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apoemaday

It Was Like This: You Were Happy

by Jane Hirshfield

It was like this: you were happy, then you were sad, then happy again, then not.

It went on. You were innocent or you were guilty. Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent. Mostly, it seems you were silent — what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness — between you, there is nothing to forgive — but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you or your days: they will be wrong, they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man, all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad, you slept, you awakened. Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

#poetry

apoemaday

Brilliance

by Mark Doty

Maggie’s taking care of a man who’s dying; he’s attended to everything, said goodbye to his parents,

paid off his credit card. She says Why don’t you just run it up to the limit?

but he wants everything squared away, no balance owed, though he misses the pets

he’s already found a home for — he can’t be around dogs or cats, too much risk. He says,

I can’t have anything. She says, A bowl of goldfish? He says he doesn’t want to start

with anything and then describes the kind he’d maybe like, how their tails would fan

to a gold flaring. They talk about hot jewel tones, gold lacquer, say maybe

they’ll go pick some out though he can’t go much of anywhere and then abruptly he says I can’t love

anything I can’t finish. He says it like he’s had enough of the whole scintillant world,

though what he means is he’ll never be satisfied and therefore has established this discipline,

a kind of severe rehearsal. That’s where they leave it, him looking out the window,

her knitting as she does because she needs to do something. Later he leaves a message:

Yes to the bowl of goldfish. Meaning: let me go, if I have to, in brilliance. In a story I read,

a Zen master who’d perfected his detachment from the things of the world remembered, at the moment of dying,

a deer he used to feed in the park, and wondered who might care for it, and at that instant was reborn

in the stunned flesh of a fawn. So, Maggie’s friend — Is he going out

Into the last loved object Of his attention? Fanning the veined translucence

Of an opulent tail, Undulant in some uncapturable curve Is he bronze chrysanthemums,

Copper leaf, hurried darting, Doubloons, icon-colored fins Troubling the water?

#poetry

bilosan

4x14 Survivors // 9x13 Mother’s Boy

#911

still-snowing

and I’ve turned down every hand that has beckoned me to come

#the untamed #fanart

apoemaday

Everyday Life

by Olav H. Hauge tr. Olav Grinde

The great storms are behind you now. Back then, you didn’t ask why you were born, where you came from, or where you were going – you were part of the storm, the fire.

But you can find a way to live in everyday life as well, in our ordinary grey days: plant your potatoes, rake leaves, clear away the brush. There is so much to ponder in this world that one life is not enough. After you’re done with your tasks, you can fry up some bacon and read Chinese poetry. Old Laërtes hacked back the brambles and hoed the earth around his fig trees, letting the heroes battle it out at Troy.

Jef Bourgeau

Simple

by Raymond Carver

A break in the clouds. The blue outline of the mountains. Dark yellow of the fields. Black river. What am I doing here, lonely and filled with remorse?

I go on casually eating from the bowl of raspberries. If I were dead, I remind myself, I wouldn’t be eating them. It’s not so simple. It is that simple.

#poetry

kiphunter

#face of a guy who's been put through the mattress for the first time in his life

sk1nnylikefel1x

shane hollander had no post nut clarity instead he got post nut bliss

#heated rivalry

ymutate

Josef Kote Born (1964) Albanian artist, based in Toronto

“Exploring the Depths”

Acrylic on Canvas. 60 x 48”

#art

apoemaday

Failing and Flying

by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It’s the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last. Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist. Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that. Listened to her while we ate lunch. How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy. I believe that Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.

#poetry