Kate Rushin: "The Bridge Poem"

 

I’ve had enough
I’m sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody

Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me
Right?

I explain my mother to my father
my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother
my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks
the Black church folks to the ex-hippies
the ex-hippies to the Black separatists
the Black separatists to the artists
the artists to my friends’ parents…

Then
I’ve got to explain myself
To everybody

I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.

Forget it
I’m sick of it.

I’m sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against
the isolation of your self-imposed limitations

Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners

Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches

Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people

Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip

I will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your humanness

I’m sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long

I’m sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf of your better selves

I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self

Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die

The bridge I must be
Is the bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses

I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful

"The Bridge Poem" by Kate Rushin, from This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa. © Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1984.

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).


 

Larry Schug: "Threading the Needle"

To find (or lose) yourself
seek the place
you go where you go
when you thread a needle;
to the timeless, seamless place
where there exists only
the fingers on your one hand
holding the thread,
wetted in your mouth,
twisted to a point;
the fingers on your other hand
holding a needle
eye to eye,
breathless.
Only when the thread
passes through the needle’s eye
do you return
to your turbulent, breathing life.



"Threading the Needle" by Larry Schug. No other bibliographic information available.

Photography credit: "Thread the Needle, by Bill Frymire, 2007 (originally color).


 

Alberto Caeiro: "The Herdsman"

I'm herdsman of a flock.
The sheep are my thoughts
And my thoughts are all sensations.
I think with my eyes and my ears
And my hands and feet
And nostrils and mouth.

To think a flower is to see and smell it.
To eat a fruit is to sense its savor.

And that is why, when I feel sad,
In a day of heat, because of so much joy
And lay me down in the grass to rest
And close my sun-warmed eyes,
I feel my whole body relaxed in reality
And know the whole truth and am happy.

"The Herdsman" by Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa), from Poetry (October, 1955). Translated by Edouard Roditi.

Photography credit: "Young Shepherd Sleeping," by Armineh Johannes, 1992 (originally color).


 

May Sarton: "Now I Become Myself"

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

"Now I Become Myself" by May Sarton, from Collected Poems 1930-1993. © W. W. Norton, 1993.

Photography credit: "Hold the Sun," by unknown photographer (originally color).

 

Marie Ponsot: "Out of Water"

A new embroidery of flowers, canary color,
                  dots the grass already dotty
                  with aster-white and clover.

I warn, “They won’t last, out of water.”
The children pick some anyway.

In or out of  water
children don’t last either.

I watch them as they pick.
Still free of  what’s next
            and what was yesterday
they pick today.

"Out of Water" by Marie Ponsot, from Springing: New and Selected Poems. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.

Image credit: "Children Picking Flowers," painting by Le Thi Luu (originally color).


 

David Wagoner: "Old Man, Old Man"

Young men, not knowing what to remember,
Come to this hiding place of the moons and years,
To this Old Man. Old Man, they say, where should we go?
Where did you find what you remember? Was it perched in a tree?
Did it hover deep in the white water? Was it covered over
With dead stalks in the grass? Will we taste it
If our mouths have long lain empty?
Will we feel it between our eyes if we face the wind
All night, and turn the color of earth?
If we lie down in the rain, can we remember sunlight?

He answers, I have become the best and worst I dreamed.
When I move my feet, the ground moves under them.
When I lie down, I fit the earth too well.
Stones long underwater will burst in the fire, but stones
Long in the sun and under the dry night
Will ring when you strike them. Or break in two.
There were always many places to beg for answers:
Now the places themselves have come in close to be told.
I have called even my voice in close to whisper with it:
Every secret is as near as your fingers.
If your heart stutters with pain and hope,
Bend forward over it like a man at a small campfire.

"Old Man, Old Man" by David Wagoner, from Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems. © Illinois Poetry Series, 1999.

Image credit: "Wise Old Man," painting by Andrew Judd (originally color).

 

e. e. cummings: "let it go—the"

let it go—the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise—let it go it
was sworn to

go

let them go—the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers—you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go—the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things—let all go
dear

so comes love

"let it go" by e. e. cummings, from Complete Poems 1904-1962, edited by George James Firmage. © Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1994.  

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).

Samuel Menashe: "Here Now"

Now and again
I am here now
And now is when
I’m here again

"Here Now" by Samuel Menashe. Published in Poetry, September 2009. 

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).



 

Ellen Bass: "If You Knew"

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked a half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

"If You Knew" by Ellen Bass, from The Human Line. © Copper Canyon Press, 2007.

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).

 

Yusef Komunyakaa: "Facing It"

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

"Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa, from Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems. © Wesleyan University Press, 2001.

Photography credit: "Vietnam Wall Reflection," by Josh Partin, 2005 (originally color).

 

Philip Booth: "Talk about Walking"

Where am I going? I'm going
out, out for a walk. I don't
know where except outside.
Outside argument, out beyond
wallpapered walls, outside
wherever it is where nobody
ever imagines. Beyond where
computers circumvent emotion,
where somebody shorted specs
for rivets for airframes on
today's flights. I'm taking off
on my own two feet. I'm going
to clear my head, to watch
mares'-tails instead of TV,
to listen to trees and silence,
to see if I can still breathe.
I'm going to be alone with
myself, to feel how it feels
to embrace what my feet
tell my head, what wind says
in my good ear. I mean to let
myself be embraced, to let go
feeling so centripetally old.
Do I know where I'm going?
I don't. How long or far
I have no idea. No map. I
said I was going to take
a walk. When I'll be back
I'm not going to say.

"Talk about Walking" by Philip Booth, from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999. © Viking Press, 1999.

Image credit: "Going Home," painting by Becx (originally color).

Peter Mayer: "Holy Now"

[Curator's note: Today, the poetry of a singer-songwriter. Watch Mayer perform it in concert.]

When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
He would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don’t happen still
But now I can’t keep track
‘Cause everything’s a miracle
Everything, Everything
Everything’s a miracle

Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn’t one

When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I’m swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

Read a questioning child’s face
And say it’s not a testament
That’d be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it’s not a sacrament
I tell you that it can’t be done

This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now

"Holy Now" by Peter Mayer, from Million Year Mind. © Midwest Artists, 1999.

Image credit: "Wondering Child" by unknown artist (originally color).

 

Julie Cadwallader-Staub: "Blackbirds"

I am 52 years old, and have spent
truly the better part
of my life out-of-doors
but yesterday I heard a new sound above my head
a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air

and when I turned my face upward
I saw a flock of blackbirds
rounding a curve I didn't know was there
and the sound was simply all those wings
just feathers against air, against gravity
and such a beautiful winning
the whole flock taking a long, wide turn
as if of one body and one mind.

How do they do that?

Oh if we lived only in human society
with its cruelty and fear
its apathy and exhaustion
what a puny existence that would be

but instead we live and move and have our being
here, in this curving and soaring world
so that when, every now and then, mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives
and when, even more rarely, we manage to unite and move together
toward a common good,

we can think to ourselves:

ah yes, this is how it's meant to be.

"Blackbirds" by Julie Cadallader-Staub. Published by The Mennonite, November 3, 2009. © Julie Cadallader-Staub.  

Photography credit: A large blackbird flock in Illinois' Starved Rock State Park, by Dan Dzurisin (originally color).

 

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "That Lives in Us"

If you put your hands on this oar with me,
they will never harm another, and they will come to find
they hold everything you want.

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer
lift anything to your
mouth that might wound your precious land—
that sacred earth that is your body.

If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm
that lives in us.

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.
When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and the future?
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear—to our innocent follies.
Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.

"That Lives in Us" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, edited by Daniel Ladinsky. © Penguin Books, 2002.

Photography credit: Untitled image shot in Vietnam by Lex Linghorn (originally color).


 

Ruby R. Wilson: "Birthday Sunrise"

A faint glow on the eastern horizon
gets brighter
as if someone were blowing on ashes
lights up more ash clouds
until there is no doubt
the fire is lit
the day will come
from yesterday’s coals.

The orange clouds
look like birds
circling
until the sun hits my eyes
and bathes me in light
too bright to watch anymore
reflected in the concentric circles
of my coffee cup
through the hot vapor cloud
of my breath.

Two hundred twenty-nine people
were killed in an airline crash this morning.
Who is glad that I am alive
today?

"Birthday Sunrise" by Ruby R. Wilson. © Ruby R. Wilson.

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).



 

Dorothy Walters: "Don't Make Lists"

Every day a new flower rises
from your body's fresh soil.
Don't go around looking
for fallen petals
in a fairy tale, when you've
got the golden plant
right here, now,
shooting forth in light from your eyes,
your awakening crown.

Don't make lists, or explore ancient accounts.
Forget everything you know
and open.

"Don't Make Lists" by Dorothy Walters, from Marrow of Flame: Poems of the Spiritual Journey. © Hohm Press, 2000.

Photography credit: Anasazi plant deity from a wall painting in northern Arizona (c. 1200 B.C.E. to 1300 C.E.), photographer unknown (originally color).

 

Jimmy Santiago Baca: "This Day"

I feel foolish, 
    like those silly robins jumping on the ditch boughs 
    when I run by them.  
                   Those robins do not have the grand style of the red tailed hawk,   
                    no design, no dream, just robins acting stupid.
They've never smoked cigarettes, drank whiskey, consumed drugs
as I have.
                    In their mindless
                    fluttering about
                    filled with nonsense, 
                         they tell me how they
                                 love the Great Spirit,            
                     scold me not to be self-pitying,
                     to open my life
                     and make this day a bough on a tree
                     leaning over infinity, where eternity flows forward
                     and with day the river runs                       
                                  carrying all that falls in it.            
                     Be happy Jimmy, they chirp,            
                     Jimmy, be silly, make this day a tree
                     leaning over the river eternity
                     and fuss about in its branches.

"This Day" by Jimmy Santiago Baca, from Spring Poems Along the Rio Grande. © New Directions, 2007.

Image credit: Unknown (originally color).



 

Arnoldo Garcia: "A Meditation on Breath"

[Note: The last two lines of this poem were edited on June 14, 2013, at the request of the poet, who had pointed out a textual error in a comment. We apologize to Mr. Garcia and thank him for the correction.]

 
I breathe in rain
I breathe out green
I breathe in wind
I breathe out sky
I breathe in laughter
I breathe out happiness
i breathe in her
I breathe out poetry
I breathe in daughters and sons
I breathe out hope
I breathe in words
I breathe out mountains
I breathe in sage
I breathe out clarity
I breathe in dust
I breathe out the bones of my people
I breathe in oppression
I breathe out liberation
I breathe in fire
I breathe out clouds
I breathe in ink
I breathe out veins
I breathe in Buddha
I breathe out Mexican

"A Meditation on Breath" by Arnoldo Garcia, from Life Prayers from Around the World, edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon. © HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.

Image credit: Unknown (originally color).



 

Robert Francis: "Summons"

Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I’m half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I’m not too hard persuaded.

"Summons" by Robert Francis, from Come Out into the Sun: Poems New and Selected. © University of Massachusetts Press, 1965.

Photography credit: "Slightly Blurred Silhouette of a Hand Behind a Glass," by Kirill Kurashov (originally color).

Jane Hirshfield: "Burlap Sack"

A person is full of sorrow
the way a burlap sack is full of stones or sand.
We say, “Hand me the sack,”
but we get the weight.
Heavier if left out in the rain.
To think that the stones or sand are the self is an error.
To think that grief is the self is an error.
Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags,
being careful between the trees to leave extra room.
The mule is not the load of ropes and nails and axes.
The self is not the miner nor builder nor driver.
What would it be to take the bride
and leave behind the heavy dowry?
To let the thick ribbed mule browse in tall grasses,
its long ears waggling like the tails of two happy dogs?

"Burlap Sack" by Jane Hirshfield, from After: Poems. © Harper Perennial, 2007.

Image credit: "Pack Mule in Desert," oil painting by Joe Rader Roberts (originally color).