Poetry Sunday: Endangered Species

Endangered Species

BY EAMON GRENNAN

Out the living-room window
I see the two older children burning
household trash under the ash tree
in wind and rain. They move
in slow motion about the flames,
heads bowed in concentration
as they feed each fresh piece in, hair
blown wild across their faces, the fire
wavering in tongues before them
so they seem creatures
half flame, half flesh,
wholly separate from me. All of a sudden
the baby breaks slowly down
through the flexed branches of the ash
in a blaze of blood and green leaves,
an amniotic drench, a gleaming liver-purple
slop of ripe placenta, head first
and wailing to be amongst us. Boy and girl
look up in silence and hold gravely out
flamefeathered arms to catch her,
who lands on her back in their linked
and ashen hands. Later,
when I take her in my arms

for a walk to that turn on the high road
where the sea always startles, I can see
how at intervals she’s thunderstruck
by a scalloped green leaf, a shivering
jig of grassheads, or that speckled bee
that pushes itself among
the purple and scarlet parts
of a fuchsia bell. And her eyes are on fire.

Poetry Sunday: from Still Another Day

from Still Another Day

BY PABLO NERUDA

The days aren’t discarded or collected, they are bees
that burned with sweetness or maddened
the sting: the struggle continues,
the journeys go and come between honey and pain.
No, the net of years doesn’t unweave: there is no net.
They don’t fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.
Sleep doesn’t divide life into halves,
or action, or silence, or honor:
life is like a stone, a single motion,
a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,
an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metal
that climbs or descends burning in your bones.

Poetry Sunday: Proverbial Ballade

Proverbial Ballade

BY WENDY COPE

Fine words won’t turn the icing pink;
A wild rose has no employees;
Who boils his socks will make them shrink;
Who catches cold is sure to sneeze.
Who has two legs must wash two knees;
Who breaks the egg will find the yolk;
Who locks his door will need his keys-
So say I and so say the folk.

You can’t shave with a tiddlywink,
Nor make red wine from garden peas,
Nor show a blindworm how to blink,
Nor teach an old racoon Chinese.
The juiciest orange feels the squeeze;
Who spends his portion will be broke;
Who has no milk can make no cheese-
So say I and so say the folk.

He makes no blot who has no ink,
Nor gathers honey who keeps no bees.
The ship that does not float will sink;
Who’d travel far must cross the seas.
Lone wolves are seldom seen in threes;
A conker ne’er becomes an oak;
Rome wasn’t built by chimpanzees-
So say I and so say the folk.

Envoi

Dear friends! If adages like these
Should seem banal, or just a joke,
Remember fish don’t grow on trees-
So say I and so say the folk.

Poetry Sunday: The Honey Bear

The Honey Bear

BY EILEEN MYLES

Billie Holiday was on the radio
I was standing in the kitchen
smoking my cigarette of this
pack I plan to finish tonight
last night of smoking youth.
I made a cup of this funny
kind of tea I’ve had hanging
around. A little too sweet
an odd mix. My only impulse
was to make it sweeter.
Ivy Anderson was singing
pretty late tonight
in my very bright kitchen.
I’m standing by the tub
feeling a little older
nearly thirty in my very
bright kitchen tonight.
I’m not a bad looking woman
I suppose     O it’s very quiet
in my kitchen tonight        I’m squeezing
this plastic honey bear      a noodle
of honey dripping into the odd sweet
tea. It’s pretty late
Honey bear’s cover was loose
and somehow honey      dripping down
the bear’s face   catching
in the crevices beneath
the bear’s eyes    O very sad and sweet
I’m standing in my kitchen     O honey
I’m staring at the honey bear’s face.

Poetry Sunday: More Than Enough

More Than Enough

BY MARGE PIERCY

The first lily of June opens its red mouth.
All over the sand road where we walk
multiflora rose climbs trees cascading
white or pink blossoms, simple, intense
the scene drifting like colored mist.

The arrowhead is spreading its creamy
clumps of flower and the blackberries
are blooming in the thickets. Season of
joy for the bee. The green will never
again be so green, so purely and lushly

new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads
into the wind. Rich fresh wine
of June, we stagger into you smeared
with pollen, overcome as the turtle
laying her eggs in roadside sand.

Poetry Sunday: It’s all I have to bring today (26)

It’s all I have to bring today (26)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

It’s all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget—
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

Poetry Sunday: This Error is the Sign of Love (excerpt)

This Error is the Sign of Love

BY LEWIS HYDE

Man has to seek God in error and
forgetfulness and foolishness. —Meister Eckhart

This error is the sign of love,
the crack in the ice where the otters breathe,
the tear that saves a man from power,
the puff of smoke blown down the chimney one morning, and the
widower sighs and gives up his loneliness,
the lines transposed in the will so the widow must scatter
coins from the cliff instead of ashes and she marries
again, for love,
the speechlessness of lovers that forces them to leave it alone
while it sends up its first pale shoot like an onion
sprouting in the pantry,
this error is the sign of love.

The leak in the nest, the hole in the coffin,
the crack in the picture plate a young girl fills with her
secret life to survive the grade school,
the retarded twins who wander house to house, eating,
’til the neighbors have become neighbors.
The teacher’s failings in which the students ripen,
Luther’s fit in the choir, Darwin’s dyspepsia, boy children
stuttering in the gunshop,
boredom, shyness, bodily discomforts like long rows of white
stones at the edge of the highway,
blown head gaskets, darkened choir lofts, stolen kisses,
this error is the sign of love.

The nickel in the butter churn, the farthing in the cake,
the first reggae rhythms like seasonal cracks in a government
building,
the rain-damaged instrument that taught us the melodies of black
emotion and red and yellow emotion,
the bubble of erotic energy escaped from a marriage and a week
later the wife dreams of a tiger,
the bee that flies into the guitar and hangs transfixed in the
sound of sound ’til all his wetness leaves him
and he rides that high wind to the Galapagos,
this error is the sign of love.

The fault in the sea floor where the fish linger and mate,
the birthmark that sets the girl apart and years later she alone
of the sisters finds her calling,
Whitman’s idiot brother whom he fed like the rest of us,
those few seconds Bréton fell asleep and dreamed of a pit of sand
with the water starting to flow,
the earth’s wobbling axis uncoiling seasons—seeds that need
six months of drought, flowers shaped for the tongues
of moths, summertime
and death’s polarized light caught beneath the surface
of Florentine oils,
this error is the sign of love.

The beggar buried in the cathedral,
the wisdom-hole in the façade of the library,
the corners of the garden that are not harvested,
the hail storm in a South Dakota town that started the
Farmers’ Cooperative in 1933,
the Sargasso Sea that gives false hope to sailors and they sail
on and find a new world,
the picnic basket that slips overboard and leads to the invention
of the lobster trap,
the one slack line in a poem where the listener relaxes
and suddenly the poem is in your heart like a fruit
wasp in an apple,
this error is the sign of love!

 

 


 

Poetry Sunday: How to Foretell a Change in the Weather

How to Foretell a Change in the Weather

BY TED KOOSER

Rain always follows the cattle
sniffing the air and huddling
in fields with their heads to the lee.
You will know that the weather is changing
when your sheep leave the pasture
too slowly, and your dogs lie about
and look tired; when the cat
turns her back to the fire,
washing her face, and the pigs
wallow in litter; cocks will be crowing
at unusual hours, flapping their wings;
hens will chant; when your ducks
and your geese are too noisy,
and the pigeons are washing themselves;
when the peacocks squall loudly
from the tops of the trees,
when the guinea fowl grates;
when sparrows chip loudly
and fuss in the roadway, and when swallows
fly low, skimming the earth;
when the carrion crow
croaks to himself, and wild fowl
dip and wash, and when moles
throw up hills with great fervor;
when toads creep out in numbers;
when frogs croak; when bats
enter the houses; when birds
begin to seek shelter,
and the robin approaches your house;
when the swan flies at the wind,
and your bees leave the hive;
when ants carry their eggs to and fro,
and flies bite, and the earthworm
is seen on the surface of things.

Poetry Sunday: A Prayer in Spring

A Prayer in Spring

BY ROBERT FROST

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.