Month: November 2023

Evening Poetry, November 20

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The Trees
by Mary Oliver

Do you think of them as decoration?

Think again.

Here are the maples, flashing.
And here are the oaks, holding on all winter
to their dry leaves.
And here are the pines, that will never fail,
until death, the instruction to be green.
And here are the willows, the first
to pronounce a new year.

May I invite you to revise your thoughts about them?
Oh, Lord, how we are all for invention and 
advancement!
But I think
it would do us good if we would think about 
these brothers and sisters, quietly and deeply.

The trees, the trees, just holding on
to the old, holy ways.

You can find this poem in Evidence.

Evening Poetry, November 19

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Tree covered with snow by Martin Sauter is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

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First Snow
by James Armstrong

As you lie in bed, 
you can tell it has snowed
by the radiance in the window--
light comes from the ground and not the sky
as if you suddenly lived on the moon.
In that moment, you are back to childhood
when any change of the exterior world
is a change of heart, when the light
tells you what to feel, when you need the sky
and its endless changes.
When that first snow fell,
each snowflake whispered
a secret so intimate
it took the rest of your life to un-believe.
Here it is again.
Your chance to repent.

You can find this poem in The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace & Renewal.

Evening Poetry, November 18

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Joint Custody
by Ada Limón

Why did I never see it for what it was:
abundance? Two families, two different
kitchen tables, two sets of rules, two
creeks, two highways, two stepparents
with their fish tanks or eight-tracks or
cigarette smoke or expertise in recipes or
reading skills. I cannot reverse it, the record
scratched and stopping to that original
chaotic track. But let me say, I was taken
back and forth on Sundays and it was not easy
but I was loved in each place. And so I have
two brains now. Two entirely different brains.
The one that always misses where I’m not,
and the one that is so relieved to finally be home.

You can find this poem in The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace & Renewal.

Evening Poetry, November 17

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Hawthorn Blossom, Kirkstall Road, Kirkstall, Leeds by Rich Tea is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0
There You Are
by Victoria Adukwei Bulley

There you are
this cold day
boiling the water on the stove
pouring the herbs into the pot
hawthorn, rose;
buying the tulips
& looking at them, holding
your heart in your hands at the table
saying please, please to nobody else
here in the kitchen with you.
How hard, how heavy this all is.
How beautiful, these things you do,
in case they help, these things you do
which, although you haven’t said it yet,
say that you want to live.

You can find this poem in Quiet Poems.

Evening Poetry, November 16

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Autumnal Tree at the side of the River Wharfe by Andy Beecroft is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

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What Can I Say?
by Mary Oliver

What can I say that I have not said before?
So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the
chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.

You can find this poem in Swan: Poems and Prose Poems.

Evening Poetry, November 15

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Two Women in a Garden by The Metropolitan Museum of Art is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

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The Laughter of Women
by Lisel Mueller

The laughter of women sets fire
to the Halls of Injustice
and the false evidence burns
to a beautiful white lightness

It rattles the Chambers of Congress
and forces the windows wide open
so the fatuous speeches can fly out

The laughter of women wipes the mist
from the spectacles of the old;
it infects them with a happy flu
and they laugh as if they were young again

Prisoners held in underground cells
imagine that they see daylight
when they remember the laughter of women

It runs across water that divides,
and reconciles two unfriendly shores
like flares that signal the news to each other

What a language it is, the laughter of women,
high-flying and subversive.
Long before law and scripture
we heard the laughter, we understood freedom.

You can find this poem in Alive Together.

Evening Poetry, November 14

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Photo by Jonas Thomann on Pexels.com

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Man, Woman, Moon
by Freya Manfred

Drink in the alien eyes of this wild one
you don't want to lose,
who doesn't want to lose you.
Make sure he can find his way home in the dark,
when he forgets who he is, or you forget,
because even after thirty years
you don't know what he's thinking
when he stares out the window at the snow
falling in veils past the moon--
the same moon you've been watching
every month since you were born.

You can find this poem in Swimming With a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle.

Evening Poetry, November 13

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Osdale River by Richard Dorrell is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

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Mysteries, Yes
by Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
   to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
   mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
   in allegiance with gravity
      while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
   never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
   scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
   who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
   “Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
   and bow their heads.

You can find this poem in Evidence.

Evening Poetry, November 12

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Autumn Fields near Frilsham by Pam Brophy is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

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VI (from 1979)
by Wendell Berry

What stood will stand, though all be fallen,
The good return that time has stolen,
Though creatures groan in misery,
Their flesh prefigures liberty
To end travail and bring to birth
Their new perfection in new earth.
At word of that enlivening
Let the trees of the woods all sing
And every field rejoice, let praise
Rise up out of the ground like grass.
What stood, whole in every piecemeal
Thing that stood, will stand though all
Fall--field and woods and all in them
Rejoin the primal Sabbath's hymn.

You can find this poem in A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997.

Evening Poetry, November 11

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Autumn Song
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?

Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

You can find this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.