<p>Sac, I LOVE Stephen Dunn (have 3 of his books—LOL!) An old college suite mate of mine is a personal friend of his. She met him while taking one of his poetry workshops while in grad school, and they live in the same town (I think).</p>
<p>Crow Garden</p>
<p>Do I remember
what it was like
before I agreed to be human?</p>
<p>Before the angels
came to me
offering me another chance
to dwell in flesh,
to experience desire.</p>
<p>Sitting in my garden
the rusty wrought iron table
reminds me how perishable
things are on this earth.</p>
<p>The center hole
that should hold the umbrella
casting shade so I wouldn’t have to squint
heaves up and separates from the table.
The yellow umbrella
we forgot to store inside
for the winter
discarded, gone to mold and mildew.</p>
<p>I watch my hands,
my nails uncharacteristically painted pink.
An insistent crow my company,
his voice loud,
his body hidden within trees.</p>
<p>The cosmos taller
than I could have imagined,
ragged but beautiful
in their own shades of pink
lead me quietly back
to those angels and their promises:</p>
<pre><code> this time I would do it right
this time the flesh would be a pleasure
not a burden,
that I would choose wisely
and negotiate fate.
</code></pre>
<p>My small angels just inside
home from camp today
each for their own reason
implicated in these memories:</p>
<pre><code> Mia tells stories
of her time before time;
David meets angels
in his dreams.
</code></pre>
<p>Is it true I created their flesh?
Was it sin or blessing
to invite their souls
to join me in this garden
of rusting iron, gargantuan cosmos
and crow sounds.</p>
<p>–mythmom</p>
<p>Sandpiper</p>
<p>The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.</p>
<p>The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.</p>
<ul>
<li>Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,
he stares at the dragging grains.</li>
</ul>
<p>The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. The tide
is higher or lower. He couldn’t tell you which.
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,</p>
<p>looking for something, something, something.
Poor bird, he is obsessed!
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.</p>
<p>Hi. I’m the lurking poet. Just wanted to say that “Crow Garden” is my own newly published poem.</p>
<p>MM–beautiful!</p>
<p>garland: a very heart felt thank you.</p>
<p>Bravo mythmom. I have been trying to get up the courage to submit a couple of my poems…</p>
<p>Lovely, mythmom. I especially like the way it pulls me into your imagination in the first stanza. Want to share where it’s published?</p>
<p>Poetsheart: I also took a workshop with Dunn. He’s a gracious and generous teacher. He’s written a combination memoir and collection of essays on writing poetry that is a good read, called Walking Light, that distills a lot of what he talks about in workshops.</p>
<p>My favorite Elizabeth Bishop poem is In the Waiting Room. I think it’s probably too long to post, but anyone interested can find it at poets.org.</p>
<p>LOL—sac. I’ve got Walking Light, too!</p>
<p>I liked your poem Mythmom. Seemed to go with your name. :)</p>
<p>Thanks all for kind words. CC is helping me to take baby steps, right along with kids.</p>
<p>It’s such a great community to be part of.</p>
<p>Mythmom, I’ve read your poem several times. I like it more with each reading.:)</p>
<p>Okay guys, you can’t imagine how much your words mean to me, but let’s get back to regular programming so everyone can enjoy thread.</p>
<p>Let’s see…</p>
<p>The Ivy Crown
by William Carlos Williams (1950)</p>
<pre><code> The whole process is a lie,
unless,
crowned by excess,
it break forcefully,
one way or another,
from its confinement–
or find a deeper well.
Antony and Cleopatra
were right;
they have shown
the way. I love you
or I do not live
at all.
Daffodil time
is past. This is
summer, summer!
the heart says,
and not even the full of it.
No doubts
are permitted–
Though they will come
and may
before our time
overwhelm us.
We are only mortal
but being mortal
can defy our fate.
We may
by an outside chance
even win! We do not
look to see
jonquils and violets
come again
but there are,
still,
the roses!
Romance has no part in it.
The business of love is
cruelty which
by our wills,
we transform
to live together.
It has its seasons,
for and against,
whatever the heart
fumbles in the dark
to assert
toward the end of May.
Just as the nature of briars
is to tear flesh,
I have proceeded
through them.
Keep the briars out,
they say.
You cannot live
and keep free of
briars.
Children pick flowers
Let them.
Though having them
in hand
they have no further use of them
but leave them crumpled
at the curb’s edge.
At our age the imagination
across the sorry facts
lifts us
to make roses
stand before thorns.
Sure
love is cruel
and selfish
and totally obtuse–
At least, blinded by the light,
young love is.
But we are older,
I to love
and you to be loved,
we have,
no matter how,
by our wills survived
to keep
the jeweled prize
always
at our fingertips.
We will it so
and so it is
past all accident.
</code></pre>
<p>Eavan Boland is a poet from Ireland who’s lived here a long time and whose work I love. She’s written some wonderful poems about mothers and daughters. This one is about something different:</p>
<p>AtlantisA Lost Sonnet<br>
by Eavan Boland </p>
<p>How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole cityarches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animalshad all
one fine day gone under?</p>
<p>I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city </p>
<p>white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is </p>
<p>this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of </p>
<p>where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.</p>
<p>Provocative. And are we still sad? I think so.</p>
<p>A couple more love poems to lighten the mood:</p>
<p>Politics
W.B. Yeats</p>
<p>How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here’s a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there’s a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms! </p>
<p>Upon Julia’s Clothes
Robert Herrick</p>
<p>Whenas in silks my Julia goes
Then, then methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes</p>
<p>Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free
Oh, how that glittering taketh me!</p>
<p>The Day Lady Died</p>
<p>It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I dont know the people who will feed me</p>
<p>I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesnt even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behans new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I dont, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness</p>
<p>and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it</p>
<p>and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing</p>
<hr>
<p>(For those of you who are not jazz fans: the “Lady” of the poem is the jazz singer Billie Holiday [AKA Lady Day], the 5 Spot a legendary NYC jazz club.)</p>
<p>Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout</p>
<p>Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.</p>
<p>I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.</p>
<hr>
<p>Hmmm . . . this thread seems to be flagging.</p>
<p>Oh, well.</p>
<p>atomom: Remember that read in Julia. Vanessa Redgrave will always be Herrick’s Julia to me: Oh how that glittering taketh me, even still.</p>
<p>epistrophy: I particularly like the Frank O’Hara. It’s a rush of image, association, and reference.</p>
<p>Re Herrick: a fascinating fact provided by DS through auspices of former HS Latin teacher: carpe diem is really “pluck the day”, not “seize the day”. For me, that puts a whole new complexion on things; gather ye rosebuds while ye may, indeed.</p>
<p>taketh reminded me of this one, by Ben Jonson</p>
<p>Still to be neat, still to be dressed<br>
As you were going to a feast
Still to be powdered, still perfumed:<br>
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art’s hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.</p>
<p>Give me a look, give me a face
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all th’ adulteries of art;
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.</p>