More from Maya Stein... pass it on

I love how she captured the way I feel about those early morning hours.


the first quiet of the morning

Don't spend it on the stack of mail, the phone call,
the mounting inventory of groceries. Resist
the finished wash cycle and the dishes clamoring for clean-up.
Ignore the pileup by the front door, the mess left in the wake
of the weekend. These things carry the patience and constancy of bedrock.
Not the first quiet of the morning. It is thin and needy, hungry for your touch.
You will miss it when it goes, siphoning out the way it does, toppled
by the weight of all your noisy urgencies, those lists mortaring your day together.
This for you, this sweet and brief emptiness, this desert island, this nest nesting
your inevitable flight. Hold your wings still. Don't go just yet. 

My day ahead looms with wide margins.....

WIDE MARGINS  ....   Maya Stein

I woke, out of nowhere, at that odd hour that directs your attention to the thinnest sounds -
the drone of a small plane passing overhead, the first conversation of birds carving out
their breakfast nooks, the sigh of the sheets beneath, breath threading the lungs.
Sometimes, the whole world narrows into single, sharp focus, and the usual,
missable nuances erupt out of the forgotten corners. If you are willing, you will remain, patient,
as the unfolding continues, the very air humming with a thousand new songs.
If you are willing, you will understand all of this has been waiting for you, and will birth itself
over and over again in the inopportune but porous stretches of sleeplessness.
The day is full of wide margins. It isn't just your usefulness that matters, but how you occupy
the spaces that hold no shape or consequence. There is room enough for you, too. Listen.

This is so beautiful

When I first saw it, I sent it to someone I love. I've gone back to it a few times, and thought I'd share with more of the world. In advance of National Poetry month, a beautiful love poem from Maya Stein....

the language between us

Not in the way of verbs. Not like the exchange at the post office, the weighing in,

the request for faster service. Not like the bartender taking an order, or the saleswoman

proffering a selection of black dresses. Not like a hand rising in a classroom, the answer

tipping out of the mouth. Not like directions from the gas station attendant or

telling the time to a stranger or the pleasantries of the checkout clerk. Not like previews

in a dark movie theater, the assault of a soundtrack. Not like the stoic delivery of news

anchors or the urgings of the gym instructor or the televangelist booming from the stage.

Instead, the language between us threading through the cracks, in air and breath and page

and all the nuance of a simple, single glance. Our tongue is split in half, our body into thirds,

love pulsing in the center of it all, a beautiful failure of words.

~Maya Stein

Amazing Poem on Divorce

by my favorite...Maya Stein

Prelude

Nothing is more or less important than this:

that first nudge we make toward the edge of the couch,

the door, the marriage, away from the old story

we can’t make fit anymore.

And then we slip into the larger mystery,

biting our nails all the while,

wondering if we’ve killed our chances for happiness,

if the people who love us most will understand the need

for this strange detour, if the answers will be any less

elusive, if the net underneath will fray and falter,

then disappear altogether,

if our hearts will suffer irreparable damage

from so much longing.

It doesn’t matter,

or it does. We will say it made all the difference,

or we will forget

it made any, because by then,

we will have already fallen.

We will have already saved ourselves.

New poem from Maya Stein

enter rain

And we sat on the porch and chattered into the late afternoon,
bubbly from the run, perhaps, or whatever freedom the summer
had gifted us, the sound on the roof like a permission slip, a tiptoe tune
of ease. I realized how much weight we carry, how we clamber
through our lives heavy as old rock. It’s not our bodies that do it, but the layers
we cloak them with, doubting our own instinct for happiness. I wondered
if, in fact, age could be a molting if I let it, a sloughing off of skepticism, tears
in the stiff fabric of my own mind. The drops intensified, and I surrendered
to a riotous music, and we sat in silence for a while, both attentive and serene.
It’s impossible, of course, to start completely over, but still I felt washed clean.

~Maya Stein


Could age be a "molting"? It feels like that to me.

Summer Night, Riverside....

Musing about a possible trip to NYC this summer, I remembered...



SUMMER NIGHT, RIVERSIDE
~by Sara Teasdale

In the wild soft summer darkness

How many and many a night we two together

Sat in the park and watched the Hudson

Wearing her lights like golden spangles

Glinting on black satin.

The rail along the curving pathway

Was low in a happy place to let us cross,

And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom

Sheltered us,

While your kisses and the flowers,

Falling, falling,

Tangled in my hair....

The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky.

And now, far off

In the fragrant darkness

The tree is tremulous again with bloom

For June comes back.

To-night what girl

Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair

This year's blossoms, clinging to its coils?

Poetry for a Wednesday

A perfect poem to describe how it is going this year with my own poetry... it's not happening. The vagaries of struggling with the economy each day leave me emotionally unprepared to be creative. Another big thanks to Maya Stein, certainly my favorite poet!

permission slip

Determined, the writer looks at a slip of blank paper with hope

that she will know what to do, that in quick succession a string

of sentences will begin to appear, and these she will manage to rope

into beauty and order. But one by one, the paragraphs cling

to each other muddily, and the writer must choose between wrestling words

and the more difficult task of unclenching from her pen. She wants an anchor,

of course, the one she's so familiar with, to keep her tethered to her task, like bird

specking at a half-opened tin until the lid collapses. But sometimes work is just ardor,

and she has to release from the grip of her own good intentions, until she is lighter

than the paper even, until she can erase herself and let the pen write her.

~ Maya Stein

FreeVerse Wednesday!

Ah, yes. The FreeVerse link is no longer, but I still find myself musing over poetry on Wednesdays. I particularly loved Maya Stein's use of words in writing about the rescue of the Chilean miners, and how she tied the concept of rescue into our own economic bleakness. See if you agree!


rescue

Did you feel it too? How each miner, surfacing from that nether-deep,

carried you with him? How something inside of you, trapped too long

in the cramped dark, rose from that slow capsule and into the wide air? We weep

for the reunion, a man and his young son, his eager, frightened wife who's gone

these months walking the high wire of her grief. But there is another rescue

we dare to hope for, and it is not in another country where we don't speak

the language. No, it's closer to home, that self we've had a hand in burying, too.

We're praying for a breathing tube, a tunnel to siphon us from the bleak

passageway we keep retreading. And maybe a crowd’s not huddled near,

waiting for this liberation. But no matter. The time has come. Our moment's here.

~Maya Stein

I hope she's right.

Getting a day ahead of myself

I have continued the habit of posting poetry on Wednesday, in tribute to the now-defunct FreeVerse postings sponsored by Cara (bring 'em back, Cara!)


Today's an exception; I loved the newest poem from Maya Stein and wanted to feature it, since it represented the day I had (and also tied back into yesterday's chocolate pudding!).



Besides, tomorrow is the first day of my new job, so I'm reserving the blog for tales of the day.








spoonful

~by Maya Stein

There were ways to attack the day, and you did just that,
razoring a path through every list and chore, slicing into the meat
of your endless to-do’s with a steel-eyed rigor. You are so good at
flinging yourself at the buzzing mechanisms of your life, separating wheat
from chaff. But eventually, the hours narrowed to a close, and the clutch
you'd kept on your efficiency diminished too. You fell to the couch a little
discombobulated - despite your efforts, feeling like you didn’t do that much.
And no wonder. Without pleasure, the work is vacant, a bookend with no middle.
So you bent to the happy task of chocolate pudding, forklifting one slow
spoonful at a time, and soon your clarity returned, your tenderness, your glow.

Wednesday is STILL FreeVerse day

A POET IN LOVE

I wrote and I wrote,
Until my pen was my blood,
And on paper my heart set before me,
Then when I had written all I could say,
All that I felt and believed,
I walked to his door, trembling, afraid,
And delivered my soul to be freed.

~ gabby nicholls

pearlsoup 2003

Airport reminders

Picked up a friend at the airport yesterday... this brought to mind a poem from Rita Dove and I quickly went home and looked it up. You'll enjoy it, here it is:

Vacation

~~by Rita Dove

I love the hour before takeoff,
that stretch of no time, no home
but the gray vinyl seats linked like
unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall
be summoned to the gate, soon enough
there’ll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers
and perforated stubs—but for now
I can look at these ragtag nuclear families
with their cooing and bickering
or the heeled bachelorette trying
to ignore a baby’s wail and the baby’s
exhausted mother waiting to be called up early
while the athlete, one monstrous hand
asleep on his duffel bag, listens,
perched like a seal trained for the plunge.
Even the lone executive
who has wandered this far into summer
with his lasered itinerary, briefcase
knocking his knees—even he
has worked for the pleasure of bearing
no more than a scrap of himself
into this hall. He’ll dine out, she’ll sleep late,
they’ll let the sun burn them happy all morning
—a little hope, a little whimsy
before the loudspeaker blurts
and we leap up to become
Flight 828, now boarding at Gate 17.

Perfect Poem

With my latest cycle of work-sleep-work-sleep-work, this Maya Stein poem really "speaks" to me! I hope you'll feel the same!

always, at the end of every day

It comes to this: the fall to bed. Despite Herculean hopes to repair
the broken furniture, to birth works of unassailable beauty,
despite a heart with its tongue out, panting for love, or the hawk stare
we train on our most extravagant intentions. Despite the toothy
rigor of the bad habits we can’t break, and the soul-trials of discipline
which repeatedly establish our guilt. Despite these wayward exiles from joy,
we fall to a set of pillows, cotton sheets, a mattress, and make a cocoon
of our bodies. We won’t admit it, but we’re designed for rest, too, a buoy
to save us from the rough seas we insist on weathering. Look how little
it takes for that kind of surrender. How easy we can be, how gentle.

Poetry Introductions

What would I do without the poets that others have introduced me to?

I really can't say...don't know if I would have discovered them on my own, or if my life would just be wanting.

I can't count the number of poets that Marion has "found" for me, but they include Rilke, Lucille Clifton, David Whyte and the incomparable Kim Addonizio. I love that Kim and Marion and I are exactly the same age. I think of her as a contemporary poet. That must mean Marion and I are contemporary, too. Heaven knows, we're not old.

From Pam came someone who means a lot to me, Sharon Olds. When I bought my first book from Sharon, I created a habit that has stayed with me. I open a poetry book to a page, any page. Invariably, the poem that is there is my favorite in the collection. It never fails.

I got a poetry book from Kelly for my birthday. Kelly introduced me to the poet Linda Pastan, and gave me her "Carnival Evening". Sure enough, on my very first "opening", I found the poem I love best -- let me share it with you now.

Excursion

I am a tourist

in my own life,

gazing at the exotic shapes

of flowers

as if someone else

had planted them;

barred

from the half-lit rooms

of children

by an invisible

velvet rope.

The dresses in my closet

are costumes

for a different woman,

though I hide myself

in their silky textures.

The man asleep

in my bed

knows me best

in the dark.

~Linda Pastan

I'm not going to draw you the parallels, but suffice it to say, the moment I read it, it was as if I wrote it... so many similar thoughts. A wonderful gift on a great birthday. (Oh, and the poem encompasses my favorite word in all of poetry, one I use over and over in my own poems... "velvet").

That's Pastan, below.

More Maya Stein

No FreeVerse available this Wednesday, but I went back in time to post an exceptional new poem from Maya Stein (parents, take note!):

Peculiar and Exceptional

Take exquisite care of yourself

she said, and that day, fighting a cold,

I misunderstood, took myself directly

to bed, then to the kitchen for soup,

then wasted an obscene amount of hot water

on a late afternoon shower.

Later, when the weight in my chest

had cleared, when I could breathe again,

and tell the difference between fogginess and fog,

it occurred to me I had not been listening

for a long time.

Here, she was saying, is the poem of you.

Here is your delicate architecture, you fragile aliveness.

Here are your deer legs, your dandelion heart.

Here are your dormouse tracks on fresh, permeable snow.

Here is the way you sing, your voice millimetering toward sound,

how you hold your gaze on the coastline as if it were

a fiber of gold. Here is your language,

thin as a moth wing, your kiss a whisper

of offering. Here is how you cross the street,

how you drive the car, how you throw a Frisbee and bake a cake.

Here are the contents of your purse,

the Chapstick down to the quick

the receipt for midnight groceries,

a square sachet of lavender, a pair of broken

sunglasses still, somehow, salvageable.

Here are the thousand tiny ways you know to love.

Here are your wild little arms,

the soft tentacles of your fingers.

Here is how you sleep and how you wake up,

how you tiptoe toward the edge of the water

like a turtle, a drip of honey, an heirloom sweater

buried in a pile of attic castoffs.

Here are your shoes.

Here is the way you eat.

Here are your secret favorite things, the underbelly of clover

lining the deck boards, the moss erupting near the recycling.

Here is your devotion to precision and the giddy, uncontainable

mess you nevertheless effort to contain.

Here are the sounds you make when you’re happy,

the alleyway damp of your sorrow.

Here is the lullaby tucked inside your bureau,

the joy hidden under the last shelf in the pantry,

the smooth belly of peace obscured by traffic lights.

Here is everything you know,

and everything that is still waiting patiently

for you to know it.

And I saw that this exquisite care

I was asked to take was not a matter

of sleep or soup, or hot water,

but an unflagging allegiance to my own wisdom,

the curves and wayward bends of it,

wool-scratched and seaglass-soft

syllabled or a baby’s babble,

however it was shaped and however it shaped,

wisdom, mine, certainty and uncertainty, a light,

however dim, steady and beckoning.

and this too:

loyalty to the peculiar and exceptional

ticking of my heart, which, without any intervention,

knows exactly what it needs

to chase the next breath

and the one that will come

just after.

Memorial Day

Poetry about the soldiers who have died in war is inexorably sad. This is a poem that digs into your consciousness and stays there...about the Vietnam war.

"Facing It"

by Yusef Komunyakaa,

a veteran of the Vietnam War

My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite.

I said I wouldn't, dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh.

My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey,

the profile of night slanted against morning.

I turn this way--the stone lets me go.

I turn that way--I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again,

depending on the light to make a difference.

I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting

to find my own in letters like smoke.

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash.

Names shimmer on a woman's blouse

but when she walks away the names stay on the wall.

Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare.

The sky. A plane in the sky.

A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine.

I'm a window. He's lost his right arm inside the stone.

In the black mirror a woman's trying to erase names:

No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

Sunrise and Sunset

Ribbon clouds, ready
To disappear as dawn lights
Early morning sky.

Bands of pastel hue
Dance on the horizon when
Night passes to day.

The world bursts forth in eager anticipation.

Ah! The shore at dusk
Sweetened with the magic
Of God's paintbrush.

Sunset on a hill
Colored sky overlooks
Deepening twilight.

The day retires slowly, drawing us into sleep.



~~~quidrock
3/26/2003


Thanks to Cara of Ooh Books for hosting FreeVerse! Click on the link above for more.

e e cummings day

Thanks to Cara of Ooh Books for hosting FreeVerse! Click on the link above for more.



Cummings was prolific and quixotic; altogether memorable. Cara posted one of his poems today, here's another in a very different genre:


somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

~e e cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

FreeVerse Wednesday

Thanks to Cara of "Oooh, books", for hosting this at Freeverse. Click on the link below for more.






CONDENSATION

The sullen sky cries for you,
a melody of rain on the roof.
Water will evaporate
and change its form,
the tears I cry
could turn into the drops
that fall softly against your window.
Your crimes,
washed away in the perfect rain.

~Jon Meredith

Jon, I've lost track of you, but your poetry never fails to move me.

FreeVerse... Small Seductions

Your Small Seductions


She’ll not be a pawn for your truth,
Nor follow you blindly or silently.
She’ll not sacrifice self for love
Or give away name or integrity.

But she is prey for your small seductions
Glances melting,
Touches burning,
Casual endearments,
Pursuing to the point of being pursued.
Sharing thoughts but holding back
From shared experience.

What is the game and when will it end?
When will you set her free with the truth of your
Intentions, your ego, your state of mind?
Can you live without her, or love with her?

Such is her nature
That she is too afraid to ask,
Too proud to admit that
She may not be able to survive the truth.

~not autobiographical...written in 2008

and linked to:

FreeVerse Wednesday

Chance or Fate?

Chance or fate? What led
Us here to this defining
Moment of our lives?

Would that we kept our
Souls separate, the way that
Others wished them.

Feigning innocence,
Keeping those glances hidden from
The view of our world.

What magic, what twist
Of mindful activity
Brought us here? To this --

Our fork in the road
Our place and time of choice to
Determine: Chance? Fate?

Neither matter if
The answer is the same, that
We belong together.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This little poem is from 2003. I was enamored of the 5-7-5 rhythm of haiku, and wrote in that format, although the poem sings its own song, and doesn't have any other characteristics of haiku. I think, at that time, that I needed to have my potential loves, my romances..in formula. No longer. Like all poets, I think I've found that love follows no set course, has no parameters. I would like it to be orderly, I would like to be able to predict. I cannot.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks to Cara of "Oooh, books", for hosting this at Freeverse. Click on the link below for more.