poetry wednesday
always, at the end of every day
It comes to this: the fall to bed. Despite Herculean hopes to repair
the broken furniture, to birth works of unassailable beauty,
despite a heart with its tongue out, panting for love, or the hawk stare
we train on our most extravagant intentions. Despite the toothy
rigor of the bad habits we can’t break, and the soul-trials of discipline
which repeatedly establish our guilt. Despite these wayward exiles from joy,
we fall to a set of pillows, cotton sheets, a mattress, and make a cocoon
of our bodies. We won’t admit it, but we’re designed for rest, too, a buoy
to save us from the rough seas we insist on weathering. Look how little
it takes for that kind of surrender. How easy we can be, how gentle.
-Maya Stein
Ah, sleep, yes. Look how little it takes for that kind of surrender, even for us warriors of the life, us planners and doers.
Maya Stein is my new favorite poet. You'll find several of her luscious poems in my new book, Creative is a Verb: if you're alive, you're creative (Nov 9, 2010). I'm a supporter of her 10-line poetry workshop tour and invite you to be, too. She's near her fundraising goal, but needs help reaching it for the tour to be a reality.
In my alternate universe, poets and quilters and painters and teachers and nurses are paid more than movie stars and basketball players and drug dealers. Until that happens, the least I can do is buy their books and paintings and send them thank you notes and bake them snickerdoodles and give so they can go on tour and enlist other unsuspecting people into poetry-making.
[Image from here]
