Category Archives: poetry

A Pitter Poem for Lisa

poetry, ,

Blogger Lisa just mentioned in a comment here that she was reading the poet Ruth Pitter. I am not familiar with that poet, and I discovered right away that our local public library also is not. But when I went looking online, I found two nice poems immediately. Here’s one that I think Lisa will appreciate; I feel that I know her a little bit from reading over the years about all the many things that interest her. As soon as I read the poem below I imagined Lisa and me meeting in person one day, and smiling face to face.

THE PLAIN FACTS

See what a charming smile I bring,
Which no one can resist;
For I have found a wondrous thing –
The Fact that I exist.

And I have found another, which
I now proceed to tell.
The world is so sublimely rich
That you exist as well.

Fact One is lovely, so is Two,
But O the best is Three:
The Fact that I can smile at you,
And you can smile at me.

-Ruth Pitter

A nipping day, a biting day.

poetry, winter,

The sun is shining,
but I added a wool blanket to my bedclothes
this winter morning.

 
Today’s a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to everyone who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro’ my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro’ my wraps and all.

-Christina Rossetti

When winter is over.

poetry, winter, , ,

Last week it seemed that winter had just begun, but this evening a balmy wind blew in from I can’t imagine where, and made me think ahead to when actual winter will be over and gone. I offer this poem that makes reference to that point in the future, metaphorically:

A SHORT TESTAMENT

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I’ve destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death’s bare branches.

–Anne Porter