Astonishments

image by samantha wall

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Soreal, There’s No Way Back, 2011

[hiddenshores]

When I Am Asked

When I am asked

how I began writing poems,

I talk about the indifference of nature.

It was soon after my mother died,

a brilliant June day,

everything blooming.

I sat on a gray stone bench

in a lovingly planted garden,

but the day lilies were as deaf

as the ears of drunken sleepers

and the roses curved inward.

Nothing was black or broken

and not a leaf fell

and the sun blared endless commercials

for summer holidays.

I sat on a gray stone bench

ringed with the ingenue faces

of pink and white impatiens

and placed my grief

in the mouth of language,

the only thing that would grieve with me.

— Lisel Mueller

[hiddenshores]

getting there

the mind says:

this river has no bottom

the heart says:

we can build a bridge here

— Cleo Wade

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

“I have no eye for eternity. I know only this world, where May’s light lengthens into June’s long days, and someone I love”

— Robert Cording, from section 2, “June Prayer,” of “Four Prayers,” Image (no. 56, Winter 2007-2008)

[isabellebertolini]

[hiddenshores]

News headlines

It’s day 98 of the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

Mass shootings in the US, a million dead from

Covid.

Over 40 million people worldwide affected by extreme hunger. Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso.

Too many places where someone has lost someone they love.

Joan Didion writes “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it”.

I have been there, but I haven’t had to bury my own child.

There are so many words for the people who remain: widow, widower, orphan. There is no name for a parent who lost their child.

A friend told me recently that she doesn’t read the news anymore. I said I still do and she asked me why. I suppose I feel I should know.

Remember something somehow, no matter how removed or remote it is. We are part of this world even when we don’t feel like it. And maybe there’s also that bit of hope.

To read about someone who didn’t die.

A food bank run by pensioners.

Small acts of kindness.

And that scientists have discovered what is now believed to be the biggest plant anywhere on Earth, covering about 200 sq km, over three times the size of Manhattan island, just off the coast of Western Australia.

[hiddenshores]

“… of course

loss is the great lesson.

But also I say this: that light

is an invitation

to happiness,

and that happiness,

when it's done right,

is a kind of holiness,

palpable and redemptive.”

— Mary Oliver, from “Poppies”

[elvedon]

— Ana Carrizo, "Backbone at Sunset" (after my poem)

[hiddenshores]

[a-quiet-green-agreement]

– Anne Carson, Float

[hiddenshores]

Joy

When it comes back to teach you

or you come back to learn

how half alive you’ve been,

how your own ignorance and arrogance

have kept you deprived—

when it comes back to you

or you yourself return,

joy is simple, unassuming.

Red tulips on their green stems.

Early spring vegetables, bright in the pan.

The primary colors of a child’s painting,

the first lessons, all over again.

— Thomas Centolella

Lights & Mysteries by Thomas Centolella - Copper Canyon Press

This second collection of poems from multi-award winning poet Centolella mixes Zen and Hasidic philosophy with classical skepticism, resulti

[hiddenshores]

Joy

[hiddenshores]

5.

It is true that there is not enough beauty in the world.

It is also true that I am not competent to restore it.

Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.

I am

at work, though I am silent.

The bland

misery of the world

bounds us on either side, an alley

lined with trees; we are

companions here, not speaking,

each with his own thoughts;

behind the trees, iron

gates of the private houses,

the shuttered rooms

somehow deserted, abandoned,

as though it were the artist’s

duty to create

hope, but out of what? what?

the word itself

false, a device to refute

perception — At the intersection,

ornamental lights of the season.

I was young here. Riding

the subway with my small book

as though to defend myself against

the same world:

you are not alone,

the poem said,

in the dark tunnel.

— Louise Glück, from “October”, in Averno

[hiddenshores]

Oxygen

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,

while it calls the earth its home, the soul.

So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its

lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel

before the fire, stirring with a

stick of iron, letting the logs

lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,

are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches

all day. You are breathing

patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is

your life, which is so close

to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of

separation. And what does this have to do

with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises

and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red

roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds

as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:

our purest, sweet necessity: the air.

— Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Helped Us Stay Amazed

With her sensitive, astute compositions about interior revelations and small, daily concerns, Oliver made herself one of the most beloved po

[hiddenshores]

You’re light to me

[hiddenshores]

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

— Naomi Shihab Nye, “Kindness”, in Words Under the Words

Wonderfully read by Emma Thompson here https://www.instagram.com/tv/CDilnDwly6K/?igshid=1hmquzck2v43j

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[hiddenshores]

The poppies send up their

orange flares; swaying

in the wind, their congregations

are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin

and lacy leaves.

There isn't a place

in this world that doesn't

sooner or later drown

in the indigos of darkness,

but now, for a while,

the roughage

shines like a miracle

as it floats above everything

with its yellow hair.

Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade

from hooking forward—

of course

loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light

is an invitation

to happiness,

and that happiness,

when it's done right,

is a kind of holiness,

palpable and redemptive.

Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,

I am washed and washed

in the river

of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—

what can you do

about it—

deep, blue night?

— Mary Oliver, “Poppies”, in Devotions