Category Archives: poetry

The darkness keeps its appointment.

March 30, 2023home, poetrydarkness, light, Mary Oliver, nightGretchenJoanna

LAMPS

Eight o’clock, no later
You light the lamps,

The big one by the large window,
The small one on your desk.

They are not to see by—
It’s still twilight out over the sand,

The scrub oaks and cranberries.
Even the small birds have not settled

For sleep yet, out of the reach
Of prowling foxes. No,

You light the lamps because
You are alone in your small house

And the wicks sputtering gold
Are like two visitors with good stories

They will tell slowly, in soft voices,
While the air outside turns quietly

A grainy and luminous blue.
You wish it would never change—

But of course the darkness keeps
Its appointment. Each evening,

An inscrutable presence, it has the final word
Outside every door.

-Mary Oliver

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown…

March 16, 2023history, poetry, timefriendship, James Elroy Flecker, the futureGretchenJoanna

TO A POET A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE

I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.

I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.

But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?

How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Maeonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago.

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.

Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.

-James Elroy Flecker

Rain and a hundred connections.

March 14, 2023love, poetryanniversaries, memory, rain, Stephen DunnGretchenJoanna

It’s still raining here, but it’s not hailing, and the air is warmer. So it’s a day when I can imagine spending time in the elements with someone you love, and this poem I’ve been wanting to share finally fits the mood of the season, and the current weather. On our honeymoon in the Santa Cruz mountains of California, my beloved and I walked in rain under redwood trees, and it wasn’t the last time. Here’s to all the rainy days when we’ve been in love with somebody and with life.

ANNIVERSARY POEM

Remember that day in the rain
at the park where we used to meet,

how we took and we gave,
and what couldn’t be spoken

was nevertheless contained
in what we were able to say,

well, it’s raining again
and it’s the body, I realize,

that stores memory
and sends it, when keyed,

to those long unvisited
regions of the brain – remember

that steady collision
of rain and branch and leaf,

a hundred connections
happening at once,

long before I said I do.
I was saying I will and Let’s.

-Stephen Dunn

What late was hidden in the heart.

February 18, 2023church, poetryFra Guittone d’Arezzo, pre-Lent, Sunday of the Last JudgmentGretchenJoanna

LOVE’S BONDMAN

Great joy it were to me to join the throng
…That thy celestial throne, O Lord, surround,
…Where perfect peace and pardon shall be found,
…Peace for good doings, pardon for the wrong;
Great joy to hear the vault of heaven prolong
…That everlasting trumpet’s mighty sound,
…That shall to each award their final bound,
…Wailing to these, to those the blissful song.
All this, dear Lord, were welcome to my soul,
…For on his brow then every one shall bear
…Inscribed, what late was hidden in the heart;
And round my forehead wreath’d a lettered scroll
…Shall in this tenor my sad fate declare:
…“Love’s bondman, I from him might never part.”