Happy Earth Day People! **Do not forget that this Thursday is Poem In Your Pocket Day**!

Birds and Bees

When my daughter starts asking I realize
I don't know which, if any, birds
have penises. I can't picture how swans

do it. I'm even confused about bees:
that fat queen and her neurotic workers,
her children grown in cells. I'm worried

by turtles and snakes: their parts hidden
in places I have never seen. How do they
undress? Long ago, awash in college

boyfriends, I knew a little about sex.
I understood the dances and calls,
the pretty plumage. Now, I am as ignorant

as a child. We have gone to the library
to find books though I know sex
is too wild for words. The desire to be

kissed is the desire to live forever
in the mouth of pleasure. My God
I can never tell my daughter the truth.

It is a secret the way spring is a secret,
buried in February's fields. It is a secret
the way babies are a secret: hidden

by skin or egg, their bodies made of darkness. 

Faith Shearin

 ***

It's all I have to bring today (26)

It's all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

Emily Dickinson

 

Thursday, April 24th, Poem in Your Pocket Day!

Ahh...Hand me an Oar ~ Gregory Orr!

The World Seems…

The world seems so palpable

And dense: people and things

And the landscapes

They inhabit or move through.

Words, on the other hand,

Are so abstract—they’re

Made of empty air

Or black scratches on a page

That urge us to utter

Certain sounds.

                           And us:

Poised in the middle, aware

Of the objects out there

Waiting patiently to be named,

As if the right words

Could save them.

                               And don’t

They deserve it?     

So much hidden inside each one,

Such a longing

To become the beloved.

And inside us: the sounds

That could extend that blessing—

How they crowd our mouths,

How they press up against

Our lips, which are such

A narrow exit for a joy so desperate.

Gregory Orr

It's National Poetry Month People ~ Get your poetry on!

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

Rumi

From Essential Rumi

Translated by Coleman Barks