2 for St. Valentine's Day ! !

Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

I love creeks and the music they make.

And rills, in glades and meadows, before

they have a chance to become creeks.

I may even love them best of all

for their secrecy.  I almost forgot

to say something about the source! 

Can anything be more wonderful than a spring?

But the big streams have my heart too.

And the places streams flow into rivers.

The open mouths of rivers where they join the sea.

The places where water comes together

with other water.  Those places stand out

in my mind like holy places.

But these coastal rivers!

I love them the way some men love horses

Or glamorous women.  I have a thing

for this cold swift water.

Just looking at it makes my blood run

and my skin tingle.  I could sit

and watch these rivers for hours.

Not one of them like any other.

I’m 45 years old today.

Would anyone believe it if I said

I was once 35?

My heart empty and sere at 35!

Five more years had to pass

before it began to flow again

I’ll take all the time I please this afternoon

before leaving my place alongside this river.

It pleases me, loving rivers.

Raymond Carver

***

Windchime

She goes out to hang the windchime

in her nightie and her work boots.

It’s six-thirty in the morning

and she’s standing on the plastic ice chest

tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch,

windchime in her left hand,

hammer in her right, the nail

gripped tight between her teeth

but nothing happens next because

she’s trying to figure out

how to switch #1 with #3.

She must have been standing in the kitchen,

coffee in her hand, asleep,

when she heard it—the wind blowing

through the sound the windchime

wasn’t making

because it wasn’t there.

No one, including me, especially anymore believes

till death do us part,

but I can see what I would miss in leaving—

the way her ankles go into the work boots

as she stands upon the ice chest;

the problem scrunched into her forehead;

the little kissable mouth

with the nail in it.

Tony Hoagland

So much gratitude ~

What Was Told, That

What was said to the rose that made it open was said

to me here in my chest.

What was told the cypress that made it strong

and straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made

sugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in

Turkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush

like a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in

language, that's happening here.

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,

chewing a piece of sugarcane,

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

Rumi  
translated by Coleman Barks

Happy February ~ Sugar Says & Betsy Wheeler Wheels!

Non-Sonnet for Telling You Everything

Like how high banjo trills make me go electric.
Like how charity. Like how gold.
Like I’d like to take you in and feed you a little
sweet milk. Like you’d mind, but I’m so
tired of honesty like California fault lines.
Like how this is the big moment.
Like, now.
Like how cuteness rules the dating quadrants.
Like how sexy. Like when I say you look good
in white linen, I mean sheets. Like I’d like to
rob your booty bank. Like how I’d take my
winnings to the grave.

***

Non-Sonnet  for the Phrase “But I Believe.”

This afternoon slowly flaking away in sheaths. 

3:00 grandfathered in.  Collector’s stamps

accidentally licked and posted, the Basil Dove

heckling the rest of the postal pouch.

Leaves faking change and then the guard. 

To the waitress I said wondermeat meaning

wonderment.  Meaning I wonder where you are, and

how you spend your wooden nickels.  Every cup

of coffee after noon counts as addiction but nothing

compared to how much I miss you.  Your gleeful,

airless laugh.  Your lashes lashing.  Languishing.

Pinioned stars say I am both born and dying

in love’s mystery.  Penelope weaving and unweaving

her weaving.  I say I do not believe.  I do not believe.  

Betsy Wheeler