New Favorite #3

Despite the facts that Billy Collins is a man, forty years older than me, and has been poet laureate of the United States (I'll get there someday), I often find myself relating to his poems, especially ones that touch upon his childhood. I don't know if it's a poet thing, or a human thing, but I often wake up, like Collins does here, with a mind full of thoughts and ponderings. I love how he tries to clear his mind and enjoy the simplicity of morning only to fill it back up with the complexities of life.

August
(from Ballistics, Random House, 2008)

The first one to rise on a Sunday morning,
I enter the white bathroom
trying not to think of Christ or Wallace Stevens.

It's before dawn and the road is quiet,
even the birds are silent in the heat.
And standing on the tile floor,

I open a little nut of time
and nod to the cold water faucet,
with its chilled beaded surface

for cooling my wrists and cleansing my face,
and I offer some thanks
to the electricity swirling in the lightbulbs

for showing me the toothbrush and the bottle of aspirin.
I went to grammar school for Jesus
and to graduate school for Wallace Stevens.

But right now, I want to consider
only the water and the light,
always ready to flow and spark at my touch,

and beyond the wonders of this white room -
the reservoir high in the mountains,
the shore crowded with trees,

and the dynamo housed in a colossus of brick,
its bright interior, and up there,
a workman smoking alone on a catwalk.

New Favorite #2

This poem by Robert Hass is short and beautifully simplistic. Yet, the ending adds a complexity that invites one into perpetual wondering. The last line is haunting. How would you interpret its meaning?

After Goethe
(from Time and Materials, Harper Collins, 2007)

In all the mountains,
Stillness;
In the treetops
Not a breath of wind.
The birds are silent in the woods.
Just wait: soon enough
You will be quiet too.

Happy Poem-In-Your Pocket Day!

Today, I am carrying a simple poem by A.R. Ammons. It is a reminder that poetry just is. It does not need to fit neatly into form or fulfill some grand revelation. It's meant to be read, enjoyed, and shared.

Substantial Planes

It doesn't
matter

to me
if

poems mean
nothing:

there's no
floor

to the
universe

and yet
one

walks the
floor.

New Favorite #1

The following poem by Marie Howe is one of my new favorites. It explains, in much better words than I could ever create, something that has been on my mind lately. I'm a bit younger than Howe, but I've been grappling with my own mortality of late, especially after having my son and realizing that as fast as he grows, I am growing even faster. I'll be almost sixty when he graduates high school. Will I have a chance to meet my own grandkids? I am beginning to feel as if I have taken the last thirty years for granted, and now I must hurry to enjoy this earth before my own time comes.

The World by Marie Howe
(from The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, W.W. Norton & Company, 2008)

I couldn't tell one song from another,
which bird said what or to whom or for what reason.

The oak tree seemed to be writing something using very few words.
I couldn't decide which door to open - they looked the same or what

would happen when I did reach out and turn a knob. I thought I was safe,
standing there
but my death remembered its date:

only so many summer nights still stood before me, full moon, waning moon,
October mornings: what to make of them? which door?

I couldn't tell which stars were which or how far away any one of them was,
or which were still burning or not - their light moving through space like a
long

late train - and I've lived on this earth so long - 50 winters, 50 springs and
summers,
and all this time stars in the sky - in daylight

when I couldn't see them, and at night when, most nights, I didn't look.

* Note: indented lines have been altered because of formatting issues.