Category Archives: poetry

Our patron star kisses us.

my garden, nature, poetry, summer,

This new poem came to me by way of the website Poets.org, and their daily e-mail “Poem-P1000456crpa-Day.” But for it I might have forgotten that tomorrow is the summer solstice – obviously I haven’t been following my plan of keeping up with the moon and stars, etc.

I love the poet’s evocation of a warm summer’s day, and the sort of experience she describes, of spending the whole day outdoors, lolling by a pond and not even going home until night — even though it hasn’t often been my own.

P1000458crpWhen I was young we lived where we could not start this relaxed lingering until the evening turned the heat from scorching to comfortable. Now where I live with coastal and river influence, it’s rare to have a day in summer without chilly fog on one or both ends.

But today the sun shined as soon as it was up. No fog! And when I went outdoors in the morning I didn’t need a sweater. I was caressed by the earth’s atmosphere.P1000449crp

Soldier came over for a few hours to help me clean up and move things around the yard, to prepare for the huge demolition project that is happening soon. Yes, the concrete pool will be broken up and the hole filled with good ol’ dirt. The large utility yard will also have its crumbling cement layer scraped off so that I can make it more useful and beautiful.

So…we had to move all the things one keeps in such a yard, or near the pool, to other places; Soldier sawed old stakes into kindling, and we piled it elsewhere. We moved potted plants, bricks, cinderblocks, and steppingstones; a bench swing, landscape rocks I’ve brought down from the Sierras over the decades, clay pots, tarps, buckets…and dumped out a barrel of water that had been saved since Y2K.

Next week a boy I kP1000439now will help me move all my firewood, and then I’ll be ready to set a date for the heavy work to begin. I’m starting to use the pool water on my plants; the patio is getting crowded, and not with humans.

It was a very satisfying way to spend a few hours on this almost-solstice day. Maybe tomorrow I’ll loll about a little as well, and soak up the sweetness of light.

SOLSTICE

How again today our patron star
whose ancient vista is the long view

turns its wide brightness now and here:
Below, we loll outdoors, sing & make fire.

We build no henge
but after our swim, linger

by the pond. Dapples flicker
pine trunks by the water.

Buzz & hum & wing & song combine.
Light builds a monument to its passing.

Frogs content themselves in bullish chirps,
hoopskirt blossoms

on thimbleberries fall, peeper toads
hop, lazy—

Apex. The throaty world sings ripen.
Our grove slips past the sun’s long kiss.

We dress.
We head home in other starlight.

Our earthly time is sweetening from this.

–Tess Taylor

These are not the lines.

poetry,

This poem just now became an instant favorite. Oh, if we all could write half so well about the things we’ve forgotten!

LINES LOST AMONG TREES

These are not the lines that came to me
while walking in the woods
with no pen
and nothing to write on anyway.

They are gone forever,
a handful of coins
dropped through the grate of memory,
along with the ingenious mnemonic

I devised to hold them in place —
all gone and forgotten
before I had returned to the clearing of lawn
in back of our quiet house

with its jars jammed with pens,
its notebooks and reams of blank paper,
its desk and soft lamp,
its table and the light from its windows.

So this is my elegy for them,
those six or eight exhalations,
the braided rope of syntax,
the jazz of the timing,

and the little insight at the end
wagging like the short tail
of a perfectly obedient spaniel
sitting by the door.

This is my envoy to nothing
where I say Go, little poem —
not out into the world of strangers’ eyes,
but off to some airy limbo,

home to lost epics,
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,

which, like a fantastic city in pencil,
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.

~ Billy Collins, poet laureate 2001-2003

We’re looking and making words.

poetry, ,

This poem reminds me of the effect Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood had on me the first time I read it. Her noticing of so many details in the history and geography and biographies of her life made me realize that I’d had just as fascinating a childhood. From then on I began to look around with a new eye.

Looking Around, Believing

How strange that we can begin at any time.
With two feet we get down the street.
With a hand we undo the rose.
With an eye we lift up the peach tree
And hold it up to the wind — white blossoms
At our feet. Like today. I started
In the yard with my daughter,
With my wife poking at a potted geranium,
And now I am walking down the street,
Amazed that the sun is only so high,
Just over the roof, and a child
Is singing through a rolled newspaper
And a terrier is leaping like a flea
And at the bakery I pass, a palm,
Like a suctioning starfish, is pressed
To the window. We’re keeping busy —
This way, that way, we’re making shadows
Where sunlight was, making words
Where there was only noise in the trees.

by Gary Soto

The Church’s Wedding Night

church, Pascha, poetry

Pascha night chandelier 2012Pascha procession 2 2010 PW
O night clearer than the day!
O night more luminous than the sun!
O night whiter than the snow!
giving more light than our torches,
sweeter than Paradise!
O night that knows no darkness;
driving away our sleep,
you make us keep watch with the angels.
O night, the terror of demons,
Paschal night, awaited for a year!
The Church’s wedding night
which gives life to the newly baptized
and renders harmless the torpidity of the demon.
Night in which the Heir
brings the heirs into eternity.

–Asterius of Amasea,
Homily 19 on Psalm 5, early 5th century

Pascha night TR 2012

 

(From Christ is in our Midst.)