One more for day four...

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

...Mary Oliver...

And for 3rd...

O sweet spontaneous

earth how often have

the

doting

fingers of

purient philosophers pinched

and

poked

, thee

has the naughty thumb

of science prodded

thy

beauty , how

oftn have religions taken

thee upon their scraggy knees

squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive

gods

(but

true

to the incomparable

couch of death thy

rhythmic

lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

e.e. cummings

A poem for the second day...

Yellow Bowl

If light pours like water

into the kitchen where I sway

with my tired children,

if the rug beneath us

is woven with tough flowers,

and the yellow bowl on the table

rests with the sweet heft

of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,

if my body curves over the babies,

and if i am singing,

then loneliness has lost its shape,

and this quiet is only quiet.

...Rachel Contreni Flynn...

I feel like I should say...

It is National Poetry month and I feel like I should say something, or write something, or be something because I am a poet and this is a time for poets. I have been out of the habit of writing poetry. There are perhaps a million excuses for why. Regardless of the reasons, it is, by all measurable means, a tragedy. Not to the world or to the readers, but only myself. Poetry has always been, for me, an anchor; it has been too long since I felt its calm. So, I am redeeming by putting a little poetry up everyday for the rest of the month. Somedays I'll even put two, so by the end there will be thirty poems here. Thirty anchors. Thirty points of calm, even if the words aren't all mine.

One thing I can remember...

Driving to your house in the winter

your house iced blue

and the snow to your door

two feet thick.

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