Susan and I traveled this route in 1979
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Saturday, January 19, 2019
THOM GUNN ~
Considering the Snail
BY THOM GUNN
The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth’s dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,
pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts. I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail’s fury? All
I think is that if later
I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.
________________________
New Selected Poems
Thom Gunn
edited and with an excellent
introduction by Clive Wilmer
Farrar Straus Giroux 2018
Friday, January 18, 2019
Thursday, January 17, 2019
MARY OLIVER ~
The Old Poets of China
Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness, it does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
_____________________________
Mary Oliver
1935 - 2019
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
JOANNA McCLURE ~
Permission
You left me to re-attach myself
Carefully and only partly to someone else
While you finished your fling
With fast cars, married women, cocaine,
magic, and deception.
Now you begin a new life
With a young strong lady
To whom you give fidelity,
Honesty, and clean living.
Thanks.
Lust
I long to give this body —
Not to science, not to the fire,
I long to be given, whole
For the fish in the sea to nibble away.
I long to be buried, naked,
Under the earth, to be returned to the earth.
I want to be placed high,
On an altar made of sticks, for the birds,
For the birds of prey to feed on,
For the sun to whiten my bones.
I long, long to join myself
Back, back into all that life
From which I came.
I long, long to feed life directly.
A Chinese Painting
The stairs,
Up the mountain,
Are delicately, barely visible.
A chicken looks at
A butterfly looking at . . .
I think of Issa.
Images
Creeley
yields
Images
As satisfying
As pulling
Out potatoes.
—————————————
Joanna McClure
CATCHING LIGHT
Collected poems
North Atlantic Books
2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Monday, January 14, 2019
HEAVEN LAKE (16) ~
Man-Made
What a noise!
Pots that won’t
The Lifetime
What does a writer do all day?
She or he writes
Some are successful
Most are not
Even if a book or books are published
Many millions of books go by the wayside
So now what is the writer but someone who writes and fails
Books are forgotten or no books are published at all
Years and even a lifetime could be wasted
Something else is accomplished
One becomes a sales clerk
While still writing at odd hours
The writing goes nowhere
But the sales clerk is very popular
People leave you very happy, bag in hand
You try to write a book about a sales clerk
No one cares
They’d rather you be the sales clerk
Who sells caramel candy
Because you are beautiful
Someone goes home and melts
That caramel in their mouth and
Smears the caramel across
Their teeth and lips
Cabin Life
On the coldest day of winter
25 below
just to get-by
and it’s all about just getting-by
we took the two largest empty potato chip bags
in the house and fit them over our heads
making us
two feet-taller
scaring all
our cats
The Muse
I can’t get anything done
until she is out of my hair!
her eyes are that blue
her hair goes with the sun
the flash of her flowered dress in the air
and even when she is away
only momentarily, an errand to town
I’m thinking now of what I’m missing
here where I work in a woods ditch with shovel
laying in stone stairs which may as well be to the sea
since she’ll visit on her return and I’m grubby and
she steps lightly down each new step before anyone
saying how lovely it all is and all is fine
——————————————————
Bob Arnold
Heaven Lake
Longhouse 2018
Sunday, January 13, 2019
GEORGE KALAMARAS ~
The Journey Inward (Body Time No More)
From that which refuses my moth, I replace my hands.
From that which instigates the winter storms of my eyes, I open
an ear.
On the pillow, a spot of snail blood, spittle of the vanish auk.
Where my left ear had lain in the moist warm, all noise of the world
was muffled.
Draw a bath of lightly caressed playing cards.
Ask me for the king of clubs, the jack of night sweats.
There is a place in my heart even I have not touched with
diamonds.
Try if you must, but know that—in extreme quiet—you too might
get quashed.
A divide opens up along the shelf of Antarctic ice.
On one side of the deck, it is cold. On the other, cold.
I do not speak any longer in ice moths or in irreparable twos.
I will not solve the dichotomy of this winged pain, even with an
obstinate mouth.
Nor will I salve my own blue-bolstered bruise with dream talk and
shame.
I am not talking time any longer but a continental drift of ice
diamonds, devoid of the clutch of a kind hand or mouth.
_________________
George Kalamaras
That Moment of Wept
SurVision Books (Ireland)
2018
Saturday, January 12, 2019
ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK ~
Your lover has taken you in
with my eyes which are in his eyes
and which keep watch day and night
in his eyelids I sleep until dawn
in his eyes I've come to know
a last nakedness
Don't forget your eyes
because I inhabit them
——————————
Alejandra Pizarnik
The Galloping Hour
translated by Patricio Ferrari and Forrest Gander
New Directions 2018
Friday, January 11, 2019
RAE ARMANTROUT ~
Practicing
As the sun finds you,
upstanding,
knotted
at intervals,
gray-green
As you were, limbs
aloft and
eagerly splayed,
still practicing
the old faith
as I do —
these words,
pushed in the fore,
posing
——————————
RAE ARMANTROUT
Wobble
Wesleyan University Press
2018
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
Tuesday, January 8, 2019
Monday, January 7, 2019
HEAVEN LAKE (15) ~
Make
New bowls
Make
Gentleman
no one else does —
so the dog rises
as one enters
Landscape
In the right place
at the right time
with the right lighting
and in the breeze
you could fall in love
Floating World
It was a dreamy time for you and me
The weather said so
The pair of windows that opened like shutters
The easy turn of the latch
Through the opening light dazzled
Something like your hair
Many years married please know
Is many years loved
A small bird with flashing orange wings
Sang from a tree that grew to our window
In this hut we built with our own hands
Some would call it a fairytale
These days pass by as light becomes darkness
There is next to nothing to show for it
How They Met
He took what clothes he needed washing, including the ones he was wearing, and she put everything into their old washing machine and it was done. She then took the fresh wash spun dry and carried it outdoors and hung it on the clothesline for the afternoon. Then she went to town to do errands. He cut a lot of grass. When they met up again the clothes were dry. He cut up fruit for their supper and she went out and brought the clothes in sun kissed from the line. She folded everything neat as a pin and rested it on the back of the sofa near the hallway door to the upstairs. He went carefully through the clothes and decided he needed everything of his right there downstairs. He left the clothes alone. Hours later, on her way upstairs, she took all the clothes with her up the stairs. When she got upstairs something about it all told her his clothes were supposed to stay downstairs. She brought the clothes downstairs.
He was happy to see her.
————————————————
Bob Arnold
Heaven Lake
Longhouse 2018
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