I’ve been down in the dumps, per winter, and now the earth’s movement is waking me.
everywhere the earth keeps shifting inch by inch and here sun floods stubborn roots loosens dirt melts air and sap wakes bulbs that thrust shoots through winter’s debris everywhere life reasserts itself despite us
A Blessing
-- James Wright
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46481/a-blessing
If I Stepped Out of My Body I might not break into blossom though I am waiting now for the tulip tree outside this window to burst free from its suffocating bark and scream petals pink as the meat inside a woman's bound body -- I hope I shatter instead into mist heady cumulous clouds in air fresh as salt and stitched with starlings insane as spring
Suggested soundtrack: Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, read by Samuel Jackson
It’s that time of the year again — time to think about poetry, about writing poetry, and then time to stop thinking and start doing.
Once again, I plan to write a poem a day. In the effort to keep myself from wandering off into the late fifties weeds, I’m probably going to come up with an overarching structure to my challenge. Since I think that poetry is a conversation with the world (at least one small part of it for each poem), and with other poets, poems, writers, novels, characters, artists, art works, musicians, songs, pundits, politicians, fake news, speeches, watchers, listeners, readers, doers, etcetera, I plan — at this moment — to write each of my poems in response to someone or something, beginning with poems.
Just to spice things up, I’m going to include a photo with each post and a suggested soundtrack.
Wow. I’ve just larded up my self assignment with crunchy details.
Suggested soundtrack: Vampire Weekend, “Oxford Comma”
Challenge: For this last poem, end on a note of hope.
The cedar dances again waking the maple whose leaves give off an invisible hiss breaking free from winter’s bare skin in red tufts that unfurl at the speed of light while pregnant clouds hang over promising baptism and the grass beautiful uncut hair lies lush and waiting for mounds of tight daffodil to add yellow glee to the scene now a rabbit leaps in to nibble the stumps of stubborn bushes and I tap this out in the same spirit of natural joy capturing a taste of renewal feeling myself melt just a bit into the earth’s yearning its delicious hope
Challenge: Find solace in nature.
Gray Sunday but the shaggy cedar rides the wind, bowing and flaring, bending against our sagging wires, just rubbing into the budding maple. It’s a dance, how the two trees sway and tremble, shiver and lean together, shy, reverent, singing over grass grown, in a night, a magical green.
