Poem Today

The Rose

A Rose, as fair as ever saw the North, Grew in a little garden all alone; A sweeter flower did Nature ne'er put forth, Nor fairer garden yet was never known: The maidens danced about it morn and noon, And learned bards of it their ditties made; The nimble fairies by the pale-faced moon Water'd the root and kiss'd her pretty shade. But well-a-day!—the gardener careless grew; The maids and fairies both were kept away, And in a drought the caterpillars threw Themselves upon the bud and every spray.  God shield the stock! If heaven send no supplies,  The fairest blossom of the garden dies.

Canadian Poem Live

I’m sorry. 

Oh, I didn’t mean that.

Would you like me to rephrase?

Here, take my spot.

That’s all right.

I’ll wait for another.

Can I get you something?

I’m fine, really.

No, no that’s o.k..

I wouldn’t dream of it.

I couldn’t.

You should though.

I really do insist.

Here have another.

Please, please do.

You’re sure?

I can do it over again.

It’s not a problem at all.

I’m sorry.

Jennifer Ailles

Domestic

If, when studying road atlases while taking, as you call it, your    morning dump, you shout down to    me names like Miami City, Franconia,    Cancún, as places for you to take    me to from here, can I help it if

all I can think is things that are    stupid, like he loves me he loves me    not? I don’t think so. No more than, some mornings, waking to your    hands around me, and remembering    these are the fingers, the hands I’ve

over and over given myself to, I can    stop myself from wondering does that    mean they’re the same I’ll grow    old with. Yesterday, in the café I    keep meaning to show you, I thought    this is how I’ll die maybe, alone,

somewhere too far away from wherever    you are then, my heart racing from    espresso and too many cigarettes,    my head down on the table’s cool    marble, and the ceiling fan turning    slowly above me, like fortune, the

part of fortune that’s half-wished- for only—it did not seem the worst    way. I thought this is another of    those things I’m always forgetting    to tell you, or don’t choose to    tell you, or I tell you but only

in the same way, each morning, I keep myself from saying too loud I love you until the moment you flush the toilet, then I say it, when the rumble of water running down through the house could mean anything: flood,

your feet descending the stairs any moment; any moment the whole world, all I want of the world, coming down.

Envoi

Go, dumb-born book, Tell her that sang me once that song of Lawes: Hadst thou but song As thou hast subjects known, Then were there cause in thee that should condone Even my faults that heavy upon me lie, And build her glories their longevity.

Tell her that sheds Such treasure in the air, Recking naught else but that her graces give Life to the moment, I would bid them live As roses might, in magic amber laid, Red overwrought with orange and all made One substance and one color Braving time.

Tell her that goes With song upon her lips But sings not out the song, nor knows The maker of it, some other mouth, May be as fair as hers, Might, in new ages, gain her worshippers, When our two dusts with Waller’s shall be laid, Siftings on siftings in oblivion, Till change hath broken down All things save Beauty alone.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Remind Me How Often

Remind me, if you can, how often I lost my thread today, stopping in the silence after what I had said and before what I intended. My memory is a needle’s eye. Too much to ask that it recover the day’s lost connections. How much of what I knew has been deflected already  into the darkness from which it will not return? I hoard what I have and coax what I can of a language that disappears daily. I am loath to let it go, quick to locate its absence on the tip of my tongue. I strive to make sense around emptying spaces and your extravagant gestures. So remind me if you can how often I lost my thread today. Start me with half a sentence, draw the thread through.

Frank Ormsby

Listen to Frank Ormsby read his poem (14:47).

Hopes Up

Never is a long time. Sweet eyes last what, a minute?

Then an empty sky, neon-bright, empty.

Love someone back. You just begin. Almost nothing happens.

Dark matter in space arranges it up. Then what are you.

Bed in Summer

In winter I get up at night    And dress by yellow candle-light.    In summer, quite the other way,    I have to go to bed by day.   

I have to go to bed and see           The birds still hopping on the tree,    Or hear the grown-up people’s feet    Still going past me in the street.   

And does it not seem hard to you,    When all the sky is clear and blue,    And I should like so much to play,    To have to go to bed by day?

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Shelter in Place

A tornado is when the wind opens the door to your house and closes it in the lake. A cyclone is some kind of milkshake I think, I think with candy inside? I know someone who made a milkshake for her babies made of meat. When you write a book you must not forget to build a door you can use to get out or else you will die there. It is very exciting to make a new mistake. Every time I turn on the blender I am afraid the blade will spin out through the glass and on through my stomach, but still I keep using it, mostly for soups and sometimes for smoothies, a word I would rather not speak. I'm not brave, but I am hungry, and the wind has taken my teeth.

Heather Christle

Dream Villanelle

I woke not knowing why I could not speak, when every sailor knows the facts of love. I can't remember who you were that week.

A blackbird sings despite a broken beak, but lovers love to hear the mourning dove. I woke not knowing why I could not speak.

In heavy rains old roofs may spring a leak. I watched, in disbelief, the stain above. I can't remember who you were that week.

Each lover longs to think his case unique, though love is common as a missing glove. I woke not knowing why I could not speak.

We spent those June days by the lying creek - there are so many ways to ruin love. I can't remember who you were that week.

Now I remember that you spoke, in Greek, but what could that have been a symbol of? I woke not knowing why I could not speak. I can't remember who you were that week.

Undertow

I set out one night When the tide was low There were signs in the sky But I did not know I’d be caught in the grip Of the undertow

And ditched on a beach Where the sea hates to go With a child in my arms And a chill in my soul And my heart the shape Of a begging bowl

Coming Home

You wanted to come home for your favorite season but you're too late. Only the tight fists of apples still cling to the trees.

And as you stand in the back yard helping your father rake the leaves out from between the apple trees, it is almost winter.

The swallows have already gathered up their shadows and moved south and the cardinals, perched in the top branches, are listening for snow.

With each stroke of the rake you uncover more leaves, mushrooms, soft decaying apples, heaping them into the wheelbarrow like debris.

Your father has kept the fire burning. You pile on more leaves and both of you watch the smoke rise like the shadow of birds leaving.

You've come home unprepared for this new season the way a worm falls asleep beside an apple blossom and wakes up deep in the fruit.

Talking About the Day

Each night after reading three books to my two children—

we each picked one—to unwind them into dreamland,

I'd turn off the light and sit between their beds

in the wide junk-shop rocker I'd reupholstered blue,

still feeling the close-reading warmth of their bodies beside me,

and ask them to talk about the day—we did this,

we did that, sometimes leading somewhere, sometimes

not, but always ending up at the happy ending of now.

Now, in still darkness, listening to their breath slow and ease

into sleep's regular rhythm.

                                            Grown now, you might've guessed.

The past tense solid, unyielding, against the acidic drip

of recent years. But how it calmed us then, rewinding

the gentle loop, and in the trusting darkness, pressing play.

The Waving Girl

When I think of the girl standing at river’s edge, arms uplifted as if crying for divine intervention, I think of Savannah and its stately

homes and squares, but I also think of longing run awry, but isn’t that part of what love is about, longing unfulfilled? She stands alone there,

towel waving at passing ships, awaiting the sailor-lover who will never come. The Waving Girl of Savannah. The sun was sunny side up, yolk lava hot, when

I first saw her standing there. I wanted more than anything, more than asking Christ what he really felt about Roman soldiers, to have a conversation

with her, the city light-tender’s sister, but bronze lips never move. They just burn in the sun and chill in the night like the rest of us.

Donald Smyth

First published in Rattle #24, Winter 2005

Overpass

The road wasn’t as hazardous then, when I’d walk to the steel guardrail, lean my bendy girl body over, and stare at the cold creek water. In a wet spring, the water’d run clear and high, minnows mouthing the sand and silt, a crawdad shadowed by the shore’s long reeds. I could stare for hours, something always new in each watery wedge— a bottle top, a man’s black boot, a toad. Once, a raccoon’s carcass half under the overpass, half out, slowly decayed over months. I’d check on him each day, watching until the white bones of his hand were totally skinless and seemed to reach out toward the sun as it hit the water, showing all five of his sweet tensile fingers still clinging. I don’t think I worshipped him, his deadness, but I liked the evidence of him, how it felt like a job to daily take note of his shifting into the sand.

Ada Limón

First published in the print edition of The New Yorker  (December 4, 2017, issue).

The End

Not yet sans everything. Thanks to my glasses, hearing aids, dental implant, walking stick, inhalers, statins, and carefully rationed painkillers, I am glad to be alive as I walk the last mile or two through the valley of the shadow.

Wendy Cope

A Shower in June

Peeling a hard boiled egg the downpour curls my hair flick of shell into garbage can where does memory not intrude? Another June whose roses swung "stitched and gored," the very words, across stone swallows this rain and birds' broken song. Memory gorges every single thing who are we to forget so much?

Station Island, Part XII

Like a convalescent, I took the hand stretched down from the jetty, sensed again an alien comfort as I stepped on ground

to find the helping hand still gripping mine, fish-cold and bony, but whether to guide or to be guided I could not be certain

for the tall man in step at my side seemed blind, though he walked straight as a rush upon his ash plant, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

Then I knew him in the flesh out there on the tarmac among the cars, wintered hard and sharp as a blackthorn bush.

His voice eddying with the vowels of all rivers came back to me, though he did not speak yet, a voice like a prosecutor’s or a singer’s,

Cunning, narcotic, mimic, definite as a steel nib’s downstroke, quick and clean, and suddenly he hit a litter basket

with his stick, saying, ‘Your obligation is not discharged by any common rite. What you do you must do on your own.

The main thing is to write |for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust that imagines its haven like your hands at night

dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast. You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous. Take off from here. And don’t be so earnest,

so ready for the sackcloth and the ashes. Let go, let fly, forget. You’ve listened long enough. Now strike  your note.’

It was as if I had stepped free into space alone with nothing that I had not known already. Raindrops blew in my face

as I came to and heard the harangue and jeers going on and on. ‘The English language belongs to us. You are raking at dead fires,

rehearsing the old whinges at your age. That subject  people stuff is a cod’s game, infantile, like this peasant pilgrimage.

You lose more of yourself than you redeem doing the decent thing. Keep at a tangent. When they make the circle wide, it’s time to swim

out on your own and fill the element with signatures on your own frequency, echo-soundings, searches, probes, allurements,

elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea.’ The shower broke in a cloudburst, the tarmac fumed and sizzled. As he moved off quickly

the downpour loosed its screens round his straight walk.