The Tables Turned

by William Wordsworth

UP! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

ominous wennsday poem

At the Very Lengthy Meeting

by Kevin McCaffrey

At the very lengthy meeting

I actually felt my soul leave my body

and rush toward the ceiling—

and fly around the walls and flare

toward daylight, toward the windows—

to throw silently its impetuous emptiness

against the glass in vain.

It could not go anywhere, the clear moth.

Then it lay on the rug, not exhausted

but bored and so inert that it almost—

though nothing—

took on a hue, stained with all the breaths

and words and thoughts that filled the room:

the yellow-green color of old teeth.

this isn't foreboding 

at all

on the final wednesday

before 

the rest of my life.

please let me keep my soul.

[untied]

unmoored freedom

and enjoying that

is rare, so sweet.

these moments are

few and far-gapped.

so hold tight

but no crying

when the slip-away goes.

let your hair down,

and dance in the flurry of papers,

savor it

because hey


why the heck not.

Rails

by Scott Owens

Every child should have one, a pair, really,

a matched set, set apart just the right width

so that one foot pressed against each one

leaves you stretched out about as far

as you can go, unable to move, feeling

almost trapped, almost actually in danger.

And every child should walk them as if

that's what they were intended for,

leading out of town, around the curve,

along the river, revealing the backsides

of people's homes, clotheslines and refuse,

the yards you weren't supposed to see.

And every child should learn to balance

atop the railhead without the constant

unsightly tipping from side to side,

should be able to step exactly the distance

between the ties consistently, almost

marching without kicking up ballast.

And every child should have a bridge

they go under to hide and look

at dirty magazines and smoke cigarettes

and place coins on the rails to flatten

and see if this could be the one

to cause the train to leap the tracks.

And every child should know the lonely

distant sound of late night travel

when bad dreams have kept them awake

wondering where they come from, what

they bring or take, and where when it's all

done they might return and call home.

[is it absurd and audacious to say (i think) i write like this]

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

By E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

the universe is trying to tell me something about time

Sonnet 106: When in the chronicle of wasted time

by William Shakespeare

When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme
In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,
Then in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their ántique pen would have expressed
Ev'n such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring,
And for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing.
     For we which now behold these present days,
     Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

time time time time time

The New Song

by W. S. Merwin

For some time I thought there was time

and that there would always be time

for what I had a mind to do

and what I could imagine

going back to and finding it

as I had found it the first time

but by this time I do not know

what I thought when I thought back then

there is no time yet it grows less

there is the sound of rain at night

arriving unknown in the leaves

once without before or after

then I hear the thrush waking

at daybreak singing the new song

meditations on the messiah

from Cynthia Ozick's  The Messiah of Stockholm

he was the messiah and he wasn't. risen from some dead, blessed, and cursed. his father was the most elaborate figment of his imagination; his sister was a fake. stars that mirror one another; windows that pour puddles of life-giving light squares onto the hardwood floor. books that become the saving grace of a town -- only to break down [clangings and clatterings] into the birth of a tiny, hope-brimming bird with a piece of hay in its fragile beak.


edit: 4/9/14 nope Jesus did not have a sister; different messiah hehehoho

Words

by Dana Gioia

The world does not need words. It articulates itself

in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path

are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.

The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.

The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.

And one word transforms it into something less or other—

illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.

Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands

glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow

arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot

name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.

To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper—

metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa

carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,

painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving

each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.

The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always—

greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.

A Story Can Change Your Life

by Peter Everwine

On the morning she became a young widow,

my grandmother, startled by a sudden shadow,

looked up from her work to see a hawk turn

her prized rooster into a cloud of feathers.

That same moment, halfway around the world

in a Minnesota mine, her husband died,

buried under a ton of rock-fall.

She told me this story sixty years ago.

I don't know if it's true but it ought to be.

She was a hard old woman, and though she knelt

on Sundays when the acolyte's silver bell

announced the moment of Christ's miracle,

it was the darker mysteries she lived by:

shiver-cry of an owl, black dog by the roadside,

a tapping at the door and nobody there.

The moral of the story was plain enough:

miracles become a burden and require a priest

to explain them. With signs, you only need

to keep your wits about you and place your trust

in a shadow world that lets you know hard luck

and grief are coming your way. And for that

—so the story goes—any day will do.

golden gifts for a golden 23

oh-h-h she
knows me
so-o-o-o-o well

things I am learning as of late:

bullet point style --

• I am small.
• God is BIG! 
• I think I've been fooling myself into thinking that I was okay with both of the things above, that I don't really care about this state of reality. But actually, I care a lot. I want to make much of myself. Not in a let's-become-Taylor-Swift way (okay or even like a let's become Ingrid Michaelson way, cause let's be real I am so far from wanting to be TSwift), but like I want to be recognized for humanly things. Encompassing career, academic prestige, the acknowledgment of the peoplez for whatever character/personality trait, etc. Even recognition for the fact that I hold values that are poetic, such as the fact that "I am small in God's big world," ugh you tricky little soul.
• Somehow, God individually and particularly loves ME. Little, insignificant-and-not-okay-with-this me.
• This renders me significant. [oh, right. identity in Christ? oh.]
• The best lessons are always always always easier said than lived.

two sidewalks diverged in a parking lot
and I,

and I,
and I,

Cleaning House

by Scott Owens

Pulling the house down piece by piece,

we see each other at our worst

before we've even had our first date,

my face itching with black insulation,

yours covered with white dust of sheetrock.

We scrape off paint and paper, buff out

spots, old glue, unexplained

stains, remove tacky paneling

revealing forgotten charm, original

beadboard, hard woods, solid ceilings.

We're woefully unprepared, untrained,

undertooled, cutting off pipes

with hacksaws, filling holes with toothpicks,

brillo pads, good wood pulled

up from where it wouldn't be seen.

An odd sort of courting really,

hammer and nails instead of flowers,

microwaved Hot Pockets for meals,

red wine in paper cups, all glasses

still mysteriously packed away.

Ripping out rotted casements of windows,

hollow doors, seven layers of floor,

we sweat together, swear together,

bend in unison towards the necessary

destruction that always precedes renewal.

what a cutie pie

Luke

by Mary Oliver

I had a dog
   who loved flowers.
         Briskly she went
              through the fields,

yet paused
   for the honeysuckle
         or the rose,
              her dark head

and her wet nose
   touching
         the face
              of every one

with its petals
   of silk,
         with its fragrance
              rising

into the air
   where the bees,
         their bodies
              heavy with pollen,

hovered—
   and easily
         she adored
              every blossom,

not in the serious,
   careful way
         that we choose
              this blossom or that blossom—

the way we praise or don't praise—
   the way we love
         or don't love—
              but the way

we long to be—
   that happy
         in the heaven of earth—
              that wild, that loving.

"Write it!"

One Art

BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

the world is a beautiful and mysterious place

A Hundred Years from Now

by David Shumate

I'm sorry I won't be around a hundred years from now. I'd like to

see how it all turns out. What language most of you are speaking.

What country is swaggering across the globe. I'm curious to know

if your medicines cure what ails us now. And how intelligent your

children are as they parachute down through the womb. Have

you invented new vegetables? Have you trained spiders to do your

bidding? Have baseball and opera merged into one melodic sport?

A hundred years....My grandfather lived almost that long. The

doctor who came to the farmhouse to deliver him arrived in a

horse-drawn carriage. Do you still have horses?

The world is a beautiful and mysterious place

will I still think this way a hundred years from now? a hundred days from now? after the magic of college is actually behind me and days and moods are less dependent on the quality of discussions I had in my classes and the lunch partner of that particular afternoon and who I happen to run into - who happens to run into me - all happy and bright, Maaaaadison?! I haven't seen you in forever!

Will I still think this way, mid-career, when I'll probably want to be having a mid-career crisis and feel panic, realizing that I'm realizing my desire to go back to school for something? On those days I will feel stuck, or stagnant, or too consumed with pesky details I have never liked?

Will I still feel this way when my baby gets sick and I realize I never learned how to take care of sick babies, or when that baby starts asking questions about where babies come from or about math (dear God please let me marry a math-science-technology genius who will be patient with me) or when that baby officially declares the end of her babyhood, ignores my curfew and phone calls? Or takes too many selfies? Or is a he?

Not certain. But today, the world is a beautiful and mysterious place. And today, the world was also a beautiful and mysterious place - of these things I am certain. 

There are: horses and beauty and mystery and happiness in the world today.

The world is a beautiful and mysterious place today.

TRANSDUCTION

It Is Enough

by Anne Alexander Bingham

To know that the atoms

of my body

will remain

to think of them rising

through the roots of a great oak

to live in

leaves, branches, twigs

perhaps to feed the

crimson peony

the blue iris

the broccoli

or rest on water

freeze and thaw

with the seasons

some atoms might become a

bit of fluff on the wing

of a chickadee

to feel the breeze

know the support of air

and some might drift

up and up into space

star dust returning from

whence it came

it is enough to know that

as long as there is a universe

I am a part of it.

saturday morning poetry

Why I Wake Early
by Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety—

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light—
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.


내가 일찍 일어나는 이유

내 얼굴 어루만져 주시는 

아침 햇님에게 인사--

새벽 빛을 만들어 들판위에 뿌려주시고

기다리는 튤립들에게,

꾸벅이는 나팔꽃들에게,

찌그러지고 찌푸린이들의 

창문까지도

빠짐없이 찾아주시는, 빛 나눠주시는 

아침 햇님에게 인사--

그 최고의 설교자,

별님, 

온 우주 중 어느 한 곳에서

어둠을 막아내시고,

따뜻이 둘러싸주시고,

빛의 손안에 담아주신다--

좋은 아침, 좋은 아침, 좋은 아침. 

자, 오늘의 좋은 아침은 

행복하게, 따스하게 시작할테다.

travel

여행
-윤성택

여정이 일치하는 그곳에 당신이 있고
길이 생겨나기 시작 한다
시간은 망명과 같다 아무도 그
서사의 끝에서 돌아오지 못한다
그런 끝끝내 완성될 운명이
이렇게 읽히고 있다는 사실,
사랑은 단 한 번 펼친 면의 첫줄에서
비유 된다 이제 더 이상
우연한 방식의 이야기는 없다
이곳에 도착했으니 가방은
조용해지고 마음이 열리기 시작 한다
여행은 항상 당신의 궤도에 있다.


This is just to say

that the tra-
vel bug
is coming
back

and I am
quietly
ecstatic ab
-out this.

Let's go together.

Morning

by Billy Collins

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,

the swale of the afternoon,

the sudden dip into evening,

then night with his notorious perfumes,

his many-pointed stars?

This is the best—

throwing off the light covers,

feet on the cold floor,

and buzzing around the house on espresso—

maybe a splash of water on the face,

a palmful of vitamins—

but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,

dictionary and atlas open on the rug,

the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,

a cello on the radio,

and, if necessary, the windows—

trees fifty, a hundred years old

out there,

heavy clouds on the way

and the lawn steaming like a horse

in the early morning.