Category Archives: poetry

Yours is the name the leaves chatter.

nature, poetry, ,

DEAR ONE ABSENT THIS LONG WHILE

It has been so wet stones glaze in moss;
everything blooms coldly.

I expect you. I thought one night it was you
at the base of the drive, you at the foot of the stairs,

you in a shiver of light, but each time
leaves in wind revealed themselves,

the retreating shadow of a fox, daybreak.
We expect you, cat and I, bluebirds and I, the stove.

In May we dreamed of wreaths burning on bonfires
over which young men and women leapt.

June efforts quietly.
I’ve planted vegetables along each garden wall

so even if spring continues to disappoint
we can say at least the lettuce loved the rain.

I have new gloves and a new hoe.
I practice eulogies. He was a hawk

with white feathered legs. She had the quiet ribs
of a salamander crossing the old pony post road.

Yours is the name the leaves chatter
at the edge of the unrabbited woods.

-Lisa Olstein

 

It almost speaks to you.

my garden, nature, poetry, , ,

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period –
When March is scarcely here.

A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,
It shows the furthest Tree
Upon the furthest Slope, you know
It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step
Or Noons report away
Without the Formula of sound
It passes and we stay –

A quality of loss
Affecting our Content
As Trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a Sacrament.

-Emily Dickinson

Collards, March 2021

 

The shape of what you lived.

poetry, , ,

REMEMBERING

And you wait. You wait for the one thing
that will change your life,
make it more than it is—
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.

In the dusky bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke, by Leonid Pasternak 1928

Let yourself get soaked.

nature, poetry, weather, , ,
“Rain Bird” woodblock by Hirokazu Fukuda

The poem below is part of a collection of “Himalaya Poems” on the “Asymptote” website, where that magazine’s name is explained like this:

“Asymptote is the premier site for world literature in translation. We take our name from the dotted line on a graph that a mathematical function may tend toward, but never reach. Similarly, a translated text may never fully replicate the effect of the original; it is its own creative act.”

I originally read the poem on a blog that didn’t tell what century the poet was writing in, so I had to hunt around to find out that he is a contemporary Korean. On his own website he writes something that I can relate to: “I long not to finish my life as a poet. In other words, I wish I could be a poem at the end of the poet.” 

If Ko Un does manage to set off and “walk on and on until the sun sets,” and not just write about that kind of activity, then I think he stands a good chance of turning into a poem. Especially if he gets drenched! Lately I have done a lot of walking in the rain myself, and I have begun to look forward to those wet outings. I keep wondering why that is…

One friend said something about “the ions,” and online I found numerous articles about the “health benefits” of walking in the rain. Every article counted a different number of benefits, ranging from four to nine, one number per article, and that coordinated numbering was the most interesting thing about them.

I try not to take an umbrella on my walks, because of the way an umbrella usually takes my attention from the wind and water assaulting me, and forces me to give my all to one more instance of wrestling with technology, especially if it’s the pop-up type. (However, umbrellas seem to add cheer to dark and rainy paintings.) If the day is very wet, I do merely a loop around a block or two, and change into dry clothes afterward. That’s not a pilgrimage, but it makes me feel that I am walking in a (short) poem.

YOUR PILGRIMAGE

A slower pace, a somewhat slower pace will do.
Of a sudden, should it start to rain,
let yourself get soaked.
An old friend, the rain.

One thing alone is beautiful: setting off.
The world’s too vast
to live in a single place,
or three or four.

Walk on and on
until the sun sets,
with your old accomplice,
shadow, late as ever.
If the day clouds over,
go on anyway
regardless.

-Ko Un

McGee Creek Trail in the Sierras