To Sleep ~ Plentiful and Elusive...

Variation on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,

which may not happen.

I would like to watch you,

sleeping. I would like to sleep

with you, to enter

your sleep as its smooth dark wave

slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent

wavering forest of bluegreen leaves

with its watery sun & three moons

towards the cave where you must descend,

towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver

branch, the small white flower, the one

word that will protect you

from the grief at the center

of your dream, from the grief

at the center. I would like to follow

you up the long stairway

again & become

the boat that would row you back

carefully, a flame

in two cupped hands

to where your body lies

beside me, and you enter

it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air

that inhabits you for a moment

only. I would like to be that unnoticed

& that necessary. 

Margaret Atwood

Check out this amazing essay, "Sleep as Resistance", by Siobhan Phillips.

Springing into Spring!

A Color of the Sky

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,

driving over the hills from work.

There are the dark parts on the road

                     when you pass through clumps of wood   

and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,   

but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize

for being so boring at dinner last night,

but can I really promise not to be that way again?   

And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing   

in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;

the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves

are full of infant chlorophyll,   

the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,   

and on the highway overpass,

the only metaphysical vandal in America has written   

MEMORY LOVES TIME

in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.

She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.   

Years ago she penetrated me

but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,   

I never got her out,

but now I’m glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.   

What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.   

What I thought was an injustice

turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store   

and the police station,

a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,   

like a sudsy mug of beer;

like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.   

It’s been doing that all week:

making beauty,

and throwing it away,

and making more.

Tony Hoagland

To hyacinths and Ilya Kaminsky ~

A Toast
 

To your voice, a mysterious virtue,

to the 53 bones of one foot, the four dimensions of breathing,

to pine, redwood, sworn-fern, peppermint,

to hyacinth and bluebell lily,

to the train conductor’s donkey on a rope,

to smells of lemons, a boy pissing splendidly against the

trees.

Bless each thing on earth until it sickens,

until each ungovernable heart admits: “I confused myself

and yet I loved–and what I loved

I forgot, what I forgot brought glory to my travels,

to you I traveled as close as I dared, Lord.”

Ilya Kaminsky

About This Poem:
"This piece is from the unfinished manuscript Deaf Republic.  This story of a pregnant woman and her husband living during an epidemic of deafness and civil unrest was found beneath the floorboards in a house in Eastern Europe.  Several versions of the manuscript exist."  -- Ilya Kaminsky

It's March in the Sonoran desert...Here's to Spring revolution, fresh poems, and the smell of orange blossoms ~

Every Revolution Needs Fresh Poems

Every revolution needs fresh poems

that is the reason

poetry cannot die.

It is the reason poets

go without sleep

and sometimes without lovers

without new cars

and without fine clothes

the reason we commit

to facing the dark

and

resign ourselves, regularly, to the possibility

of being wrong.

Poetry is leading us.

It never cares how we will

be held by lovers

or drive fast

or look good

in the moment;

but about how completely

we are committed

to movement

both inner and outer;

and devoted to transformation

and to change.

AliceWalker

From The World Will Follow Joy