After Our Daughter's Wedding • Poetry Wednesday

After Our Daughter's Wedding
While the remnants of cake
and half-empty champagne glasses
lay on the lawn like sunbathers lingering
in the slanting light, we left the house guests
and drove to Antonelli's pond.
On a log by the bank I sat in my flowered dress and cried.
A lone fisherman drifted by, casting his ribbon of light.
"Do you feel like you've given her away?" you asked.
But no, it was that she made it
to here, that she didn't
drown in a well or die
of pneumonia or take the pills.
She wasn't crushed
under the mammoth wheels of a semi
on highway 17, wasn't found
lying in the alley
that night after rehearsal
when I got the time wrong.
It's animal. The egg
not eaten by a weasel. Turtles
crossing the beach, exposed
in the moonlight. And we
have so few to start with.
And that long gestation—
like carrying your soul out in front of you.
All those years of feeding
and watching. The vulnerable hollow
at the back of the neck. Never knowing
what could pick them off—a seagull
swooping down for a clam.
Our most basic imperative:
for them to survive.
And there's never been a moment
we could count on it.


by Ellen Bass 
From Mules of Love
courtesy The Writer's Almanac

At the Pitch • Poetry Wednesday

At the Pitch If I could only live at the pitch that is near madness, Eberhart wrote but there was his wife Betty hanging onto his coattails for dear life to the end of her life. No one intervened when my mother’s brother’s wife ran off with the new young rabbi every woman in the congregation had a crush on. They rose unleashed, fleeing west into the sooty sky over Philadelphia in a pillar of fire, at the pitch that is near madness touching down in the outskirts of Pittsburgh. Cleveland. Chicago. O westward! O fornication! I was sixteen. Eberhart had written his poem before he sailed off to World War II and a boy had just put his tongue in my mouth which meant he could make me do anything. No one holding onto his coattails, no one onto my skirt until my father switched on the back porch light. by Maxine Kumin from Where I Live: New & Selected Poems courtesy The Writer's Almanac

At the Station • National Poetry Month

At the Station

When the girl got off the train at the college town,
she leapt up and wrapped her legs around the waist
of the boy she’d come to visit, and they spun
around, embracing and shrieking with joy.
Their love set off a piccolo’s vibration.
Those years are gone for us—I see you every day,
we eat meals together from decades-old plates.
But when we lie in bed at night, you take my hand,
and I feel the orb that’s formed around us tighten,
while you and I, like knitting needles in a ball
of yarn, lie beside each other, fingers touching.

by Anya Krugovoy Silver 
from from nothing.
courtesy The Writer's Almanac

The Same River • National Poetry Month

The Same River 

Yes, yes, you can’t step into the same
river twice, but all the same, this river
is one of the things that has changed
least in my life, and stepping into it
always feels like returning to something
far back and familiar, its steady current
of coppery water flowing around my calves
and then my thighs, my only waders
a pair of old shorts. Holding a fly rod
above my head, my other arm out
for balance, like some kind of dance,
trying not to slip on the mossy rocks,
I make my way out to the big rock
I want to fish from, mottled with lichen
that has dried to rusty orange, a small
midstream island that a philosopher
might use to represent stasis
versus flux, being amidst becoming,
in some argument that is larger
than any that interests me now
as I climb out dripping onto the boulder
and cast my line out to where the bubbles
form a channel and trail off in a V
that points to where the fish might be,
holding steady amid the river’s flow.

by Jeffrey Harrison 
From Into Daylight
Courtesy The Writer's Almanac

After We Saw What There Was to See • National Poetry Month

After We Saw What There Was to See

After we saw what there was to see
we went off to buy souvenirs, and my father
waited by the car and smoked. He didn’t need
a lot of things to remind him where he’d been.
Why do you want so much stuff?
he might have asked us. “Oh, Ed,” I can hear
my mother saying, as if that took care of it.

After she died I don’t think he felt any reason
to go back through all those postcards, not to mention
the glossy booklets about the Singing Tower
and the Alligator Farm, the painted ashtrays
and lucite paperweights, everything we carried home
and found a place for, then put away
in boxes, then shoved far back in our closets.

He’d always let my mother keep track of the past,
and when she was gone--why should that change?
Why did I want him to need what he’d never needed?
I can see him leaning against our yellow Chrysler
in some parking lot in Florida or Maine.
It’s a beautiful cloudless day. He glances at his watch,
lights another cigarette, looks up at the sky.

by Lawrence Raab
courtesy of The Writer's Almanac

In Honor of National Poetry Day and Poetry Wednesday: Billy Collins

The Order of the Day  A morning after a week of rain and the sun shot down through the branches into the tall, bare windows. The brindled cat rolled over on his back, and I could hear you in the kitchen grinding coffee beans into a powder. Everything seemed especially vivid because I knew we were all going to die, first the cat, then you, then me, then somewhat later the liquefied sun was the order I was envisioning. But then again, you never really know. The cat had a fiercely healthy look, his coat so bristling and electric I wondered what you had been feeding him and what you had been feeding me as I turned a corner and beheld you out there on the sunny deck lost in exercise, running in place, knees lifted high, skin glistening- and that toothy, immortal-looking smile of yours. by Billy Collins  from The Trouble with Poetry courtesy of The Writer’s Almanac

Poetry Wednesday: A Small-Sized Mystery

A Small-Sized Mystery

Leave a door open long enough,
a cat will enter.
Leave food, it will stay.
Soon, on cold nights,
you’ll be saying “excuse me”
if you want to get out of your chair.
But one thing you’ll never hear from a cat
is “excuse me.”
Nor Einstein’s famous theorem.
Nor “The quality of mercy is not strained.”
In the dictionary of Cat, mercy is missing.
In this world where much is missing,
a cat fills only a cat-sized hole.
Yet your whole body turns toward it
again and again because it is there.

by Jane Hirshfield
courtesy The Writer's Almanac

Poetry: Lucky

Lucky

All this time,
the life you were
supposed to live
has been rising around you
like the walls of a house
designed with warm
harmonious lines.

As if you had actually
planned it that way.

As if you had
stacked up bricks
at random,
and built by mistake
a lucky star.

by Kirsten Dierking 

From Northern Oracle. © Spout Press, 2007.  
Courtesy of The Writer's Almanac. (Listen Online)

Vocational Training — National Poetry Month

Vocational Training

I sound so much like my mother

that when people called our house for help,
I’d have to stop them halfway through
their stories. Hold on, I’d say, I’m not her.
When I went with her on calls, I hovered
in doorways, holding her equipment, watched
her walk to the center of what was wrong.
I knew I could memorize facts, anatomy,
the math of giving oxygen or shock,
but I needed her to teach me what the body
wanted. What I learned was common sense:
Apply pressure to bleeding. Stay as calm
as you can. I’ll never have her hands,
the power I saw her wield, but sometimes
I feel her voice in my mouth: Get some ice
and you’ll be fine. It doesn’t need stitches,
it’s only a scratch. Even when I’m the one
speaking, my mother’s voice knows what to do.

by Carrie Shipers 
from Family Resemblances
courtesy The Writer's Almanac

Ripe Cherries — National Poetry Month

Ripe Cherries

I read that the men,
on their way to Gettysburg,
stopped along the road
to pick and eat ripe cherries.

That the fruit should not
go to waste.

That they should take
such pleasure before battle.

That the oldest among them
should shake the trees
and the youngest gather
the fallen fruit.
That they should aim rifles
with the taste of cherries
against their teeth.

by Athena Kildegaard
from Bodies of Light
courtesy The Writer's Almanac

The visible and the in- — National Poetry Month

The visible and the in-

Some people move through your life
like the perfume of peonies, heavy
and sensual and lingering.

Some people move through your life
like the sweet musky scent of cosmos
so delicate if you sniff twice, it’s gone.

Some people occupy your life
like moving men who cart off
couches, pianos and break dishes.

Some people touch you so lightly you
are not sure it happened. Others leave
you flat with footprints on your chest.

Some are like those fall warblers
you can’t tell from each other even
though you search Petersen’s.

Some come down hard on you like
a striking falcon and the scars remain
and you are forever wary of the sky.

We all are waiting rooms at bus
stations where hundreds have passed
through unnoticed and others

have almost burned us down
and others have left us clean and new
and others have just moved in.

by Marge Piercy
courtesy of The Writer's Almanac

April in Maine — National Poetry Month

April in Maine

The days are cold and brown,
Brown fields, no sign of green,
Brown twigs, not even swelling,
And dirty snow in the woods.

But as the dark flows in
The tree frogs begin
Their shrill sweet singing,
And we lie on our beds
Through the ecstatic night,
Wide awake, cracked open.

There will be no going back.

by May Sarton
courtesy The Writer's Almanac and april-is.tumblr

April Prayer — National Poetry Month

April Prayer

Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple’s branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world
just moving forward from bud
to flower to blossom to fruit
to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots
await the next signal, every signal
every call a miracle and the switchboard
is lighting up and the operators are
standing by in the pledge drive we’ve
all been listening to: Go make the call.

by Stuart Kestenbaum  
from Prayers and Run-on Sentences. © Deerbrook Editions, 2007. 
courtesy The Writer's Almanac

Sunday Brunch at the Old Country Buffet — National Poetry Month

Sunday Brunch at the Old Country Buffet

 

 

 

 

Here is a genial congregation,

well fed and rosy with health and appetite,
robust children in tow. They have come
and all the generations of them, to be fed,
their old ones too who are eligible now
for a small discount, having lived to a ripe age.
Over the heaped and steaming plates, one by one,
heads bow, eyes close; the blessings are said.

Here there is good will; here peace
on earth, among the leafy greens, among the fruits
of the gardens of America's heartland. Here is abundance,
here is the promised
land of milk and honey, out of which
a flank of the fatted calf, thick still
on its socket and bone, rises like a benediction
over the loaves of bread and the little fishes, belly-up in butter. 

by Anne Caston

from Flying Out with the Wounded. © New York University Press
Courtesy The Writer's Almanac

The Cats — National Poetry Month

Thanks to Bob for suggesting this poem!

 The Cats

 

To find such glory in a dehydrated pea

on the tile between the stove and fridge.

To toss the needs of others aside
when you simply aren't in the mood for affection.

To find yourselves so irresistible.

And always in a small spot of sun,
you sprawl and spread out the pleasure of yourselves

never fretting, never wanting to go back
to erase your few decisions.

To find yourself so remarkable
all the day long.

by Ann Iverson

from Come Now to the Window. © Laurel Poetry Collective, 2003.

Courtesy The Writer's Almanac

I Didn't Go to Church Today — National Poetry Month

 

 

I Didn't Go to Church Today

I didn't go to church today,
I trust the Lord to understand.
The surf was swirling blue and white,
The children swirling on the sand.
He knows, He knows how brief my stay,
How brief this spell of summer weather,
He knows when I am said and done
We'll have plenty of time together.

— by Ogden Nash

 from The Best of Ogden Nash. 

Courtesy of The Writer's Almanac

Poetry Wednesday: cats and you and me

cats and you and me

the Egyptians loved the cat

were often entombed with it
instead of with the child
and never with the dog.

and now
here
good people with
the souls of cats
are very few

yet here and now many
fine cats
with great style
lounge about
in the alleys of
the universe.

about
our argument tonight
whatever it was
about
and
no matter
how unhappy
it made us
feel

remember that
there is a
cat
somewhere
adjusting to the
space of itself
with a calm
and delightful
ease.

in other words
magic persists with
or without us
no matter how
we may try to
destroy it

and I would
destroy the last chance for
myself
that this might always
continue.

by Charles Bukowski

from The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps. © Black Sparrow Press, 2001. 

Courtesy of The Writer's Almanac

Poetry Wednesday: The Swan at Edgewater Park

The Swan at Edgewater Park

Isn't one of your prissy rich peoples' swans
Wouldn't be at home on some pristine pond
Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers, condoms
      in its tidal fringe
Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck
      into the body of a Great Lake,
Swilling whatever it is swans swill,
Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud,
While Clevelanders walk by saying Look
      at that big duck!
Beauty isn't the point here; of course
      the swan is beautiful,
But not like Lorie at 16, when
Everything was possible—no
More like Lorie at 27
Smoking away her days off in her dirty kitchen,
Her kid with asthma watching TV,
The boyfriend who doesn't know yet she's gonna
Leave him, washing his car out back—and
He's a runty little guy, and drinks too much, and
It's not his kid anyway, but he loves her, he
Really does, he loves them both—
That's the kind of swan this is.

by Ruth L. Schwartz
 from Edgewater. © Harper Collins, 2002
Courtesy of The Writer's Almanac

Poetry Wednesday: In Spite of Everything, the Stars

In Spite of Everything, the Stars

Like a stunned piano, like a bucket

of fresh milk flung into the air
or a dozen fists of confetti
thrown hard at a bride
stepping down from the altar,
the stars surprise the sky.
Think of dazed stones
floating overhead, or an ocean
of starfish hung up to dry. Yes,
like a conductor's expectant arm
about to lift toward the chorus,
or a juggler's plates defying gravity,
or a hundred fastballs fired at once
and freezing in midair, the stars
startle the sky over the city.

And that's why drunks leaning up
against abandoned buildings, women
hurrying home on deserted side streets,
policemen turning blind corners, and
even thieves stepping from alleys
all stare up at once. Why else do
sleepwalkers move toward the windows,
or old men drag flimsy lawn chairs
onto fire escapes, or hardened criminals
press sad foreheads to steel bars?
Because the night is alive with lamps!
That's why in dark houses all over the city
dreams stir in the pillows, a million
plumes of breath rise into the sky. 

by Edward Hirsch

 from Wild Gratitude
Courtesy of The Writer's Almanac 

Poetry Wednesday: Smoke

Smoke

It was everywhere in my childhood: in restaurants,
on buses or planes. The teacher's lounge looked like
London under fog. My grandmother never stopped

smoking, and walking in her house was like diving
in a dark pond. Adults were dimly lit: they carried
matches in their pockets as if they might need fire

to see. Cigarette machines inhaled quarters and
exhaled rectangles. Women had their own brands,
long and thin; one was named Eve and it was meant

to be smoked in a garden thick with summer flowers.
I'm speaking of moods: an old country store where
my grandfather met friends and everyone spoke

behind a veil of smoke. (My Uncle Bill preferred
fragrant cigars; I can still smell his postal jacket ...)
He had time to tell stories because he took breaks

and there was something to do with his hands.
My mother's bridge club gathered around tables
with ashtrays and secrets which are best revealed

beside fire. Even the fireplaces are gone: inefficient
and messy. We are healthier now and safer! We have
exercise and tests for breast or colon cancer. We have

helmets and car seats and smokeless coffee shops
where coffee has grown frothy and complex. The old
movies are so full of smoke that actors are hard to see

and they are often wrapped in smoking jackets, bent
over a piano or kiss. I miss the places smoke created.
I like the way people sat down for rest or pleasure

and spoke to other people, not phones, and the tiny fire
which is crimson and primitive and warm. How long
ago when humans found this spark of warmth and made

their first circle? What about smoke as words? Or the
pipes of peace? In grade school we learned how it rises
and how it can kill. We were taught to shove towels

under our closed doors: to stop, drop, and roll. We had
a plan to meet our family in the yard, the house behind
us alive with all we cannot put out... 

by Faith Shearin 
from The Empty House. © Word Press, 2008
Courtesy The Writers Almanac