poem-today

[poem-today]

A poem by Rita Dove

Canary

for Michael S. Harper

Billie Holiday’s burned voice had as many shadows as lights, a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano, the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.

(Now you’re cooking, drummer to bass,    magic spoon, magic needle. Take all day if you have to with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)

Fact is, the invention of women under siege    has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.

If you can’t be free, be a mystery.

Rita Dove

Rita Dove reads Canary

#rita dove #american #billie holiday #canary

[poem-today]

A poem by Philip White

Underwing

I don’t know what it is that brings me back walking here. Even the heat is old, the woods again in stunned depletion and everywhere the musk of carcass-rot catching in the throat or dulling as the trail winds through. I want it far off, that smell, the smear like tar on grass just visible through leaves, the spine spilled out like broken dice or beads. And so when huge black birds clatter up through branches, close, I’m frightened too, half-lifting my arm against the blow. Ten in ten feet, the combed silver of their underwings clear feather by feather, working hard with hoarse grunts to pierce the canopy. Then gone. And when I break from the trees I watch them lofting over the fields— “Like wreckage in a funnel cloud,” I thought then, in my grief. But slow, at ease, released, crossing and crossing in the carious air.

Philip White

Philip White writes: Probably too many of my poems are about birds. I can’t justify it. They’re just important to me. The worst places for me are the ones where birds are few. Fortunately, birds can be found almost everywhere, even places we’ve made pretty inhospitable to life. This poem is about one of the most spectacular birds for sheer beauty in flight.  They make the air look like an element you could live in.  It’s the more amazing because unlike the birds we get closest to most often, these convey unmistakable weight and bodily presence up close. At that range you feel their vulnerability and awkwardness when they shoulder themselves off the ground. Even setting aside their association with what they eat, in the body on the ground they can seem ugly—shaggy, hunched, misshapen, old—and their fleshy heads give them a vaguely naked look that seems bound to provoke recognition in the animal that recognizes nakedness. That’s what they do in this particular animal, anyway.

First published in The Missouri Review, October 2012.

Image: Image of Small flock of tiny birds flying by forest (Copyright: nick7634)

#philip white #american poetry #bird #underwing

[poem-today]

A poem by Norman MacCaig

Between mountain and sea

Honey and salt – land smell and sea smell, as in the long ago, as in forever.

The days pick me up and carry me off, half-child, half-prisoner,

on their journey that I’ll share for a while.

They wound and they bless me with strange gifts:

the salt of absence, the honey of memory.

Norman MacCaig (1910-1996)

#norman maccaig #scottish poet #mountain and sea

[poem-today]

Mountain Dreams - Brief Poems by Francis Harvey

Francis Harvey (13 April 1925 – 7 November 2014) was an Irish poet born in Belmore Street, Enniskillen in 1925. His Catholic mother eloped with his Protestant father Hamilton Harvey, who died when the young Frank Harvey was only six. His mother was from Ballyshannon in Donegal and she moved back there. Frank stayed on and completed his secondary education in Enniskillen. He went to University…

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#books #crows #Donegal Haiku #Epigrams #Francis Harvey #haiku #Irish Poetry #literature #mountain dreams #poem #Poems #poet #poetry #writing

[poem-today]

A poem by Francis Harvey

Blessings

Yesterday, for some reason I couldn’t understand, I suddenly felt starved of tress and had to make tracks towards the beeches of Lough Eske to set my heart at ease and stand there slowly adjusting myself to the overwhelming presence of all those trees. It was like coming back among people again after living for ages alone and as I reached out and laid my right hand in blessing on the trunk of a beech that had the solidity but not the coldness of stone I knew it for the living thing it was under the palm of my hand as surely as I know the living sensuousness of flesh and bone and my blessing was returned a hundredfold before it was time for me to go home.

Francis Harvey (1925-2014)

#francis harvey #irish poetry #blessings

[poem-today]

A poem by Linda Gregg

Winter Love

I would like to decorate this silence,    but my house grows only cleaner and more plain. The glass chimes I hung    over the register ring a little when the heat goes on. I waited too long to drink my tea.    It was not hot. It was only warm.

Linda Gregg (1942-2019)

#linda gregg #american poetry #winter love

[poem-today]

Snow Day  by Conor Kelly

#youtube

[poem-today]

A poem by Katha Pollitt

The Expulsion

Adam was happy -- now he had someone to blame for everything: shipwrecks, Troy, the gray face in the mirror.

Eve was happy -- now he would always need her. She walked on boldly, swaying her beautiful hips.

The serpent admired his emerald coat,   the Angel burst into flamea (he'd never approved of them, and he was right).

Even God was secretly pleased: Let History begin!

The dog had no regrets, trotting by Adam's side self-importantly, glad to be rid

of the lion, the toad, the basilisk, the white-footed mouse, who were also happy and forgot their names immediately.

Only the Tree of Knowledge stood forlorn, its small hard bitter crab apples

glinting high up, in a twilight of black leaves. How pleasant it had been, how unexpected

to have been, however briefly, the center of attention.

Katha Pollitt

Published in The New Yorker (November 12, 2001, issue)

#katha pollitt #american poetry #the expulsion #adam and eve #crab apple #the new yorker

[poem-today]

A poem by Jim Moore

Love in the Ruins

1           I remember my mother toward the end,

folding the tablecloth after dinner           so carefully, as if it were the flag           of a country that no longer existed, but once had ruled the world.

2           7 A.M. and the barefoot man

leaves his lover's house           to go back to his basement room across the alley. I nod hello,           continuing to pick the first small daffodils           which just yesterday began to bloom.

3           Helicopter flies overhead

reminding me of that old war           where one friend lost his life, one his mind,           and one came back happy to be missing only an unnecessary finger.

4           I vow to write five poems today,

look down and see a crow           rising into thick snow on 5th Avenue as if pulled by invisible strings,           and already there is only one to go.

5           Survived

another winter: my black stocking cap,           my mismatched gloves, my suspicious, chilly heart.

Jim Moore

More poems by Jim Moore are available through his website.

#jim moore #american poetry #love in the ruins #small daffodils

[poem-today]

A poem by Bill Knott

Poem

I want to commission a portrait of you but I have no money and don’t know any painters to do it for free. I don’t want the portrait for myself, no, it would go to you. I guess I’d like it if you thought of me each time you looked at it but probably after a while you would forget the circumstances of its installment and only glance at it from time to time as if it had been there always, an old heirloom or less, a thing kept not for any memories it stirs but simply because it has no practical use and therefore would take too much thought to throw away, too much effort. If it’s successful, that is— And though I have crammed everything into this portrait which does not exist, it remains unsatiated, stays compromise. A thousand campaigns of insightful rummage cannot glut it, satisfy its imperial essence, remote ethereal framing. I crave its emptiness, never-to- be-filledness. It blinks at me, idol of smithereens, filled with shadow-hush. Spacial justice, harmonic weight, pinned dream.

Bill Knott (1940-2014)

Image: Bill Knott (from the Bill Knott Archive)

More brief poems by Bill Knott are available here.

#bill knott #american poetry #poem #portrait

[poem-today]

A poem by George Szirtes

Meetings

The drowned return, the travellers come home, All is forgiven in that breathless cry. The statue weeps secure beneath her dome, Delightedly she wipes her stony eye.

It is the end of literature to meet With what was offered once and then withdrawn, To make up stories and to give the sweet Illusion that we’re only as alone                                                            

As we would wish. I wish now we had kissed Before you left me, but it is too late. I cannot find your ear or lip or breast. I’m going back to books. The rest can wait.

George Szirtes

Image: La mémoire by René Magritte

#george szirtes #english poetry #meetings

[poem-today]

A poem by Susan Mitchell

The Bear

Tonight the bear comes to the orchard and, balancing on her hind legs, dances under the apple trees, hanging onto their boughs, dragging their branches down to earth. Look again. It is not the bear but some afterimage of her like the car I once saw in the driveway after the last guest had gone. Snow pulls the apple boughs to the ground. Whatever moves in the orchard— heavy, lumbering—is clear as wind.

The bear is long gone. Drunk on apples, she banged over the trash cans that fall night, then skidded downstream. By now she must be logged in for the winter. Unless she is choosy. I imagine her as very choosy, sniffing at the huge logs, pawing them, trying each one on for size, but always coming out again.

Until tonight. Tonight sap freezes under her skin. Her breath leaves white apples in the air. As she walks she dozes, listening to the sound of axes chopping wood. Somewhere she can never catch up to trees are falling. Chips pile up like snow When she does find it finally, the log draws her in as easily as a forest, and for a while she continues to see, just ahead of her, the moon trapped like a salmon in the ice.

 

Susan Mitchell

#susan mitchell #american poetry #the bear

[poem-today]

A poem by Sir Walter Raleigh 

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd

If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love. Time drives the flocks from field to fold When Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold, And Philomel becometh dumb; The rest complains of cares to come. The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward winter reckoning yields; A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall. Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten: In folly ripe, in reason rotten. Thy belt of straw and Ivy buds, Thy coral clasps and amber studs, All these in me no means can move To come to thee and be thy love. But could youth last and love still breed, Had joys no date nor age no need, Then these delights my mind might move To live with thee and be thy love.

Sir Walter Raleigh  (1552–1618)

Raleigh's poem is a response to a poem by Christopher Marlowe entitled The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.

#sir walter raleigh #elizabethan poetry #christopher marlowe

[poem-today]

A poem by William Butler Yeats

A Dialogue Of Self And Soul

I My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, Upon the broken, crumbling battlement, Upon the breathless starlit air, Upon the star that marks the hidden pole; Fix every wandering thought upon That quarter where all thought is done: Who can distinguish darkness from the soul

My Self.  The consecrated blade upon my knees Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was, Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass Unspotted by the centuries; That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn From some court-lady's dress and round The wodden scabbard bound and wound Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn

My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war? Think of ancestral night that can, If but imagination scorn the earth And intellect is wandering To this and that and t'other thing, Deliver from the crime of death and birth.

My self. Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it Five hundred years ago, about it lie Flowers from I know not what embroidery — Heart's purple — and all these I set For emblems of the day against the tower Emblematical of the night, And claim as by a soldier's right A charter to commit the crime once more.

My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows And falls into the basin of the mind That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, For intellect no longer knows Is from the Ought, or Knower from the Known —  That is to say, ascends to Heaven; Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

II My Self. A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more? Endure that toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;

The finished man among his enemies? — How in the name of Heaven can he escape That defiling and disfigured shape The mirror of malicious eyes Casts upon his eyes until at last He thinks that shape must be his shape? And what's the good of an escape If honour find him in the wintry blast?

I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch, A blind man battering blind men; Or into that most fecund ditch of all, The folly that man does Or must suffer, if he woos A proud woman not kindred of his soul.

I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

#w b yeats #irish poetry #self and soul #dialogue

[poem-today]

A poem by Kaveh Akbar

Pilgrim Bell

My savior has powers and he needs. To be convinced to use them. Up until now he has been. A no-call no-show. Curious menace. Like a hornet’s nest buzzing. On a plane’s wing. Savior. Younger than. I pretend to be. Almost everyone is. Younger than I pretend to be. I am a threat. Even in my joy. Like a cat who. Playing kills. A mouse and tongues. It back to life. The cat lives. Somewhere between wonder. And shame. I live in a great mosque. Built on top of a flagpole. Whatever happens happens. Loudly. All day I hammer the distance. Between earth and me. Into faith. Blue light pulls in through. The long crack in my wall. Braids. Into a net. The difference between. A real voice and the other kind. The way its air vibrates. Through you. The way air. Vibrates. The violence. In your middle ear.

Kaveh Akbar

#kaveh akbar #american poetry #pilgrim bell

[poem-today]

A poem by Marjorie Pickthall

The Sailor's Grave at Clo-oose, V.I.

Out of the winds' and the waves' riot,  Out of the loud foam,  He has put in to a great quiet  And a still home. 

Here he may lie at ease and wonder  Why the old ship waits,  And hark for the surge and the strong thunder  Of the full Straits, 

And look for the fishing fleet at morning,  Shadows like lost souls,  Slide through the fog where the seal's warning  Betrays the shoals, 

And watch for the deep-sea liner climbing  Out of the bright West,  With a salmon-sky and her wake shining  Like a tern's breast, — 

And never know he is done for ever  With the old sea's pride,  Borne from the fight and the full endeavour  On an ebb tide. 

Marjorie Pickthall (1883 - 1922)

Notes

Clo-oose, V.I. - An Indian village in an area adjacent to the mouth of the Cheewhat River on the west coast of southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia. (Image above.) Marjorie Pickthall lived there among the First Nations Ditidaht community in the last years of her life.

Straits - possibly the straits of Juan de Fuca, running for one hundred miles and separating Vancouver Island and the state of Washington.

#marjorie pickthall #canadian poetry #epitaph #sailor's grave #clo-oose

[poem-today]

A poem by John Thompson

Horse Chestnuts

I drive through              with a clean nail:              it goes

easy and true through the heart,                but only with force                              through the tough

undershell, breaking out                in a jagged, stiff,                              brown flower, crumbs

of yellow flesh spilling:

in the heel of my palm              the sharp bite                            of the nail-head,

as I thread these fruits on a string              to hang up in the sun.

John Thompson (1938 – 1976)

#john thompson #canadian poetry #horse chestnuts