Seamus Heaney you will be dearly missed ~

Postscript

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Seamus Heaney

1939-2013

For Shiloh - Magnificent Border Collie ~ 1997-2013

I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life

Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.
Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.

Mary Oliver


 ***

Pear Dreams

 for Shiloh

From the cool shade of the porch

I toss my half-eaten pear
out into the vast landscape

of desert backyard,
and watch as our border collie
snaps for it.

It is hers

forever.

She sends an artful glance
to our german shepherd,

a few feet away,
who, now,
can only dream
of tasting the sweet mushy meat
and chewing on the small funny stem.

ECS
As read on W.B.U.R's  Here & Now, in 2004.

To the month of August and our hands...

These Hands, If Not Gods

Haven't they moved like rivers--

like Glory, like light--

over the seven days of your body?

And wasn't that good?

Them at your hips--

isn't this what God felt when he pressed together

the first Beloved: Everything.

Fever. Vapor. Atman. Pulsus. Finally,

a sin worth hurting for. Finally, a sweet, a

You are mine.

It is hard not to have faith in this:

from the blue-brown clay of night

these two potters crushed and smoothed you

into being--grind, then curve--built your form up--

atlas of bone, fields of muscle,

one breast a fig tree, the other a nightingale,

both Morning and Evening.

O, the beautiful making they do--

of trigger and carve, suffering and stars--

Aren't they, too, the dark carpenters

of your small church? Have they not burned

on the altar of your belly, eaten the bread

of your thighs, broke you to wine, to ichor,

to nectareous feast?

Haven't they riveted your wrists, haven't they

had you at your knees?

And when these hands touched your throat,

showed you how to take the apple and the rib,

how to slip a thumb into your mouth and taste it all,

didn't you sing out their ninety-nine names--

Zahir, Aleph, Hands-time-seven,

Sphinx, Leonids, locomotura,

Rubidium, August, and September--

And when you cried out, O, Prometheans,

didn't they bring fire?

These hands, if not gods, then why

when you have come to me, and I have returned you

to that from which you came--bright mud, mineral-salt--

why then do you whisper O, my Hecatonchire. My Centimani.

My hundred-handed one?

 

Natalie Diaz

About This Poem

"The images and hands of this poem began building during Mass one Sunday. The reading was about the laying of hands on someone, and I began thinking of how my own hands work upon a body. How they do things both beautiful and awful--to gently trace a throat in one moment, to hold it tightly in another--a type of sweet wreckery that makes me feel godlike and helpless all at once." 

--Natalie Diaz