgotten
back in the days when as he knows there was
no word for life in the language
and if they wanted to say eyes or heart
they would hold up a leaf and he remembers
the big tree where it rose from the dry ground
and the way the birds carried water in their voices
they were all the color of their fear of the dark
and as he sits there humming he remembers
some of the words they come back to him now
he smiles hearing them come and go

"Parts of a Tune" by W. S. Merwin, from The Shadow of Sirius (Copper Canyon Press, 2009). Text as published at the Merwin Conservancy website.

Art credit: Untitled photograph taken on October 21, 2011, by Martin Gommel.

 

Linda Pastan: "April"

A whole new freshman class
of leaves has arrived

on the dark twisted branches
we call our woods, turning

green now—color of
anticipation. In my 76th year,

I know what time and weather
will do to every leaf.

But the camellia swells
to ivory at the window,

and the bleeding heart bleeds
only beauty.



"April" by Linda Pastan, from Traveling Light: Poems (W. W. Norton & Company, 2012 edition).

Art credit: Untitled image of bleeding heart blossoms by unknown photographer.

Anne Barney: "Another Moment"

Last night I woke up

too warm and in want

of a breeze.

I went to the window,

in a hurry to open it quickly,

to get back to sleep

before creatures began

to scurry in my thoughts.

I had left up the shade,

and looked forward to rising

early with first light,

that gentle rousing

before the sun shouts over the mountain.

Raising the glass, I stared out,

into a night without moon,

a night of diamonds, just-cut.

One small bit of brilliance

shot through the sky, right then,

falling, it seemed, right

in front of me, and I

felt as my breath

left my body

for just that moment,

a moment given to me

as a gift,

as all my moments are,

a flash

of brilliance, or something

on which to wish,

out of a fathomless darkness

that holds so many,

and lets so many

go.

"Another Moment" by Anne Barney. Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: Image of a meteor taken by an unknown photographer during the 2009 Leonid Meteor Shower.

David Tucker: "The Day Off"

My wife and kids were gone, the house

was empty and light. All morning I read
Barbara Tuchman’s great book
about the Middle Ages.

A plain gray moth slept
on the windowsill, waking now and then
to crawl with the heat of the sun.

The smell of the lilac near the fence
rushed past me—scene of the French cavalry
there, then not there. It all went so fast.

The kids came home,
my wife rushed in talking of dinner,
and the streetlights switched on.

I put my book down somewhere
in the years after the Black Death
Farms lay abandoned and whole towns
had disappeared. In an abbey
by the Seine, the last monk alive left a note,

and the moth on the windowsill
was gone—slipping though a hole
in the screen and into the night.

"The Day Off" by David Tucker. Text as published in Late for Work (Houghton Mifflin, 2006).

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.