Wendy Cope: "New Season"

No coats today. Buds bulge on chestnut trees,
and on the doorstep of a big, old house
a young man stands and plays his flute.

I watch the silver notes fly up
and circle in blue sky above the traffic,
travelling where they will.

And suddenly this paving stone
midway between my front door and the bus stop
is a starting point.

From here I can go anywhere I choose.

"New Season" by Wendy Cope, from Serious Concerns. © Faber and Faber, 1992.  

Photography credit: "Flute Player III," by Robert Fries (originally black and white).

 

Tamara Madison: "The Way Sunshine Smells"

Ten daffodils stand in a pasta sauce jar

giving up their moment of prime

to brighten this cluttered kitchen table.

Yellow lovelies, I am honored

to have you here. Outside you’d be

just another bit of the great flowering world,

but in my kitchen, among the papers,

the bottles, the bananas growing tired

in the bowl, you are amazement itself.

Outside amid the orange blossoms,

the roses, the sweet allysum,

your light scent would be lost.

Here, you turn this morning kitchen

Into a festival of fragrance—you

are the way sunshine smells.

"The Way Sunshine Smells" by Tamara Madison. Published online by Your Daily Poem. © Tamara Madison.  

Photography credit: "Daffodils in a mason jar," likely by Bill Bell (originally color).

 

Jim Harrison: "Becoming"

Nowhere is it the same place as yesterday.
None of us is the same person as yesterday.
We finally die from the exhaustion of becoming.
This downward cellular jubilance is shared
by the wind, bugs, birds, bears and rivers,
and perhaps the black holes in galactic space
where our souls will all be gathered in an invisible
thimble of antimatter. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Yes, trees wear out as the wattles under my chin
grow, the wrinkled hands that tried to strangle
a wife beater in New York City in 1957.
We whirl with the earth, catching our breath
as someone else, our soft brains ill-trained
except to watch ourselves disappear into the distance.
Still, we love to make music of this puzzle.

"Becoming" by Jim Harrison, from Saving Daylight. © Copper Canyon Press, 2006.

Photography credit: Still image from "The Sound of the Earth Spinning," a film by Dean Omori (originally color).

Dean Omori

Dean Omori

Dean Omori

Dean Omori

Dean Omori

John Fox: "When Someone Deeply Listens to You"

When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you've had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.

When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind's eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered.

When someone deeply listens to you
your barefeet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.

"When Someone Deeply Listens to You," by John Fox. Published online at PoeticMedicine.org (date unknown).

Photography credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer (originally color).

 

Linda Gregg: "Being"

The woman walks up the mountain
and then down. She wades into the sea
and out. Walks to the well,
pulls up a bucket of water
and goes back into the house.
She hangs wet clothes.
Takes clothes back to fold them.
Every evening she crochets
from six until dark.
Birds, flowers, stars. Her rabbit lives
in an empty donkey pen. The sea is out
there as far as the stars.
Always quiet.
No one there. She may not believe
in anything. Not know
what she is doing. Every morning
she waters the geranium plant.
And the leaves smell like lemons.

"Being" by Linda Gregg, from In the Middle Distance: Poems. © Graywolf Press, 2006.

Photography credit: "Old Metal Watering Can," watercolor painting by RoseAnn Hayes (originally color).

 

W. S. Merwin: "To This May"

                                    They know so much more now about
                                    the heart we are told but the world
                                    still seems to come one at a time
                                    one day one year one season and here
                                    it is spring once more with its birds
                                    nesting in the holes in the walls
                                    its morning finding the first time
                                    its light pretending not to move
                                    always beginning as it goes

"To This May" by W. S. Merwin, from Present Company: Poems by W. S. Merwin. © Copper Canyon Press, 2007.

Photography credit: "Bird Nest," painting by Melissa Payne Baker (originally color).

 

Edna St. Vincent Millay: "Afternoon on a Hill"

                                        I will be the gladdest thing

                                              Under the sun!
                                        I will touch a hundred flowers

                                              And not pick one.



                                        I will look at cliffs and clouds

                                              With quiet eyes,

                                        Watch the wind bow down the grass,

                                              And the grass rise.



                                        And when lights begin to show

                                              Up from the town,

                                        I will mark which must be mine,

                                              And then start down!

"Afternoon on a Hill" by Edna St. Vincent Millay, from Collected Poems. © Harper Perennial, 2011.

Photography credit: Image on a foreign-language page, source therefore unknown (originally color).

 

C. K. Williams: "Droplets"

Even when the rain falls relatively hard,
only one leaf at a time of the little tree
you planted on the balcony last year,
then another leaf at its time, and one more,
is set trembling by the constant droplets,

but the rain, the clouds flocked over the city,
you at the piano inside, your hesitant music
mingling with the din of the downpour,
the gush of rivulets loosed from the eaves,
the iron railings and flowing gutters,

all of it fuses in me with such intensity
that I can't help wondering why my longing
to live forever has so abated that it hardly
comes to me anymore, and never as it did,
as regret for what I might not live to live,

but rather as a layering of instants like this,
transient as the mist drawn from the rooftops,
yet emphatic as any note of the nocturne
you practice, and, the storm faltering, fading
into its own radiant passing, you practice again.

"Droplets" by C. K. Williams, from Love About Love. © Ausable Press, 2001.

Photography credit: Still shot of rain falling on a piano keyboard, from a video uploaded by xYaKkUzAx (originally black and white).

 

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi: "What Was Told, That"

Note: If you can't see the viewer above, click here to watch the video.


What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest.

What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that’s happening here.

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane,

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

"What Was Told, That" by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, from The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems. Translated from the Persian by Coleman Barks. © HarperCollins, 2002.

Performance credit: Rumi translator Coleman Barks performs "What Was Told, That" at a Mythic Journey conference, accompanied by musicians Eugene Friesen and Arto Tuncboyaciyan.

Ezra Pound: "The Tree"

                I stood still and was a tree amid the wood
Knowing the truth of things unseen before,
Of Daphne and the laurel bough
And that god-feasting couple olde
That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder-thing.
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many new things understood
That was rank folly to my head before.

"The Tree" by Ezra Pound, from Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound. Edited by Michael King. © New Directions Publishing, 1982.  

Image credit: Today's artwork is a special gift, offered by A Year of Being Here subscriber and Patra Passage creator Lynda Lowe. She writes, "This painting is titled `Poïesis,' a Greek word layered with meaning and the root origin of the word poetry. Martin Heidegger used it to mean ‘a bringing forth,’ a threshold occasion when something transforms from one thing to become another. This image came to me during an important meditation during a very transitional time—a time of poïesis. A tree dissolved into light, edges expanded; everything seemed multivalent and newly understood. Ezra Pound’s poem `The Tree' speaks to this threshold moment."

Poïesis is 40" x 36" mixed media on panel. Just beautiful! Thank you, Lynda.

Seamus Heaney: "Had I Not Been Awake"

Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
A wind that rose and whirled until the roof
Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore

And got me up, the whole of me a-patter,
Alive and ticking like an electric fence:
Had I not been awake I would have missed it,

It came and went so unexpectedly
And almost it seemed dangerously,
Returning like an animal to the house,

A courier blast that there and then
Lapsed ordinary. But not ever
After. And not now.

"Had I Not Been Awake" by Seamus Heaney, from Human Chain: Poems. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.  

Image credit: Untitled acrylic painting by Matthew Hamblen (originally color).

Jeanne Lohmann: "To Say Nothing But Thank You"

All day I try to say nothing but thank you,

breathe the syllables in and out with every step I

take through the rooms of my house and outside into

a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden

where the tulips’ black stamens shake in their crimson cups.

I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring

and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy

after a hot shower, when my loosened muscles work,

when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly

hair combs into place.

Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute,

and with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I

remember who I am, a woman learning to praise

something as small as dandelion petals floating on the

steaming surface of this bowl of vegetable soup,

my happy, savoring tongue.

"To Say Nothing But Thank You" by Jeanne Lohmann. Published by The Sun, Issue 401, May 2009. © Jeanne Lohmann.

Photography credit: "Dandelions," by John M. Phillips (originally black and white).

 

David Allan Evans: "Waking Up"

for Jan


We wake up again to the sound
of those same birds just

outside our window. I can’t
name them, wouldn’t need to

if I could, but only guess
what they seem to be

saying over and over.
Listen: We are here,

we are here,
we are here.

"Waking Up" by David Allan Evans. Published here via poet submission. © David Allan Evans.  

Photography credit: "When birds join the chorus," by Robert David Siegel, September, 2008 (originally color).

Ursula Le Guin: "Initiation Song from the Finders Lodge"

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
walk mindfully, well-loved one,
walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.

"Initiation Song from the Finders Lodge" by Ursula Le Guin, from Always Coming Home. © University of California Press, 1985.

Curator's note: In Le Guin's novel Kesh elders sing this song to initiates who have chosen to become the people's emissaries to "the outside world." 

Photography credit: "Close-up of Person's Palm," by Casarsa (originally black and white).

T. S. Eliot: Excerpt from The Cocktail Party

UNIDENTIFIED GUEST

             Ah, but we die to each other daily.
             What we know of other people
             Is only our memory of the moments
             During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
             To pretend that they and we are the same
             Is a useful and convenient social convention
             Which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember
             That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

Excerpt from The Cocktail Party by T. S. Eliot. © Mariner Books, 1964.

Image credit: "The Cocktail Party," oil painting on canvas, by Jane Roberts (originally color).

Peter Everwine: "Rain"

Toward evening, as the light failed

and the pear tree at my window darkened,

I put down my book and stood at the open door,

the first raindrops gusting in the eaves,

a smell of wet clay in the wind.

Sixty years ago, lying beside my father,

half asleep, on a bed of pine boughs as rain

drummed against our tent, I heard

for the first time a loon’s sudden wail

drifting across that remote lake—

a loneliness like no other,

though what I heard as inconsolable

may have been only the sound of something

untamed and nameless

singing itself to the wilderness around it

and to us until we slept. And thinking of my father

and of good companions gone

into oblivion, I heard the steady sound of rain

and the soft lapping of water, and did not know

whether it was grief or joy or something other

that surged against my heart

and held me listening there so long and late.

"Rain" by Peter Everwine. Published in Ploughshares, Spring 2008. © Peter Everwine, 2008.  

Photography credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer (originally color).

 

Curator's Note: Happy Double Post (Sort of)

This morning I posted two poems by (happy) mistake, and both were delivered to email subscribers. My apologies. The Broughton post was obviously unfinished, as I'd not yet been able to confirm the original text. Once I discovered that it had been published through a slip of my fingers, I deleted it from the website, but it had already been delivered to subscribers.

Still, the Broughton poem fits the day. I hope you enjoyed receiving the Happy Passover, Happy Easter, Happy Sunday bonus. Blessings on your day.

Emily Dickinson: "#1309" ["The Infinite a sudden Guest"]

                                       The Infinite a sudden Guest
                                       Has been assumed to be—
                                       But how can that stupendous come
                                       Which never went away?


"#1309" ["The Infinite a sudden Guest"] by Emily Dickinson, from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson. © Back Bay Books, 1976.  

Photography credit: "Smelling the Roses," taken in India by☻☺ on March 12, 2009 (originally a mix of black and white and color).

 

Nancy Paddock: "Lie Down"

Lie down with your belly to the ground,
like an old dog in the sun. Smell
the greenness of the cloverleaf, feel the damp
earth through your clothes, let an ant
wander the uncharted territory
of your skin. Lie down
with your belly to the ground. Melt into
the earth's contours like a harmless snake.
All else is mere bravado.
Let your mind resolve itself
in a tangle of grass.
Lie down with your belly
to the ground, flat out, on ground level.
Prostrate yourself before the soil
you will someday enter.
Stop doing.
Stop judging, fearing, trying.
This is not dying, but the way to live
in a world of change and gravity.
Let go. Let your burdens drop.
Let your grief-charge bleed off
into the ground.
Lie down with your belly to the ground
and then rise up
with the earth still in you.

"Lie Down" by Nancy Paddock, from Trust the Wild Heart. © Red Dragonfly Press,  2006.

Photography credit: "Picture of 1960s Barefoot Boy Lying Stomach-Down Running Fingers Through High Grass," by unknown photographer (originally black and white).

 

Anne Higgins: "Tribute Poem"

                                           Praise for late sleeping day,
                                           waking up without alarm,
                                           for corkscrews,
                                           corkscrew call of
                                           yellowing lustful goldfinches,
                                           butter,
                                           opposable thumbs,
                                           lusciously plush perfume
                                           of viburnum
                                           blooming in the woods
                                           just now
                                           just now.



"Tribute Poem" by Anne Higgins. Published here via poet submission. © Anne Higgins.

Photography credit: "Viburnum prunifolium," by Dan Tenaglia (originally color).