At Balmorhea State Park

History matters, but if you thought about all the lives entangled in twenty-four
million gallons a day,
you’d go crazy. And I do not wish to.
I wish to observe the cleanliness
of the water, the kittenish algae on the stone
steps. And the small, alert fish—one of them’s
a Gambusia… Hard to believe
the children and all of us are swimming
with two endangered species, but there it is: they attend our entry,
divert our hair. I am rolling
them over and they
are winding me in. I mean
forgetting the future, the sun,
my password. While we sort out what matters,
we can never write enough
about a body diving into water.

Wendy Burk

Originally published in Pilgrimage, vol. 35, no. 2 (2010).

The wednesday poem on wednesday!

Our Valley

We don’t see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.


You probably think I’m nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you’re thrilled and terrified.


You have to remember this isn’t your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

Philip Levine

Wednesday poem on Thursday!

Ode to My Hands

Five-legged pocket spiders, knuckled
starfish, grabbers of forks, why
do I forget that you love me:
your willingness to button my shirts,
tie my shoes—even scratch my head!
which throbs like a traffic jam, each thought
leaning on its horn. I see you

waiting anyplace always
at the ends of my arms—for the doctor,
for the movie to begin, for
freedom—so silent, such
patience! testing the world
with your bold myopia: faithful,
ready to reach out at my
softest suggestion, to fly up
like two birds when I speak, two
brown thrashers brandishing verbs
like twigs in your beaks, lifting
my speech the way pepper springs
the tongue from slumber. O!

If only they knew the unrestrained
innocence of your intentions,
each finger a cappella, singing
a song that rings like rain
before it falls—that never falls!
Such harmony: the bass thumb, the
pinkie's soprano, the three tenors
in between: kind quintet x 2
rowing my heart like a little boat
upon whose wooden seat I sit
strummed by Sorrow. Or maybe

I misread you completely
and you are dreaming a tangerine, one
particular hot tamale, a fabulous
banana! to peel suggestively,
like thigh-high stockings: grinning
as only hands can grin
down the legs—caramel, cocoa,
black-bean black, vanilla—such lubricious
dimensions, such public secrets!
Women sailing the streets
with God's breath at their backs.
Think of it! No! Yes:
let my brain sweat, make my
veins whimper: without you, my five-hearted
fiends, my five-headed hydras, what
of my mischievous history? The possibilities
suddenly impossible—feelings
not felt, rememberings un-
remembered—all the touches
untouched: the gallant strain

of a pilfered ant, tiny muscles
flexed with fight, the gritty
sidewalk slapped after a slip, the pulled
weed, the plucked flower—a buttercup!
held beneath Dawn's chin—the purest kiss,
the caught grasshopper's kick, honey,
chalk, charcoal, the solos teased
from guitar. Once, I played
viola for a year and never stopped

to thank you—my two angry sisters,
my two hungry men—but you knew
I just wanted to know
what the strings would say
concerning my soul, my whelming
solipsism: this perpetual solstice
where one + one = everything
and two hands teach a dawdler
the palpable alchemy
of an unreasonable world.

Tim Seibles

Wednesday poem on Friday

Vacation        

I love the hour before takeoff,
that stretch of no time, no home
but the gray vinyl seats linked like
unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall
be summoned to the gate, soon enough
there’ll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers
and perforated stubs—but for now
I can look at these ragtag nuclear families
with their cooing and bickering
or the heeled bachelorette trying
to ignore a baby’s wail and the baby’s
exhausted mother waiting to be called up early
while the athlete, one monstrous hand
asleep on his duffel bag, listens,
perched like a seal trained for the plunge.
Even the lone executive
who has wandered this far into summer
with his lasered itinerary, briefcase
knocking his knees—even he
has worked for the pleasure of bearing
no more than a scrap of himself
into this hall. He’ll dine out, she’ll sleep late,
they’ll let the sun burn them happy all morning
—a little hope, a little whimsy
before the loudspeaker blurts
and we leap up to become
Flight 828, now boarding at Gate 17.

Rita Dove

Three for Thursday!

Epic

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided : who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.

I heard the Duffys shouting ‘Damn your soul’
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
‘Here is the march along these iron stones’.

That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was most important ? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind
He said : I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.

Patrick Kavanagh

**********************************

A lovely thing to see:
through the paper window's hole,
the Galaxy.

Issa


***********************************

The summer river:
although there is a bridge, my horse
goes through the water.

Masaoka Shiki

The wednesday poem on friday

On the M104
(New York City Public Bus)

    The longing we know that does not have a name
    may be for our lost twins, our cellular siblings
    who flaked away from us
    only days after our conception.
    Like a singular petal tugged from its floribunda,
    most of us were left alone in our planet-wombs,
    gravity-less balloons, loose space suits. Galaxies of mother
    around us, we slept the way I still like to:
    my back nestled against someone else's chest,
    my knees bent and at rest on his
    as though I were sitting in a chair
    but my weight askew, pulled away to a 90-degree angle.
    No wonder, regardless of who it is,
    love is what I feel every time.
    He is my lost one, my lost twin,
    the dolphin, the underwater uterine-angel
    who loved me regardless, who continued
    to swim up against me, whether I pulled away or not.
    I miss him the way a soldier
    has a phantom itch on the elbow
    of his amputated arm. I look into mirrors
    and dress up as someone else.
    Our lost Gods are so hard to find
    though they are as many
    as the flakes of novelty confetti
    that snow from a bridal shower bell.
    Or the pastel dots
    that rise to the roof and multiply
    on this city bus
    as the sun hits a stone
    on some piece of jewelry a passenger is wearing.
    The magic blinks away as we turn the corner
    and a building's shadow takes over.
    We all check our watches
    and bracelets, wondering which one of us
    could have been the source
    of such beauty. The travelers who saw
    look at each other to confirm.
    Our lost Gods, so hard to find --
    their appearances so short, their bodies so small.

Denise Duhamel

"I like trees.  They seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do."

Willa Cather
1876-1947


A Final Affection

    I love the accomplishments of trees,
    How they try to restrain great storms
    And pacify the very worms that eat them.
    Even their deaths seem to be considered.
    I fear for trees, loving them so much.
    I am nervous about each scar on bark,
    Each leaf that browns. I want to
    Lie in their crotches and sigh,
    Whisper of sun and rains to come.

    Sometimes on summer evenings I step
    Out of my house to look at trees
    Propping darkness up to the silence.

    When I die I want to slant up
    Through those trunks so slowly
    I will see each rib of bark, each whorl;
    Up through the canopy, the subtle veins
    And lobes touching me with final affection;
    Then to hover above and look down
    One last time on the rich upliftings,
    The circle that loves the sun and moon,
    To see at last what held the darkness up.

    Paul Zimmer