Headpiece Filled With Straw

The Place I Want to Get Back To

By Mary Oliver

is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness

and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting

on the ground, like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;

and so they come
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can't be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

LINK: The Place I Want to Get Back To - Thirst. By Mary Oliver.

You, Andrew Marvell

By Archibald MacLeish

And here face down beneath the sun
Here upon Earth's noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night:

To feel creep up the curving East
The earthy chill of dusk and slow
upon those underlands the vast
And ever climbing shadow grow

And strange at Ecbatan the trees
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange
The flooding dark about their knees
The mountains over Persia change

And now at Kermanshah the gate
Dark empty and the withered grass
And through the twilight now the late
Few travellers in the Westward pass

And Baghdad darken and the bridge
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
of evening widen and steal on

And deepen in Palmyra's street
The wheel-rut in the ruined stone
And Lebanon fade out and Crete
High through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under and the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea:

And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on...

Link: [minstrels] You, Andrew Marvell -- Archibald MacLeish.

Neonatology

by Elizabeth Alexander

Is
funky, is
leaky, is
a soggy, bloody crotch, is
sharp jets of breast milk shot straight across the room,
is gaudy, mustard-colored poop, is
postpartum tears that soak the baby’s lovely head.

Then everything dries and disappears
Then everything dries and disappears

Neonatology
is day into night into day,
light into dark into light, semi-
and full-fledged, hyperconscious,
is funky, is funny: the baby farts,
we laugh. The baby burps, we smile, say “Yes.”
The baby poops, his whole body stiffens,
then steam heat floods the pipes.
He slashes his nose with nails we cannot bear to trim,
takes a nap, and the wounds disappear.
The spirit lives in your squirts and coos.
Your noises and fluids are what you do.

Neonatology
is what we cannot see: you speak to the birds,
the birds speak back, is solemn,
singing, funky, frightening,
buckets of tears on the baby’s lovely head, is
spongy.

“One day you’ll forget the baby,” Mother says,
“as if he were a pocketbook, a bag of groceries,
something you leave on a kitchen counter-top.
I left you once, put on my coat and hat,
remembered my pocketbook, the top and bottom locks,
got all the way to the elevator before I realized.

It only happens once.”

We lay on the bed and we rode the grey waves,
apricot juice in a glass in your hand,
single color in this grey light like November.
It is April. We rock.

Then the miracle which is always a miracle happens in many stages,

then the mouth which opens,
the bluebell
that sings.

I was just pregnant,
am no longer pregnant,
see myself in my memory
in overalls, sensible shoes.

Shockingly vital, mammoth giblet,
the second living thing to break free
of my body in fifteen minutes.

The midwife presents it on a platter.
We do not eat, have no Tupperware
to take it home and sanctify a tree.

Instead, we marvel at my cast-off meat,
the almost-pulsing slab, bloody mesa,
what lived moments ago and now has died.

Now I must take the baby to my breast.
There is no mother here but me.
The midwife discards the placenta.

What do you make of this rain, little one,
night rain that your parents have loved all their lives?

From 2 to 3 “The Streets of San Francisco” comes on each night,
and I watch Karl Malden stop crime, and listen

to the mouse squeak of your suckling, behold your avid jaws,
your black eyes: otter, oscelot,

my whelp, my cub, my seapup.
In the days before you smile at me

or call me Mama or love me,
love is all tit, all wheat-smelling milk, humid crook of the arm

where your warm, damp head seems to  live.
I pretend your clasping my finger means you love me

Dreamt the baby
was born again,
arrived this time in a Moses basket,
had a crone’s face,
a Senegalese head wrap,
a pendulous lower lip.

“I’d walked across the bridge
with the Savarin Coffee sign
from Harlem to the Bronx
to a frame shop just past the open market.
You were maybe two months old, I’m sure,
a), because the day was very hot, and
b), because I rolled you in the pram and not the stroller.
I was having the Japanese woodcuts framed,
the ones by Daddy’s dresser.
Something must have struck you funny,
and right in the middle of the shop you laughed,
loudly, a real laugh. I never told you?
I must have told you. That was the first time
I heard you laugh.”

Mamma Zememesh, I dreamt your sister’s names.
They floated around me as objects, satellites:

Zayd

Ntutu

Yeshareg

Asefash

Moulounesh

a spinning, turning, turning, spin.

I think the baby needs to eat. The baby’s hungry.
Look! He’s making sucking noises. Look!
His fist is in his mouth.
Why does the baby sleep all day? How
does the baby sleep at night? Three feedings? Huhn.
You need to let that baby cry.
You need to pick that baby up.
You need to put that baby down.
Kiss the baby too much, he’ll get heartburn.
What are those bumps on the baby’s face?
Why is the baby crying so?
That baby needs to eat, and now.

I dream the OB-Gyn is here
to spend the night with us. He wears
his white coat and his stethescope
to bed, looks like a loaf
of whole wheat bread. Goodnight, we say,
and shut our eyes.
The next day
he’s up early, jolly. “Time
to have this baby! Tally ho!” And so we do.

All of my aunties chatting like crows on a line,
all of my aunties on electric breast pumps,
the double kind, one for each exhausted tit.

Mommy, the baby’s head popped off! A tiny head,
white, wet, bloodless, heartbeat still on the soft spot.
She tells me, Stick it back on, Girl. Don’t be afraid.

You can’t show your children you’re afraid.

A paraffin seam bubbles on his scalp.
A pink cicatrix lines his lovely neck.

Giving birth is like jazz, something from silence,
then all of it. Long, elegant boats,
blood-boiling sunshine, human cargo,
a hand-made kite —

Post-partum.
No longer a celebrity, pregnant lady, expectant.
It has happened; you are here,
from flushed and floating, lush and curled.
Now you are the pink one, the movie star.
It has happened. You are here,

and you sing, mewl, holler, peep,
swallow the light and bubble it back,
shine, contain multitudes, gleam. You

are the new one, the movie star,
and birth is like jazz,
from silence and blood, silence
then everything,

jazz.

Link: Elizabeth Alexander | Poems.

Living in America

by Anne Stevenson

'Living in America,'
the intelligent people at Harvard say,
'is the price you pay for living in New England.'

Californians think
living in America is a reward
for managing not to live anywhere else.

The rest of the country?
Could it be sagging between two poles,
tastelessly decorated, dangerously overweight?

No. Look closely.
Under cover of light and noise
both shores are hurrying towards each other.

San Francisco
is already half way to Omaha.
Boston is nervously losing its way in Detroit.

Desperately the inhabitants
hope to be saved in the middle.
Pray to the mountains and deserts to keep them apart.

 

 

"Living in America" by Anne Stevenson, from Anne Stevenson: Selected Poems. © American Poets Project, 2008.  (buy now) 

Link: The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor | Living in America by Anne Stevenson.

Jabberwocky

By Lewis Carroll

From Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
  And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
  He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Link: Jabberwocky.

Expectant Mother

By Cathryn Cofell

These are my children.
Bratty little poems, full of colds and colic.
This one has his shoes on the wrong feet.
That one has her skirt up over her head,
laughs too loud.  They are in the toilet
again, pretending it's the fountain
at Grant Park, the big fish with water
jetting from its mouth, an upside-opened
umbrella of rain.  It's hot and their suits
are wet and the asphalt steams.

This is my life's work.
A conductor, open and waiting.  Limp
from the weight of midnight arias,
afternoon rehearsals. Manic as sheet music,
holding notes like babies.  Some will grow
to become riffs, songs, symphonies.
Some will not, I will be so full
of the blues I will bang
their small backs until they are still.
None will be what I imagined.  At best,
an anthem whistled in gauze, a myth of spittle. 

This is my house.
Years unoccupied, swallowing toxins to control
those crawling metaphors and now I am one.
  Corridors in dust, walls bare, rooms so bulimic
I can only press the air, mouth the shape
of a mother's reflection.
I am a nipple out of milk.
I am an alley cat panting in the dark,
digging in dumpsters
for just one scrap to make me full.

 

Reprinted  from Sweet Curdle

Link: Cathryn Cofell.

Twenty-eight Swimmers in 1855

I'm living a bit in Walt Whitman these days. An oddly expansive feeling, after having lived so long in Emily Dickinson. It feels strange, and wonderful, living in his backyard. It's like I can FEEL him, like I never could before.

Link: Leaves of Grass (1855).

Twenty-Eight Swimmers

By Walt Whitman
1855 Leaves of Grass

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore, 
Twenty-eight young men, and all so friendly, 
Twenty-eight years of womanly life, and all so lonesome. 

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank, 
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.   

Which of the young men does she like the best? 
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.   

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you, 
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.   

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather, 
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.   

The beards of the young men glistened with wet, it ran from their long hair, 
Little streams passed all over their bodies.   

An unseen hand also passed over their bodies, 
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs. 

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies swell to the sun . . . . they do not ask who seizes fast to them, 
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, 
They do not think whom they souse with spray.   

The Blind Leading the Blind

By Lisel Mueller

Take my hand. There are two of us in this cave.
The sound you hear is water; you will hear it forever.
The ground you walk on is rock. I have been here before.
People come here to be born, to discover, to kiss,
to dream, and to dig and to kill. Watch for the mud.
Summer blows in with scent of horses and roses;
fall with the sound of sound breaking; winter shoves
its empty sleeve down the dark of your throat.
You will learn toads from diamonds, the fist from palm,
love from the sweat of love, falling from flying.
There are a thousand turnoffs. I have been here before.
Once I fell off a precipice. Once I found gold.
Once I stumbled on murder, the thin parts of a girl.
Walk on, keep walking, there are axes above us.
Watch for the occasional bits and bubbles of light.
Birthdays for you, recognitions: yourself, another.
Watch for the mud. Listen for bells, for beggars.
Something with wings went crazy against my chest once.
There are two of us here. Touch me.

Fun web site!
Link: Enter the Jonathan Carroll Web Site.

On Death, without Exaggeration

By Wislawa Szymborska

It can't take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.

It can't even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn't strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won't help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat
is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies' skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it's omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it's not.

There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come
can't be undone.

Baccalaureate

By Archibald MacLeish

A year or two, and grey Euripides,
And Horace and a Lydia or so,
And Euclid and the brush of Angelo,
Darwin on man, Vergilius on bees,
The nose and Dialogues of Socrates,
Don Quixote, Hudibras and Trinculo,
How worlds are spawned and where the dead gods go,--
All shall be shard of broken memories.

And there shall linger other, magic things,--
The fog that creeps in wanly from the sea,
The rotten harbor smell, the mystery
Of moonlit elms, the flash of pigeon wings,
The sunny Green, the old-world peace that clings
About the college yard, where endlessly
The dead go up and down. These things shall be
Enchantment of our heart's rememberings.

And these are more than memories of youth
Which earth's four winds of pain shall blow away;
These are earth's symbols of eternal truth,
Symbols of dream and imagery and flame,
Symbols of those same verities that play
Bright through the crumbling gold of a great name.