Poetry

Evening Poetry, October 23

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Still Life, Apples and Chestnuts by Los Angeles County Museum of Art is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

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Apples by Danusha Laméris

One, tossed to Aphrodite,
begins a war. Eve, that fateful bite
into the crisp white skin. 
Distracted by the sight of golden apples
a virgin huntress loses a race
and must marry. Each apple
a kind of failure. The body
calling our desire. Isn't there
always something we want
more than our own happiness?
A pull toward the Fall.
Haven't we all loved too much?
Snow White bit into the flesh
laced with poison.
Love is something we fall into.
Fall, the time of ripening apples.
In England one falls pregnant.
Life requires collapse
holds it out to us
sweet and fragrant.

You can find this poem in The Moons of August.

Evening Poetry, October 22

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Think of Others by Mahmoud Darwish

As you prepare your breakfast — think of others.
Don’t forget to feed the pigeons.
As you conduct your wars — think of others.
Don’t forget those who want peace.
As you pay your water bill — think of others.
Think of those who have only the clouds to drink from.
As you go home, your own home — think of others — don’t forget those who live in tents.
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others — there are people who have no place to sleep.
As you liberate yourself with metaphors think of others — those who have lost their right to speak.
And as you think of distant others — think of yourself and say
"I wish I were a candle in the darkness".

You can find this poem in Almond Blossoms and Beyond.

Evening Poetry, October 21

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Fall Song by Mary Oliver

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

You can find this poem in American Primitive: Poems.

Evening Poetry, October 20

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We Are of a Tribe
by ALBERTO RÍOS

We plant seeds in the ground
And dreams in the sky,
 
Hoping that, someday, the roots of one
Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.
 
It has not happened yet.
We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:
 
Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,
Even as we stand on uncertain ground.
 
The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,
Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.
 
The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,
Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.
 
The sky is our common home, the place we all live.
There we are in the world together.
 
The dream of sky requires no passport.
Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.
 
Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.
Know that you always have a home here.

You can find this poem in Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems.

Evening Poetry, October 19

KimLeave a comment 
The Empty House
BY WALTER DE LA MARE

See this house, how dark it is
Beneath its vast-boughed trees!
Not one trembling leaflet cries
To that Watcher in the skies—
‘Remove, remove thy searching gaze,
Innocent of heaven’s ways,
Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright,
On secrets hidden from sight.’

‘Secrets,’ sighs the night-wind,
‘Vacancy is all I find;
Every keyhole I have made
Wails a summons, faint and sad,
No voice ever answers me,
Only vacancy.’
‘Once, once … ’ the cricket shrills,
And far and near the quiet fills
With its tiny voice, and then
Hush falls again.

Mute shadows creeping slow
Mark how the hours go.
Every stone is mouldering slow.
And the least winds that blow
Some minutest atom shake,
Some fretting ruin make
In roof and walls. How black it is
Beneath these thick boughed trees!

Find this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.

Evening Poetry, October 18

KimLeave a comment 
A Reminiscence
BY RICHARD O. MOORE

Held in a late season
At a shifting of worlds,
In the golden balance of autumn,
Out of love and reason
 
We made our peace;
Stood still in October
In the failing light and sought,
Each in the other, ease
 
And release from silence,
From the slow damnation
Of speech that is weak
And falls from silence.
 
In the October sun
By the green river we spoke,
Late in October, the leaves
Of the water maples had fallen.
 
But whatever we said
In the bright leaves was lost,
Quick as the leaf-fall,
Brittle and blood red.           


                 For Kenneth Rexroth, 1950

You can find this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.

Evening Poetry, October 17

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Kindness by Anya Silver

Last week, a nurse pulled a warm blanket
from a magical cave of heated cotton
and lay it on my lap, even wrapping
my feet. She admired my red sandals.
Once, a friend brought me a chicken
she’d roasted and packed with whole lemons.
I ate it with my fingers while it was still warm.
Kindnesses appear, then disappear so quickly
that I forget their brief streaks: they vanish,
while cruelty pearls its durable shell.
Goodness streams like hot water through my hair
and down my skin, and I’m able to live
again with the ache. Love wakens the world.
Kindness is my mother, sending me a yellow dress in the mail
for no reason other than to watch me twirl.

You can find this poem in Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness & Connection.

Evening Poetry, October 16

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Autumn by Library of Congress is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

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The Autumn by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
    And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
    Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them —
    The summer flowers depart —
Sit still — as all transform'd to stone,
    Except your musing heart.

How there you sat in summer-time,
    May yet be in your mind;
And how you heard the green woods sing
    Beneath the freshening wind.
Though the same wind now blows around,
    You would its blast recall;
For every breath that stirs the trees,
    Doth cause a leaf to fall.

Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth
    That flesh and dust impart:
We cannot bear its visitings,
    When change is on the heart.
Gay words and jests may make us smile,
    When Sorrow is asleep;
But other things must make us smile,
    When Sorrow bids us weep!

The dearest hands that clasp our hands, —
    Their presence may be o'er;
The dearest voice that meets our ear,
    That tone may come no more!
Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth,
    Which once refresh'd our mind,
Shall come — as, on those sighing woods,
    The chilling autumn wind.

Hear not the wind — view not the woods;
    Look out o'er vale and hill-
In spring, the sky encircled them —
    The sky is round them still.
Come autumn's scathe — come winter's cold —
    Come change — and human fate!
Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound,
    Can ne'er be desolate.

You can find this poem in The Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Evening Poetry, October 15

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October
BY ROBERT FROST

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

You can find this poem in The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged.

Evening Poetry, October 14

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What Trees Dream Of by Danusha Laméris

This one thinks, let me be the slender bow
of the violin. Another, the body of the instrument,
burnished, the color of amber.
One imagines life as a narrow boat
crossing water,
a light mist of salt on the prow.
And still another &emdash; planed down to planks,
then hammered into shelter
toices vibrating through the rafters.
We do not notice their pleasure,
the slight hum of the banister
beneath our palms,
The satisfaction of the desk
as we tap our pens, impatiently,
upon its weathered surface.
They have ferried us
across rough seas
to lands that smelled of cinnamon
housed our senators,
who pace the creaky floors, debating,
carried arrowheads to pierce our enemies.
We have boiled their pulp, pressed it
into thin, white sheets of paper
on which we describe all of the above in great detail.
And when we die
they hold our empty forms
in bare cedar
until the moment &emdash; and how they long for this,
when we meet again in the blackened soil
and they take us back
in their embrace, carry us
up the length of their bodies
into the glittery, trembling movement of the leaves.

You can find this poem in The Moons of August.