Your Favorite Poems

[puddin']

west wind #2

you are young. so you know everything. you leap
into the boat and begin rowing. but listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt,iI talk directly to your soul. listen to me.
lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
me. there is life without love. it is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. it is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. when you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable
pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming – then row, row for your life
toward it.
"

[Semantics]

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.


by Wendell Berry

[Hollylane]

Perennial
by April Lindner


You surprise me at noon.

We undress quickly,
meet under the faded blanket.
There's your familiar taste,

comforting as toast,
your skin's texture, soft lips
I'd know in utter darkness.

Your articulate tongue.

How many times
have we found each other
just like this? A homecoming.

Like the peonies that spill
from the earth each July—
the ornate layers

that fold inward, protective
of some luscious secret.

Around us, the house
holds its breath. The dogs
resign themselves to the rug.

So many days
we lose each other
in labyrinths of worry and work,

in detours so intricate
it seems we might never
find our way back

to this bed our bodies shaped.

[grenade]

Ghazal

You with the dark burly hair and the breathtaking eyes,
your inquiring glance that leaves me undone.

Eyes that pierce and then withdraw like a blood-stained sword,
eyes with dagger lashes!
Zealots, you are mistaken - this is heaven.

Never mind those making promises of the afterlife:
join us now, righteous friends, in this intoxication.

Never mind the path to the Kaabah: sanctity resides in the heart.
Squander your life, suffer! God is right here.

Oh excruciating face! Continual light!
This is where I am thrilled, here, right here.

There is no book anywhere on the matter.
Only as soon as I see you do I understand.
If you wish to offer your beauty to God, give Zebunisso
a taste. Awaiting the tiniest morsel, she is right here.


Zebunisso (1639-1706)

[Martina]

I really don't have favorite anything. Desert island, yes.

This is neither. I just read it recently and liked it. I like art about age and aging. And I certainly like Stephen Dunn.

Sisyphus in the Suburbs
Stephen Dunn

It was late and the wine had wet
an aridity he'd forgotten he had.
He could feel the evening
arching above the house,
a good black dome. No ledges,
he realized, tempted him.
The once-inviting abyss
was now just a view.

Sisyphus put another CD on
and stroked the cat.
His wife was in Bermuda
with her younger sister,
celebrating the death
of winter, and a debt paid.
Her missed her, and he did not.

He'd been mixing Janis Joplin
with Brahms, accountable now
to no one. The lights
from some long-desired festival
were not calling him.
No silent dog or calm ocean
made him fear the next moment.

But Sisyphus was amazed
how age sets in, how it just came
one day and stayed. And how far
away the past gets. His break
from the gods, just an episode now.

Tomorrow he'd brave the cold,
spireless mall, look for a gift.
He'd walk through the unappeasable
crowds as if some right thing
were findable and might be bestowed.

[-Red-Flag-]

Have I ever told you
that if I sit really still and silent,
sometimes. I like to think
I can hear your heart beating
in time with mine?

Have I ever told you
that when I watch you speak to me
through lines and cords,
and bytes and ram,
I imagine
your voice,
whispering into my ear?

Have I ever told you
that I wait out each day
in anticipation,
wanting
only an hour or two,
just a second in space and time,
to feel close to you?

Have I ever told you
that there has been times,
when I ached for you,
ached for you so badly,
that the emotions overwhelmed me..
and so I sat and cried?

Have I ever told you
that sometimes,
I will reach out,
touching your name
on this cold screen before me,
wishing
I could reach in
and pull you to me?

Have I ever told you
that I would give everything up,
just for one night
to be able to lay near you,
to feel your chest rise and fall
with each breath you take,
just to know that you are real?

Have I ever told you
that I dream of you often,
I dream of you reaching out
and touching my hand,
simply to let me know
that you are there,
and everything is okay?

Have I ever told you,
have I still yet to tell you . . .
that I love you?

--I am not sure who the correct author is, Ive seen different variations.. but I think.. it fits the medium .. that we are in here on the Planet..

[puddin']

geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. and we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. what we need is here.

~wendell berry

[Hominid]

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes


First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.
-- Billy Collins