poetry 22: once i believed in you
Vespers ["Once I believed in you…"] Once I believed in you; I planted a fig tree. Here, in Vermont, country of no summer. It was a test: if the tree lived, it would mean you existed. By this logic, you do not exist. Or you exist exclusively in warmer climates, …
poetry 21 : we have a soul at times
A few words on the soul We have a soul at times. No one's got it non-stop, for keeps. Day after day, year after year may pass without it. Sometimes it will settle for awhile only in childhood's fears and raptures. Sometimes only in astonishment that we are old. It …
poetry 20 : without looking where, she lets go.
Watching Nina bowl The guys in the next lane are all biceps and beer, their eyes on the prize of a night's high score. They fling the ball toward the pins as if the lane was mere afterthought, an inconsequential distance toward the meat of their destruction. Nina cuts …
poetry 14 : consider the hands that write this letter
How do we write? Not just the physicality of the act, beautiful enough – hands against paper – but more than that: holding the door to ourselves shut and knocking to get in, simultaneously. Lovely. Lovely. A poem first posted on 37days for National Poetry Month in 2007, it bears …
angela’s brain.
A one-month vigil for Angela and her mighty brain. Every morning at 9am. Join me. Invite friends who are special, connected, powerful, who care. Let's do this.
poetry 13 : even with so much withheld, so much unspoken, potatoes are cooked with butter and parsley
Poem holding its heart in one fist Each pebble in this world keepsits own counsel. Certain words–these, for instance–may be keeping a pronoun hidden.Perhaps the lover's youor the solipsist's I.Perhaps the philosopher's willowy it. The concealment plainly delights. Even a desk will gatherits clutch of secret, half-crumpled papers,eased slowly, over …
write one name on a slip of paper.
I want you to do something for me. I want you to find a small box in your house or office, something with a lid. Perhaps even something you love–a trinket made by a child or given to you by your grandmother or that you bought in Sri Lanka that …
poetry 12 : the fuel that feeds you
Hidden If you place a fernunder a stonethe next day it will benearly invisibleas if the stone has swallowed it. If you tuck the name of a loved oneunder your tongue too longwithout speaking itit becomes bloodsighthe little sucked-in breath of airhiding everywherebeneath your words. No one seesthe fuel that …
poetry 11 : Write it. Write. In ordinary ink on ordinary paper.
Hunger Camp at Jaslo Write it. Write. In ordinary inkon ordinary paper: they were given no food,they all died of hunger. "All. How many?It's a big meadow. How much grassfor each one?" Write: I don't know.History counts its skeletons in round numbers.A thousand and one remains a thousand,as though the …
simple action saturday : “it wasn’t bad”
The missing four miners in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in West Virginia were found dead yesterday. I remember the Sago mine disaster of 2006 for this reason, this note, scrawled on the back of an insurance form in the dark death chamber he knew would claim him, that …
