Welcome to Day 18! Thank you to all of the great poets who have contributed so far. Here is today's batch of poems:
Experience-thorn
by Martin Bidney
amphibrachian tetrameters
regular and catalectic
with floating refrain
x/x x/x x/x x/x
x/x x/x x/x x/
“A thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.”
--James Russell Lowell
Experience-thorn’s worth a forest of warning.
The voice of another is heard in the mind,
A chamber too cloistered, constrained, or confined.
The Cleaver of Daybreak appears in the morning
And dark becomes light that with heart is combined.
O pilgrim, your knapsack and walking-rod find:
Behold a horizon, no wisdom-gift scorning.
Experience-thorn’s worth a forest of warning.
So forward fare bold, wispy fear leave behind.
There’s Dawn! – she’s with henna her fingers adorning.
Your Fate-thread’s your own, that you spinning can wind:
Awake to each day as a baby a-borning.
The Lumen, the Numen, subsumed the dove’s mourning.
The birds viewed the Sun when the rest were yet blind.
Experience-thorn’s worth a forest of warning.
Sin tÃtulo VI SANTIAGO RODRIGUEZ
Me imagino a veces un futuro extraño donde nosotros vivimos en el espacio y la gente pudiente es la que tiene el privilegio de vivir en el planeta.
Y yo soy un repartidor de pizzas del espacio.
O un minero solitario en un asteroide, con perro robot de compañÃa, extrañando casa, esperando a que terminen los seis meses de mi contrato para regresar a una colonia espacial apretada y llena de chatarra. Pero con gente, y entre esa gente quizás uno o dos buenos amigos. Con eso basta en el espacio.
Y hablamos todos de la tierra como si alguna vez hubiéramos estado ahÃ, pero somos ratas del espacio soñando con columpios y con árboles, con tierra. Y con insectos también merodeando por ahÃ.
Pero acá en el espacio nada, o al menos muy poco.
Y volteamos al cielo y vemos la luna y la tierra y suspiramos. Ahà está, recordándonos que no es para nosotros.
Taschlich SUSAN ESCHBACH
Water flows from our
birth mothers
propels us to be born
pure
unencumbered
unjaded
some of us are born
into love
unconditional
some of us had
to strike our bargains
early
we grew
to know
to laugh
to cry, help, hurt
sigh, wail, pray
heal, play
to study, argue, bruise
to regret, repent
reveal to ourselves
this chance to renew
to hurl ourselves into
that flow of life
and return
able still to know
to laugh
to heal
Spider Web Roses Fran Markover
She embosses her final gardens,
the knotted cotton lot. Before her:
floss, needles, loop. She embroiders
all afternoon as if her hand is pulled
by a puppeteer. For the sampler
she sews, mom follows instructions,
the pattern, the whimsy someone
else imagined. Unspools strands:
Blue Joy, Ruby Glint for the 1,2, 3's.
Spark Gold outlines floral borders,
ones filled with crewel shadings.
On her canvas an alphabet blossoms:
A, B, C's in X's and detached chains.
A tear or two drips on her handiwork,
pearls her daisies. She trims a last leaf
before she turns off the light, closes
her eyes for earlier flourishings.
*Spider web is a type of embroidery stitch
DYING Susan Weitz
It’s not only the dying, the infected and dying.
No.
That’s invisible,
behind hospital walls,
inside houses,
in refugee camps
on the other side of the country.
But it’s not only THAT dying.
No.
Loud but still invisible
are the guns.
Everybody’s got one
so why not use it.
Disagree or just look different?
Welcome to the dying.
But it’s not only THAT dying.
No.
All the money flew upward
in a funnel cloud
till it found its stratospheric
friends.
Back here on earth,
no money means
no home,
no food,
no safety.
But it’s not only THAT dying.
No.
Did I mention our dreams?
Is this really how you want to break my heart? Carol Whitlow
It is not the dagger which breaks me.
What breaks my heart is
The distance from which
My heart drops
The dizzying heights to which it soars
On wings as light and full of hope
As a bird on a spring morning
The giddy heights in which
So briefly
A mated pair
So full of joy
Ascend and dance
What breaks my heart
Is the fall
From grace
From hope
From joy
In dizzying descent
What breaks my heart is
The hard cold lonely ground
On which it bursts
In silence
The pieces blown and washed
Down the cliff
Down the valley
Into the river
And out to the cold and lonely sea
What breaks my heart
Is that we may forget
That this ever happened
Daphne Sola
ANY DAY NOW . . .
I will fall off a ladder and either badly injure or kill myself.
Therein lie two truths . . .one, that imbalance is embedded in old age, and two, that I seldom pass a ladder
without feeling the urge to climb.
If I have unsure feet, they have not seriously considered retirement,
and my hands still have the will to grasp, after all,
it's only one rung at a time
to reach the top
and see the world
spread out before me.
I revel in sweeps of fields and stony skyscrapers, - - -what a strange notion - -
to rasp a man-made tower
against the sky,
like playing an instrument
that has not yet been invented - -
and on grass and sidewalks
I see people,scrambling about, and note that from up here their foibles
are not visible.
In my pockets, for sustenance, I
I have brought packets
of temerity and foolishness,
which have offered me, in the past,
much pleasure,
but now
may well cause me to lose my precarious toehold at the top of a lsdder
and I will plummet,
surprised only in the first moment,
to an implicit ending.
Happy Knowledge Barbara Regenspan
On Rosh Hashanah eve
I want to believe that
the cavanah* of one-ness
can propel politics, so
it makes me very happy
that the Jewish philosopher,
Derrida, says
“Justice is hospitality without reservation.”
* an almost untranslatable (because of an uncanny suggestion of both weight and lightness) Hebrew word for "spiritual intention"
