Poem for the Day: Happy Hour

What I want most is a table outdoors,
two glasses sweating. No--one, just one,
and a tree I can ease my hands over, feeling
white, knobby bark. That, and a blue sky
with wisps of clouds high up, a contrail
to remind me that others are busy, headed
somewhere, shut inside, smelling each other.
I want to smell hot pavement, dirt, the lime
in my drink, and hear no traffic, only the
birds calling in their dipping ways,
and if I kneel down and rest
my ear on the patio, I'll hear grass pushing
its way through cracks in concrete, not anxiously
but easily, like waking, falling asleep,
like sitting at a table in late afternoon,
with one drink and just enough ice cubes
to make it all last until evening.

Poem for the Day: Spring Outing

One bright April morning
after torrential rains the boy
and I sat in the car, and as I turned the key,
the raspberry bushes in the garden trembled,
but I did not tell the boy
about the turtle I watched lumbering
into a bush, the way its shell glistened
in the wet grass, nor did I exclaim out loud
though I was tempted; the engine was running
and I pulled into the road.

Almost to the swings and slides,
the boy said suddenly: This is a boring park!
And I stopped the car midroad--a grand gesture--
turned and fixed him with a stare:
Boring is for nincompoops, the mindless
bereft of imagination!

But later after an eternity
of pushing the boy on the swing,
I strode ahead, turned, saw him
prostrate on the mud, his face buried
in a clutch of purple violets
he dared not pick,
only he murmured:
Sweet, sweet.

Then I recognized myself.
And before I forgot
I stopped,
smelled lilacs blooming, felt a wind
pregnant with sunlight and spring:
the unlikely birth of turtles,
flowers tiny as a boy's fingertip.

Five Ways of Looking at a Lilac, with surprised nods to the Song of Solomon!

1. The girl in sixth grade who budded early.
Boys wrote her name on the insides of their eyelids;
I never took a chair by her at lunch.

2. The woman who lopped off Sampson's hair.
No decent way to say this:
even her armpits smelled like heaven.
Who could blame the man?

3. Feather boaed woman singing on a piano
at a bar
at three in the morning.
I have never known a woman like this.

4. Delilah, overscented,
at sixteen. She's got a neck
like the tower of Lebanon, legs
like gleaming marble. Her tum is a pile
of wheat; young men swear they'll climb her,
squeeze her through their flour grinders,
bake them some mighty fine bread.
Her mouth, when she opens to yawn,
is full of lilacs; they curl and burble
all over her tongue.
The boys have never known a woman like this.

5. Before rain, I cut two stems,
slip them into blue vase.
Every time I walk through the kitchen
to toss a wadded paper napkin
or open the refrigerator,
they catch me. It's indecent.
As they age, they will become
ever more potent, browning and bruising
but never losing their heavy,
full scent. Even now, at my window,
they rise from the ground,
pushing stale air. Big-bosomed flowers,
bloom forever.

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).