Before Dark
by Wendell Berry

From the porch at dusk I watched
a kingfisher wild in flight
he could only have made for joy.

He came down the river, splashing
against the water's dimming face
like a skipped rock, passing

on down out of sight. And still
I could hear the splashes
farther and farther away

as it grew darker. He came back
the same way, dusky as his shadow,
sudden beyond the willows.

The splashes went on out of hearing.
It was dark then. Somewhere
the night had accommodated him

—at the place he was headed for
or where, led by his delight,
he came.

How to be alone

Pádraig Ó Tuama

 

It all begins with knowing

nothing lasts forever.

So you might as well start packing now.

But, in the meantime,

practice being alive.

 

There will be a party

where you’ll feel like

nobody’s paying you attention.

And there will be a party

where attention’s all you’ll get.

What you need to do

is know how to talk to

yourself

between these parties.

 

And,

again,

there will be a day,

— a decade —

where you won’t

fit in with your body

even though you’re in

the only body you’re in.

 

You need to control

your habit of forgetting

to breathe.

 

Remember when you were younger

and you practiced kissing on your arm?

You were on to something then.

Sometimes harm knows its own healing

comfort its own intelligence.

Kindness too.

It needs no reason.

 

There is a you

telling you a story of you.

Listen to her.

 

Where do you feel

anxiety in your body?

The chest? The fist? The dream before waking?

The head that feels like it’s at the top of the swing

or the clutch of gut like falling

& falling & falling and falling

It knows something: you’re dying.

Try to stay alive.

 

For now, touch yourself.

I’m serious.

 

Touch your

self.

Take your hand

and place your hand

some place

upon your body.

And listen

to the community of madness

that

you are.

 

You are

such an

interesting conversation.

 

You belong

here.

 

Parlor
by Rita Dove

We passed through
on the way to anywhere else.
No one lived there
but silence, a pale china gleam,

and the tired eyes of saints
aglow on velvet.
Mom says things are made
to be used. But Grandma insisted
peace was in what wasn't there,
strength in what was unsaid.

It would be nice to have a room
you couldn't enter, except in your mind.
I like to sit on my bed
plugged into my transistor radio,
"Moon River" pouring through my head.

How do you use life?
How do you feel it? Mom says

things harden with age; she says
Grandma is happier now. After the funeral,
I slipped off while they stood around
remembering-away from all
the talking and eating and weeping

to sneak a peek. She wasn't there.
Then I understood why
she had kept them just so:

so quiet and distant,
the things that she loved.

 oldviolin wrote:
 

The whole poem feels kinda like it's addressing me personally.  

Yet it's soothing as per it's well-wishing. ~ Thx!

 oldviolin wrote: 
Or it could be you lose your job at Happy Nails
because you can't stop smudging the stars
on those ten teeny American flags.

 ScottN wrote:
 
I like it all. It's like validation...

 oldviolin wrote: 
Wrong forum?  I kinda like that stanza.

 oldviolin wrote: 
Thank you, kind sir.

 Antigone wrote:
 
Really nice 

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.

BY ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

The River at Wolf

 ScottN wrote:
 

Sheesh...

Dawn Revisited
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don’t look back,
the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits –
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours
to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You’ll never know
who’s down there, frying those eggs,
if you don’t get up and see.

French Chocolates
by Ellen Bass

If you have your health, you have everything
is something that's said to cheer you up
when you come home early and find your lover
arched over a stranger in a scarlet thong.

Or it could be you lose your job at Happy Nails
because you can't stop smudging the stars
on those ten teeny American flags.

I don't begrudge you your extravagant vitality.
May it blossom like a cherry tree. May the petals
of your cardiovascular excellence
and the accordion polka of your lungs
sweeten the mornings of your loneliness.

But for the ill, for you with nerves that fire
like a rusted-out burner on an old barbecue,
with bones brittle as spun sugar,
with a migraine hammering like a blacksmith

in the flaming forge of your skull,
may you be spared from friends who say,
God doesn't give you more than you can handle
and ask what gifts being sick has brought you.

May they just keep their mouths shut
and give you French chocolates and daffodils
and maybe a small, original Matisse,
say, Open Window, Collioure, so you can look out
at the boats floating on the dappled pink water.

38.9639677,-120.1198166
I go there, sometimes, in a physical sense
more often, without thinking so much
I'll find myself there for a moment
or an hour or a day
abandoning the audacity of our mortality
peeling away from the harshness of reality
I rise through open country
skimming past the golden foothills
buffeting breezes among the ragged ridge lines
above blue waters, across green meadows
to that desolate wilderness beyond man's reach
pass the end of that narrow bumpy road
beyond the narrower windswept trail
up the steps built on the back
of the father of my father’s father
to our nest above that cabin in the sky
and we fade into alpen glow
within the hole bored behind the lightning scar
Oh Pinus jeffreyi! Our hardy home
we may be fat but we are content
to look out upon our favorite view
and nestle in for the longest winter of our lives. -W. LeTendre

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke