Poem of the Day: Walk at Enlow Fork

This is my third poem this evening, so I've got just enough left for Enlow Fork. Just enough, maybe, for one more. We'll see. Back to schedules tomorrow after such a nice break. . .

Walk at Enlow Fork

It was more like jazz,
those frogs bumming like basses
in the pond
down at Enlow Fork.

The precise pointed
blossoms in their nun's white
couldn't hush the heady
promiscuity of the lilac

mouthing the creek
nor did the blue bells
ring primly--no, they
hung like breasts, and spring

only hid the fisherman,
cloaked toe to head,
who slipped down by the riverbank,
his line a glimmer of sunlight
in Dunkard Creek. When we turned
from skimming and plocking
our stones into the shallows,
he was gone, and the noise,
the staccato beat of dandelion heads--
it was all ours again,
and all the sunshine, too.

Beatrix and Bouquet: Lilacs

Beatrix, First Lilacs of Spring

Easter Girls: An unusually long display of photos without any poem at all

Easter afternoon, PA Cockroft style. I tried for a photo of the three of them, really and truly, but it was disastrous--so silly I couldn't post any of them.





I know it's just a glut of photos of the girls, but our family lives far, far away. Here's compensating! The lilacs, by the way, are simply intoxicating right now. . .
Currently, Beatrix is yelling from her crib: "Shake your body! Shake your BODAY!" She's apparently having a bit of trouble falling asleep.

Easter

Holiest of days,
what smooth thing do you have for me?
Drop it in my hand
and make it heavy as stone,
something I can hold and show to others:
Look, here it is, as clear
as the nose on your face!
The rock, which you thought
inanimate, lives! It has sprung
legs and arms like a prehistoric
bug, it is crawling up my arm--
see? No, I don't want

some cheap trick. What I want
is real resurrection, more real
than the bulb, flaking with skin,
that I plunge into cold soil.
I want more than the sky
every morning, dark with gloom
or bright with sun--
I want more than my sister's face
greying with illness, more even
than her faith which fills me
with weak glow,
like a lamp switched
on at twilight. I want

hands on my shoulders
while dew wets my feet,
a gardener who sets
his trowel into the soil, digs,
and pulls forth singing children!

Mud falls from their knees
as they pound the dirt with their feet--
Didn't you always know
it was real? they cry,
and their breath is warm, hotter
than the sun that fills flowering redbuds,
lilacs and forsythia.
Their laughter pools in tulips,
spills over us all,
even inside of us
where there is no more winter
or shadows, only
the weight of loved things.

Holy Saturday

You must wait,
silent and hollowed as a gourd,
neither stirring at wind or sound,
music or the voices of chimes.

Do not listen to thunder
or watch for the screams
of lightning. Tremble
as it tears curtains,
the linen around your feet.
But when the storm quiets,
there may come a whisper,

a dull light glinting,
and you, suspended deep
in the womb of rock--
you may hear it.

In the striations of slime
and trails of mollusks,
there you will lower your head,
wait for the shade of a locust tree
to shift like clock hands.

Whether you wait for sunrise
or the sigh of a star,
whether you splay fingers
over rock, begging
a boulder to shift,
asking clay to burst into grass,
only wait.

You will hear what you need,
sense the movement of wings.

Poem for the Day: Good Friday, with thanks to Richard Hugo

It's a bad Good Friday
snow and mud
and mongrels in the road
Is that how it went?
But I'm not in a dive bar,
my life's not a decaying
shed along some lonely road.
I've got a glass of red wine
and a bowl of tortilla chip crumbs
The towel wrapping my head makes
my mouth a place of intimate
conversation, crunching
and jaw, and that's nice.
Who cares if the baby vomited
all over my clothes, her mouth
a passive conduit of this morning's
oatmeal? I've seen worse.
My glass is half-full
of boxed wine, but at least
it's not the cheapest,
and the water's hot,
my feet are clean,
it's raining only outside.
Not flippant, but grateful
for words that forecast
what images cannot:
My Lord will live again
day-after-tomorrow,
baby will mend.
I gladly jump through a window
from a room of suffering,
I duck my head and slip away
from Good Friday,
just for a few moments,
hoping, as all flesh hopes,
that escape from pain is forever.
Contentment is in knowing
the endings of things,
and when the endings are good,
contentment is easy
as picking strawberries,
warmed by late summer--
and though that's only half the wine
in the glass, I'm happy enough
this Friday, at this table,
my baby sipping honeyed water
not far from me, her moon cheek,
close by my hands.

Poem by Rilke: Und doch, obwohl ein jeder von sich strebt

And yet, though we strain
against the deadening grip
of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

Who is living it, then?
Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal each other?

Is it flower
interweaving their fragrances,
or streets, as they wind through time?

Is it the animals, warmly moving,
or the birds, that suddenly rise up?

Who lives it, then? God, are you the one
who is living life?

--Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours
II, 12

translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Poem for the Day: Maundy Thursday

I rub my thumb up each arch,
over the delicate bones of the toes.
Do I love this person, whose feet I wash?
Can I lift my head from this basin?

That's the hard part.
Kneeling is easy--
there's satisfaction in rubbing dirt from skin,
weighing a heel in my palm.

In the supplicant bend of my head
I find myself holy.
Bowing to the towel,
I wait for more feet.

I could wash all night,
light from white candles
crowning me. But washing
without seeing is blasphemy--

There is blood in the water,
mud from a road,
caked in the creases
of the person I love.

My feet, I do not love,
I dread the touch of water,
the music of your fingers.
And yet--

wash my hands,
my head, my mouth.
Where else can I go?
Your basin is full of fire,

full of blood,
winged things,
a stone from the first day,
formed in minutes.

Poem for the Day: Other Dreams

The small ones I fold,
slip into envelopes,
crisp, garlic-leaf paper.
If I hold them to the window
I see their patterns glowing
like the veins of leaves.
They trace my longings
when I am weak and dull:
deep bathtubs,
a bright kitchen window,
flowers on the table every day.

I lick the envelopes, drop
them into the box, flip the arm
signalling the postal carrier
to take and deliver
but they return to me,
addressed in my own hand
to my own address,
and the slips of paper
are whiter and thinner,
fall to ashes in my fingers.

The other dreams are different.
There are no envelopes
to contain moving water,
the wind that catches me empty,
boned, a whistle in ear tunnel.
When do they leave me?
Do they come back,
pearls in the stomachs of pigs,
breadcrumbs salting the creek,
the creek so swollen with rain
that the birds open beaks,
balance on twig-feet,
welcome the riches of teeming grass,
the land that is suddenly river.

Poem for the Day: Linda's Tulips

Red tulips
splayed wide like carcasses
black spill
backlit by furious sun

Poem for the Day: High Heels

Walking with extra height,
she is now twice as high
as her friends,
she casts a long shadow
on bus steps,
birds, teachers,
window washers wonder
tower or girl?
(She suffers from vertigo)
In speech class, she hisses
her eses with confidence,
knowing what trees, women,
giraffe feel like as they
eat upright,
turn their heads to sun,
languidly sip contrails,
And the sun is closer,
the universe almost within reach.

The first two lines of this poem is taken from a brief interview I held with Merry about wearing her new high heeled shoes to school (for the record and my reputation, they are not true high heels).

Poem for the Day: A Package from Grandma

removed for submission purposes

(this is not a poem)
Guess who just sang in her first big real concert? MEEEEE! "The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down," "Leaving Lousiana," and a new one from songwriter/singer Amy. Tonight our band was called "The Unreliable Sallys" and we had a fantastic bass player, mandolin player, and an electric guitar player. . .and though I felt like a bit of an outsider with such talented musicians, I managed to remember the words and not put my sweaty foot in my mouth.

This is the only picture I have, though the concert was taped. . .our dear friend Kevin snapped it on his cell phone. That's Martin next to me (I'm the white blob in the middle wearing the lucky scarf my mother gave me for my birthday). Special thanks to Kevin and Sally for adopting our daughters all afternoon, bathing them, and making them (and us) feel oh, so loved.

Poem for the Day: Bear About Town

I'm jealous of the big brown bear in my daughter's board book. I long for his tall, European townhouse, where every room sings in plum purples and cherry reds. The rooms are so pretty you want to eat them like hard candy.

Too, I want Bear's town, where everyone waves with innocuous paws that could crush a child in a minute but instead accomplish dainty tasks, like pouring tea, tying tiny apron strings, holding petite packages containing yellow clocks and iced cakes with cherries perched on top.

Fat bumblebees never sting but hover and buzz in the ears of the bears who love them, who love their park with the empty bench and the bunches of balloons held by small bears and grinned upon by old bears.

The bakery, jam-packed with baguettes and impossible chocolate cakes and confections, does not demand money, only a toothy smile, and all the teeth in bear's town are for tearing crusty bread and biting into pies made from plums from Grandma's orchard, studded with candles for a small bear's birthday as his drum-playing cousin bears beat a syncopated racket.

Rabbits, who are just rabbits, live in bushes at the foot of creamy green, teardrop trees, on top of a hill packed with clean Holland-like streets with tulips sprouting from windowsills and a playground that still has a merry-go-round because little bears never break arms or legs or smash their furry heads but play and play until dark under the chimneys of their town that spout nontoxic smoke into a darkening sky full of goodwill and bear acceptance and three striped birds that my daughter counts:

one, two, three,
before we close the book.