Day 153

maggie and milly and molly and may
by e. e. cummings


maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Day 152

Strawberries
by Edwin Morgan
There were never strawberries

 like the ones we had
 that sultry afternoon
 sitting on the step
 of the open french window
 facing each other
 your knees held in mine
 the blue plates in our laps
 the strawberries glistening
 in the hot sunlight
 we dipped them in sugar
 looking at each other
 not hurrying the feast
 for one to come
 the empty plates
 laid on the stone together
 with the two forks crossed
 and I bent towards you
 sweet in that air

 in my arms
 abandoned like a child
 from your eager mouth
 the taste of strawberries
 in my memory
 lean back again
 let me love you

 let the sun beat
 on our forgetfulness
 one hour of all
 the heat intense
 and summer lightning
 on the Kilpatrick hills

 let the storm wash the plates

Day 151

After the Rain
by Anthony Hecht

The barbed-wire fences rust

As their cedar uprights blacken   

After a night of rain.

Some early, innocent lust

Gets me outdoors to smell

The teasle, the pelted bracken,   

The cold, mossed-over well,   

Rank with its iron chain,

And takes me off for a stroll.   

Wetness has taken over.

From drain and creeper twine

It’s runnelled and trenched and edged

A pebbled serpentine   

Secretly, as though pledged   

To attain a difficult goal

And join some important river.

The air is a smear of ashes   

With a cool taste of coins.   

Stiff among misty washes,

The trees are as black as wicks,   

Silent, detached and old.   

A pallor undermines

Some damp and swollen sticks.   

The woods are rich with mould.

How even and pure this light!   

All things stand on their own,   

Equal and shadowless,

In a world gone pale and neuter,   

Yet riddled with fresh delight.   

The heart of every stone

Conceals a toad, and the grass   

Shines with a douse of pewter.

Somewhere a branch rustles   

With the life of squirrels or birds,   

Some life that is quick and right.   

This queer, delicious bareness,   

This plain, uniform light,   

In which both elms and thistles,   

Grass, boulders, even words,   

Speak for a Spartan fairness,

Might, as I think it over,   

Speak in a form of signs,   

If only one could know

All of its hidden tricks,

Saying that I must go

With a cool taste of coins

To join some important river,   

Some damp and swollen Styx.

Yet what puzzles me the most   

Is my unwavering taste

For these dim, weathery ghosts,   

And how, from the very first,   

An early, innocent lust

Delighted in such wastes,

Sought with a reckless thirst   

A light so pure and just.

Day 150

Grief
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;

That only men incredulous of despair,

Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air

Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access

Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,

In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare

Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare

Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express

Grief for thy dead in silence like to death—

Most like a monumental statue set

In everlasting watch and moveless woe

Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.

Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:

If it could weep, it could arise and go.

Day 149

This one's for Inga. And Katie.

You Fit Into Me
by Margaret Atwood


You fit into me
like a hook into an eye

A fish hook
An open eye

Day 148

In honor of Maria, my friend from Spain, coming to stay with me for the next month, I post this Lorca poem.

Song of the Barren Orange Tree
by Federico Garcia Lorca

Woodcutter.

Cut my shadow from me.

Free me from the torment

of seeing myself without fruit.

Why was I born among mirrors?

The day walks in circles around me,

and the night copies me

in all its stars.

I want to live without seeing myself.

And I will dream that ants

and thistleburrs are my

leaves and my birds.

Woodcutter.

Cut my shadow from me.

Free me from the torment

of seeing myself without fruit.

Day 147

Wild Asters
by Sara Teasdale


In the spring I asked the daisies
If his words were true,
And the clever, clear-eyed daisies
Always knew.

Now the fields are brown and barren,
Bitter autumn blows,
And of all the stupid asters
Not one knows.

Day 146

I'm In Paris With You

by James Fenton

Don’t talk to me of love.  I’ve had an earful
 And I get tearful when I’ve downed a drink or two.
 I’m one of your talking wounded.
 I’m a hostage. I’m maroonded.
 But I’m in Paris with you.

 Yes, I’m angry at the way I’ve been bamboozled
 And resentful at the mess that I’ve been through.
 I admit I’m on the rebound
 And I don’t care where are we bound.
 I’m in Paris with you.

 Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre,
 If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame
 If we skip the champs Elysees
 And remain here in this sleazy
 Old hotel room
 Doing this or that
 To what and whom
 Learning who you are,
 Learning what I am.

 Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris,
 The little bit of Paris in our view.
 There’s that crack across the ceiling
 And the hotel walls are peeling
 And I’m in Paris with you.

 Don’t talk to me of love.  Let’s talk of Paris.
 I’m in Paris with the slightest thing you do.
 I’m in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,
 I’m in Paris with…..all points south.
 Am I embarrassing you?
 I’m in Paris with you.

Day 145

Home Is So Sad
by Philip Larkin

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,

Shaped in the comfort of the last to go

As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

Day 144

Blackberry-picking
by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Day 143

The Solipsist
by Troy Jollimore

Don't be misled:

that sea-song you hear

when the shell's at your ear?

It's all in your head.

That primordial tide—

the slurp and salt-slosh

of the brain's briny wash—

is on the inside.

Truth be told, the whole place,

everything that the eye

can take in, to the sky

and beyond into space,

lives inside of your skull.

When you set your sad head

down on Procrustes' bed,

you lay down the whole

universe. You recline

on the pillow: the cosmos

grows dim. The soft ghost

in the squishy machine,

which the world is, retires.

Someday it will expire.

Then all will go silent

and dark. For the moment,

however, the black-

ness is just temporary.

The planet you carry

will shortly swing back

from the far nether regions.

And life will continue—

but only within you.

Which raises a question

that comes up again and again,   

as to why

God would make ear and eye

to face outward, not in?

Day 142

The Workbox
by Thomas Hardy


See, here's the workbox, little wife,
That I made of polished oak.'

 He was a joiner, of village life;
   She came of borough folk.

 He holds the present up to her
   As with a smile she nears
 And answers to the profferer,
   ''Twill last all my sewing years!'

 'I warrant it will. And longer too.
   'Tis a scantling that I got
 Off poor John Wayward's coffin, who
   Died of they knew not what.

 'The shingled pattern that seems to cease
   Against your box's rim
 Continues right on in the piece
   That's underground with him.

 'And while I worked it made me think
   Of timber's varied doom;
 One inch where people eat and drink,
   The next inch in a tomb.

 'But why do you look so white, my dear,
   And turn aside your face?
 You knew not that good lad, I fear,
   Though he came from your native place?'

 'How could I know that good young man,
   Though he came from my native town,
 When he must have left there earlier than
   I was a woman grown?'

 'Ah, no. I should have understood!
   It shocked you that I gave
 To you one end of a piece of wood
   Whose other is in a grave?'

 'Don't, dear, despise my intellect,
   Mere accidental things
 Of that sort never have effect
   On my imaginings.'

 Yet still her lips were limp and wan,
   Her face still held aside,
 As if she had known not only John,
   But known of what he died.

Day 141

I made a delicious (if I may take the liberty of saying), full-on Italian meal tonight and it made me think of this poem.


Acceptance Speech
by Lynn Powell


The radio's replaying last night's winners
and the gratitude of the glamorous,
everyone thanking everybody for making everything
so possible, until I want to shush
the faucet, dry my hands, join in right here
at the cluttered podium of the sink, and thank

my mother for teaching me the true meaning of okra,
my children for putting back the growl in hunger,
my husband, primo uomo of dinner, for not
begrudging me this starring role—

without all of them, I know this soup
would not be here tonight.

And let me just add that I could not
have made it without the marrow bone, that blood—
brother to the broth, and the tomatoes
who opened up their hearts, and the self-effacing limas,
the blonde sorority of corn, the cayenne
and oregano who dashed in
in the nick of time.

Special thanks, as always, to the salt—
you know who you are—and to the knife,
who revealed the ripe beneath the rind,
the clean truth underneath the dirty peel.

—I hope I've not forgotten anyone—
oh, yes, to the celery and the parsnip,
those bit players only there to swell the scene,
let me just say: sometimes I know exactly how you feel.

But not tonight, not when it's all
coming to something and the heat is on and
I'm basking in another round
of blue applause.

Day 140

The animals in that country

by Margaret Atwood

In that country the animals

have the faces of people:

the ceremonial

cats possessing the streets

the fox run

politely to earth, the huntsmen

standing around him, fixed

in their tapestry of manners

the bull, embroidered

with blood and given

an elegant death, trumpets, his name

stamped on him, heraldic brand

because

(when he rolled

on the sand, sword in his heart, the teeth

in his blue mouth were human)

he is really a man

even the wolves, holding resonant

conversations in their

forests thickened with legend.

In this country the animals

have the faces of

animals.

Their eyes

flash once in car headlights

and are gone.

Their deaths are not elegant.

They have the faces of

no-one.

Day 139

By Night When Others Soundly Slept

by Anne Bradstreet

1

By night when others soundly slept

And hath at once both ease and Rest,

My waking eyes were open kept

And so to lie I found it best.

2

I sought him whom my Soul did Love,

With tears I sought him earnestly.

He bow’d his ear down from Above.

In vain I did not seek or cry.

3

My hungry Soul he fill’d with Good;

He in his Bottle put my tears,

My smarting wounds washt in his blood,

And banisht thence my Doubts and fears.

4

What to my Saviour shall I give

Who freely hath done this for me?

I’ll serve him here whilst I shall live

And Love him to Eternity.

Day 138

Money

by Philip Larkin

Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me:

‘Why do you let me lie here wastefully?

I am all you never had of goods and sex.

You could get them still by writing a few cheques.’

So I look at others, what they do with theirs:

They certainly don’t keep it upstairs.

By now they’ve a second house and car and wife:

Clearly money has something to do with life

—In fact, they’ve a lot in common, if you enquire:

You can’t put off being young until you retire,

And however you bank your screw, the money you save

Won’t in the end buy you more than a shave.

I listen to money singing. It’s like looking down

From long french windows at a provincial town,

The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad

In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.

Day 137

After Love

by Maxine Kumin

Afterward, the compromise.

Bodies resume their boundaries.

These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.

Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.

The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar

and overhead, a plane
singsongs coming down.

Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when

the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self

lay lightly down, and slept.

Day 136

Here's a shout out to Methacton's Women's Performance Group. In an entirely unrelated note, Harry Potter ends tonight. :(

Witches' Blood

by Alma Villanueva

power of my blood, your secret
wrapped in ancient tongues
spoken by men who claimed themselves
gods and priests and oracles—they
made elaborate rituals
secret chants and extolled the cycles,
calling woman unclean.
men have killed
made war
for blood to flow, as naturally
as a woman's
once a month—
men have roamed the earth to find
the patience of pregnancy
the joy of birth—

the renewal of blood.
(the awful, bloody secret: O woman
you dare birth
yourself)

call me witch
call me hag
call me sorceress
call me mad
call me woman. do not
call me goddess.
I do not want the position.

Day 135

Beyond the Ash Rains

by Agha Shahid Ali

What have you known of loss
That makes you different from other men?
— Gilgamesh

When the desert refused my history,
Refused to acknowledge that I had lived
there, with you, among a vanished tribe,

two, three thousand years ago, you parted
the dawn rain, its thickest monsoon curtains,

and beckoned me to the northern canyons.
There, among the red rocks, you lived alone.
I had still not learned the style of nomads:

to walk between the rain drops to keep dry.
Wet and cold, I spoke like a poor man,

without irony. You showed me the relics
of our former life, proof that we’d at last
found each other, but in your arms I felt

singled out for loss. When you lit the fire
and poured the wine, “I am going,” I murmured,
repeatedly, “going where no one has been
and no one will be… Will you come with me?”
You took my hand, and we walked through the streets

of an emptied world, vulnerable
to our suddenly bare history in which I was,

but you said won’t again be, singled
out for loss in your arms, won’t ever again
be exiled, never again, from your arms.

Day 134

Momma Said

by Calvin Forbes

The slice I ate I want it back

Those crumbs I swept up

I’d like my share again

I can still taste it like it was

The memory by itself is delicious

Each bite was a small miracle

Both nourishing and sweet

I wish I had saved just a little bit

I know it wasn’t a literal cake

It’s the thought that counts

Like a gift that’s not store-bought

Making it even more special

Like a dream that makes you

Want to go back to sleep

You can’t have your cake

And eat it too Momma said

I was defiant and hardheaded

And answered yes I can too

The look she gave me said boy

I hope you aren’t a fool all your life

Day 133

I'm sick.

Sick

by Shel Silversein

'I cannot go to school today, '
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
'I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more-that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut-my eyes are blue-
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke-
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is-what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is...Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play! '

Day 132

The heat and humidity in this state (Missouri) are unbearable, mind-numbing. John Updike seems to have experiences something similar...

Pura Vida

by John Updike

Such heat! It brings the brain back to its basic blank.

Small, recurrent events become the daily news—

the white-nosed coati treading the cecropia's

bending thin branches like sidewalks in the sky,

the scarlet-rumped tanager flitting like a spark

in the tinder of dank green, the nodding palm leaves

perforated like Jacquard cards in a code of wormholes,

the black hawk skimming nothingness over and over.

What does the world's wide brimming mean, with hunger

the unstated secret, dying the proximate reality?

Con mucho gusto—the muchness extends to the stars,

as wet and numerous as larvae underground

where the ants in their preset patterns scurry and nurture,

and the queen, immobilized, pours forth her eggs

in the dark. We are far from oaks and stoplights,

from England's chill classrooms and Tuscany's paved hills.

For thought is a stridulation, an insect sizzling,

knit of the moment's headlines and temperate-zone quips,

viable in the debris of our rotting educations,

that thatch where peer-groups call each to each in semes

ecosystematically. Great God Himself

wilts with a rise in temperature, a drop in soil acidity,

a new language in its grimacing opacity.

The brain's dry buzz revives, a bit, as evening falls.

Day 131

for prodigal read generous

by e. e. cummings

for prodigal read generous

–for youth read age–

read for sheer wonder mere surprise

(then turn the page)

contentment read for ecstasy

–for poem prose–

caution for curiosity

(and close your eyes)

Day 130

How To Be a Poet

by Wendell Berry

i

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill—more of each

than you have—inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

Day 129

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Day 128

Kind of Blue

by Lynn Powell

Not Delft or

delphinium, not Wedgewood

among the knickknacks, not wide-eyed chicory

evangelizing in the devil strip—

But way on down in the moonless

octave below midnight, honey,

way down where you can't tell cerulean

from teal.

Not Mason jars of moonshine, not

waverings of silk, not the long-legged hunger

of a heron or the peacock's

iridescent id—

But Delilahs of darkness, darling,

and the muscle of the mind

giving in.

Not sullen snow slumped

against the garden, not the first instinct of flame,

not small, stoic ponds, or the cold derangement

of a jealous sea—

But bluer than the lips of Lazarus, baby,

before Sweet Jesus himself could figure out

what else in the world to do but weep.

Day 127

On Inhabiting an Orange

by Josephine Miles

All our roads go nowhere.

Maps are curled

To keep the pavement definitely

On the world.

All our footsteps, set to make

Metric advance,

Lapse into arcs in deference

To circumstance.

All our journeys nearing Space

Skirt it with care,

Shying at the distances

Present in air.

Blithely travel-stained and worn,

Erect and sure,

All our travels go forth,

Making down the roads of Earth

Endless detour.

Day 126

Happy Fourth of July!!!

Defence of Fort McHenry

by Francis Scott Key

O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
’Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation.
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust;”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Day 125

I am moved by the sadness of this poem.

How It Is

by Maxine Kumin

Shall I say how it is in your clothes?

A month after your death I wear your blue jacket.

The dog at the center of my life recognizes

you’ve come to visit, he’s ecstatic.

In the left pocket, a hole.

In the right, a parking ticket

delivered up last August on Bay State Road.

In my heart, a scatter like milkweed,

a flinging from the pods of the soul.

My skin presses your old outline.

It is hot and dry inside.

I think of the last day of your life,

old friend, how I would unwind it, paste

it together in a different collage,

back from the death car idling in the garage,

back up the stairs, your praying hands unlaced,

reassembling the bits of bread and tuna fish

into a ceremony of sandwich,

running the home movie backward to a space

we could be easy in, a kitchen place

with vodka and ice, our words like living meat.

Dear friend, you have excited crowds

with your example. They swell

like wine bags, straining at your seams.

I will be years gathering up our words,

fishing out letters, snapshots, stains,

leaning my ribs against this durable cloth

to put on the dumb blue blazer of your death.

Day 124

A Shropshire Lad II

by A. E. Housman

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

Day 123

Bad Day

by Kay Ryan

Not every day
is a good day
for the elfin tailor.
Some days
the stolen cloth
reveals what it
was made for:
a handsome weskit
or the jerkin
of an elfin sailor.
Other days
the tailor
sees a jacket
in his mind
and sets about
to find the fabric.
But some days
neither the idea
nor the material
presents itself;
and these are
the hard days
for the tailor elf.