And he hooted—until, alas! one day
He chanced to hear, in a casual way,
An insignificant little bird
Make use of a term he had never heard.
He was flying to bed in the dawning light
When he heard her singing with all her might,
“Hurray! hurray for the early worm!”

“Dear me!” said the Owl, “what a singular term!
I would look it up if it weren’t so late;
I must rise at dusk to investigate.
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes an Owl healthy and stealthy and wise!”

So he slept like an honest Owl all day,
And rose in the early twilight gray,
And went to work in the dusky light
To look for the early worm all night.

He searched the country for miles around,
But the early worm was not to be found.
So he went to bed in the dawning light,
And looked for the “worm” again next night.

And again and again, and again and again
He sought and he sought, but all in vain,
Till he must have looked for a year and a day
For the early worm, in the twilight gray.

At last in despair he gave up the search,
And was heard to remark, as he sat on his perch
By the side of his nest in the hollow tree,
“The thing is as plain as night to me—
Nothing can shake my conviction firm,
There’s no such thing as the early worm.”

There are badgers and bidgers and bodgers, and a Super-in-tendent’s House,
There are masses of goats, and a Polar, and different kinds of mouse,
And I think there’s a sort of a something which is called a wallaboo—
But I gave buns to the elephant when I went down to the Zoo!

If you try to talk to the bison, he never quite understands;
You can’t shake hands with a mingo—he doesn’t like shaking hands.
And lions and roaring tigers hate saying, “How do you do?”—
But I give buns to the elephant when I go down to the Zoo!

Do you still remember: falling stars,
how they leapt slantwise through the sky
like horses over suddenly held-out hurdles
of our wishes—did we have so many?—
for stars, innumerable, leapt everywhere;
almost every gaze upward became
wedded to the swift hazard of their play,
and our heart felt like a single thing
beneath that vast disintegration of their brilliance—
and was whole, as if it would survive them!

the gate, after they left us mortality estimates,

on a sheet to post in the hall, after they counted

our days of water—by megaphone from outside

the perimeter—and drove away, after our desperate

questions had exhausted all our tears, after we

looked at each other, first with suspicion of contagion,

then with curiosity, and then with love, someone

found a guitar, remembered a song, and we all

got in a line, laughing arm in arm, and danced.

I love you
            because the Earth turns round the sun
            because the North wind blows north
                 sometimes
            because the Pope is Catholic
                 and most Rabbis Jewish
            because the winters flow into springs
                 and the air clears after a storm
            because only my love for you
                 despite the charms of gravity
                 keeps me from falling off this Earth
                 into another dimension
I love you
            because it is the natural order of things

I love you
            like the habit I picked up in college
                 of sleeping through lectures
                 or saying I’m sorry
                 when I get stopped for speeding
            because I drink a glass of water
                 in the morning
                 and chain-smoke cigarettes
                 all through the day
            because I take my coffee Black
                 and my milk with chocolate
            because you keep my feet warm
                 though my life a mess
I love you
            because I don’t want it
                 any other way

I am helpless
            in my love for you
It makes me so happy
            to hear you call my name
I am amazed you can resist
            locking me in an echo chamber
            where your voice reverberates
            through the four walls
            sending me into spasmatic ecstasy
I love you
            because it’s been so good
            for so long
            that if I didn’t love you
            I’d have to be born again
            and that is not a theological statement
I am pitiful in my love for you

The Dells tell me Love
            is so simple
            the thought though of you
            sends indescribably delicious multitudinous
            thrills throughout and through-in my body
I love you
            because no two snowflakes are alike
            and it is possible
            if you stand tippy-toe
            to walk between the raindrops
I love you
            because I am afraid of the dark
                 and can’t sleep in the light
            because I rub my eyes
                 when I wake up in the morning
                 and find you there
            because you with all your magic powers were
                 determined that
I should love you
            because there was nothing for you but that
I would love you

I love you
            because you made me
                 want to love you
            more than I love my privacy
                 my freedom          my commitments
                      and responsibilities
I love you ’cause I changed my life
            to love you
            because you saw me one Friday
                 afternoon and decided that I would
love you
I love you I love you I love you

at a bad time, or bad news at a good?

Okay: Bad times don’t last forever.

Good times don’t last forever, either.

So news is, basically, Things change?

When it’s bad, we need the good.

That’s new, old, and always.

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

From And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

Picture a woman

riding thunder on

the legs of slavery ... 

2

Picture her kissing

our spines saying no to

the eyes of slavery ... 

3

Picture her rotating

the earth into a shape

of lives becoming ... 

4

Picture her leaning

into the eyes of our

birth clouds ... 

5

Picture this woman

saying no to the constant

yes of slavery ... 

6

Picture a woman

jumping rivers her

legs inhaling moons ... 

7

Picture her ripe

with seasons of

legs ... running ... 

8

Picture her tasting

the secret corners

of woods ... 

9

Picture her saying:

to change the world ... 

10

Imagine her words:

with a dreamer ... 

11

Imagine her saying:

only knew they were slaves ... 

12

Imagine her humming:

fore we taste freedom ... 

13

Imagine a woman

asking: How many workers

for this freedom quilt ... 

14

Picture her saying:

could tell no secrets ... 

15

Picture the daylight

bringing her to woods

full of birth moons ... 

16

Picture John Brown

shaking her hands three times saying:

General Tubman. General Tubman. General Tubman.

17

Picture her words:

right to: death or liberty ... 

18

Picture her saying no

to a play called Uncle Tom’s Cabin:

I am the real thing ... 

19

Picture a Black woman:

could not read or write

trailing freedom refrains ... 

20

Picture her face

turning southward walking

down a Southern road ... 

21

Picture this woman

freedom bound ... tasting a

people’s preserved breath ... 

22

Picture this woman

of royalty ... wearing a crown

of morning air ... 

23

Picture her walking,

running, reviving

a country’s breath ... 

24

Picture black voices

leaving behind

lost tongues ...

the gate, after they left us mortality estimates,

on a sheet to post in the hall, after they counted

our days of water—by megaphone from outside

the perimeter—and drove away, after our desperate

questions had exhausted all our tears, after we

looked at each other, first with suspicion of contagion,

then with curiosity, and then with love, someone

found a guitar, remembered a song, and we all

got in a line, laughing arm in arm, and danced.

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

From And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

a cardboard bed. Along this road, someone

saw a cougar last month. Forecast shows no sun.

After midnight, a train’s wail. At sunrise, crows, and sirens.

In the cart, neighbors start leaving food and water,

sleeping bag in a garbage bag, matches and gloves.

By dawn, they’re gone. Rain, moss, shadows. Only

a matter of time, some say, from a safe distance

across the fence. Every dawn provisions disappear,

and we celebrate. So far, the cart stands empty.

So far.

I like this poem because I think it touches on the important subject of homelessnes and how we all need to help.

And he hooted—until, alas! one day
He chanced to hear, in a casual way,
An insignificant little bird
Make use of a term he had never heard.
He was flying to bed in the dawning light
When he heard her singing with all her might,
“Hurray! hurray for the early worm!”

“Dear me!” said the Owl, “what a singular term!
I would look it up if it weren’t so late;
I must rise at dusk to investigate.
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes an Owl healthy and stealthy and wise!”

So he slept like an honest Owl all day,
And rose in the early twilight gray,
And went to work in the dusky light
To look for the early worm all night.

He searched the country for miles around,
But the early worm was not to be found.
So he went to bed in the dawning light,
And looked for the “worm” again next night.

And again and again, and again and again
He sought and he sought, but all in vain,
Till he must have looked for a year and a day
For the early worm, in the twilight gray.

At last in despair he gave up the search,
And was heard to remark, as he sat on his perch
By the side of his nest in the hollow tree,
“The thing is as plain as night to me—
Nothing can shake my conviction firm,
There’s no such thing as the early worm.”

 — Oliver Herit is about a lark which is a person that goes to early to something

the gate, after they left us mortality estimates,

on a sheet to post in the hall, after they counted

our days of water—by megaphone from outside

the perimeter—and drove away, after our desperate

questions had exhausted all our tears, after we

looked at each other, first with suspicion of contagion,

then with curiosity, and then with love, someone

found a guitar, remembered a song, and we all

got in a line, laughing arm in arm, and danced.
By KIM STAFFORD

I needed, for months after he died, to remember our rooms—
            some lit by the trivial, others ample

with an obscurity that comforted us: it hid our own darkness.
            So for months, duteous, I remembered:

rooms where friends lingered, rooms with our beds,
            with our books, rooms with curtains I sewed

from bright cottons. I remembered tables of laughter,
            a chipped bowl in early light, black

branches by a window, bowing toward night, & those rooms,
            too, in which we came together

to be away from all. And sometimes from ourselves:
            I remembered that, also.

But tonight—as I stand in the doorway to his room
            & stare at dusk settled there—

what I remember best is how, to throw my arms around his neck,
            I needed to stand on the tip of my toes.

My mouthful of grass.

My curious tale. I want to stand still but find myself moved patch by patch.

There's a bleat in my throat. Words fail me here. Can you understand? I sink to

my knees tired or not. I now know the ragweed from the goldenrod, and the blinding

beauty of green. Don't you see? I am shedding my skins. I am a paper hive, a wolf spider,

the creeping ivy, the ache of a birch, a heifer, a doc. I have fallen from my dream

of progress: the clear-cut glass, the potted and balconied tree, the lemon-waxed

wood over a marbled pillar, into my own nocturne. The lullabies I had forgotten.

How could I know what slept inside? What would rend my fantasies to cud and up

from this belly's wet straw-strewn field—

                                                                                   these soundings.

money in his pocket for coffee. He worries
he might fall asleep behind the wheel as his giant,
clumsy love for that small word—son—guides
his gaze to the crudely-sewn fabric of the miniature bear
down at the bottom of the barrel. Seasons have flared

& gone out with little change in his fear of stopping
for too long in any city, where he knows the addict
in him waits, patient as a desert bloom. Meanwhile, me:
his eldest child, the uneasy guardian of the house.
In his absence, I’ve not yet lost my virginity,

but I’ve had fist-fights with grown men & seen
my mother dragging her religious beliefs to the bitter
border of divorce. For years my father’s had trouble
saying no to crack-cocaine & women flowered in cheap
summer dresses. Watch his face as he arrives at last

& stretches the toy out, my mother fixed
on the porch behind me, the word son suddenly heavy
in my father’s mouth, his gray coat gathered
around his shoulders: he’s never looked so small.
We could crush him—we hug him instead.

knew how to guard one place with

roots and shade. Moss found

how to hug a stone for life.

Every stream works out how

to move in place, staying home

even as it flows generously

outward, sending bounty far.

Now is our time to practice —

singing from balconies, sending

words of comfort by any courier,

kindling our lonesome generosity

to shine in all directions like stars.

Shelter in Place

March 20, 2020

LISTEN TO KIM STAFFORD READ THIS POEM:

 

Oregon’s poet laureate wakes before dawn. He takes a long walk around his neighborhood. When he returns to his home in Southwest Portland, he carries a cup of black coffee in his favorite chipped mug to his tiny writing shed in the front yard. It’s “about the size of Thoreau’s hut,” he says, “made of scrounged materials.” One of the walls is made of boards from the original Elephants Delicatessen, another with boards from a fence. The multi-paned door is from a barn sale in Camp Sherman.

His days since the novel coronavirus became a pandemic haven’t been much different — but the poems reflect the times.

Every morning Stafford goes out into the dark “to see what comes to the page.” From there, in silence and darkness, he says he can find the deepest source of inspiration.

Before the news.

Before the flurry of daily life.

Stafford, 70, was born in Portland and is the son of William Stafford, who served as Oregon’s poet laureate from 1975 to 1990. It’s been almost two years since Kim Stafford was bestowed the title in May 2018 and he’s settled into the role. Unlike his father, whom he saw as deeply private, the younger Stafford sees his duty as a poet to be a “witness to the world." For him, poetry comes from two places: One is a deeply personal place of “intuition.” And the other is a sense of trying to be a “servant of the world.”

On these recent morning walks, he’s been thinking more and more about the news.

At first, there were warnings to wash your hands more often. So he wrote a poem about washing our hands. And then the schools closed, and local businesses were forced to shutter. So he wrote a poem about that. In response to COVID-19, Oregonians received a stay-home order from Gov. Kate Brown and so he wrote something for that, too.

He shares the results on Instagram, at @kimstaffordpoetry.

But he tries to see beyond the crisis at hand. He says a poem is a source of strength “because it’s short and sometimes mysterious. It invites a reader to step aside from the problem at hand and think and breathe.”

Poetry can start with a very small seed, he says. Lately he’s been latching on to words in the news — words like “pandemic” or “shelter in place.” Stafford tells his Lewis & Clark College poetry students that the news is good, but it tells only part of the story.

So each morning, Stafford sits there in his shed — in the glow of a dim lamp — waiting to see if there’s a seed.

Here, you’ll find seven poems Stafford has written on seven days since March 7, accompanied by photographs and videos Brooke Herbert and Beth Nakamura have made in recent weeks as the novel coronavirus came to dominate our lives.

He also encourages you to write or create. “I think one of my mottos is that the most important literature of our time is what has not yet been written. I encourage everyone to do some writing. Put your thoughts down on a page. It can lead to a more settled mind.”

Okay: Bad times don’t last forever.

Good times don’t last forever, either.

So news is, basically, Things change?

When it’s bad, we need the good.

That’s new, old, and always.

For my people lending their strength to the years, to the 
    gone years and the now years and the maybe years,
    washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending
    hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching
    dragging along never gaining never reaping never
    knowing and never understanding;

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama
    backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor
    and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking
    and playhouse and concert and store and hair and Miss
    Choomby and company;

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn 
    to know the reasons why and the answers to and the
    people who and the places where and the days when, in
    memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we
    were black and poor and small and different and nobody
    cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to
    be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and
    play and drink their wine and religion and success, to
    marry their playmates and bear children and then die
    of consumption and anemia and lynching;

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox
    Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New
    Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy
    people filling the cabarets and taverns and other
    people’s pockets needing bread and shoes and milk and
    land and money and something—something all our own;

For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time
     being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when
     burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled
     and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures
     who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

For my people blundering and groping and floundering in
     the dark of churches and schools and clubs and
     societies, associations and councils and committees and 
     conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and
     devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,
     preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by
     false prophet and holy believer;

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way
    from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,
    trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,
    all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless
    generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a
    bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second
    generation full of courage issue forth; let a people
    loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of
    healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing
    in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs
    be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now 
    rise and take control.

 

You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced,
   Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea,
   Gulping salt-water everlastingly,
Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced,
And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste;
   And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be,—
   Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry,
Legless, unloving, infamously chaste:—

O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,
   What is't ye do? What life lead? eh, dull goggles?
How do ye vary your vile days and nights?
   How pass your Sundays ? Are ye still but joggles
In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes, and bites,
   And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?

Amazing monster! that, for aught I know,
   With the first sight of thee didst make our race
   For ever stare! O flat and shocking face,
Grimly divided from the breast below!
Thou that on dry land horribly dost go
   With a split body and most ridiculous pace
   Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace,
Long-useless-finn'd, haired, upright, unwet, slow!

O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air,
   How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dry
And dreary sloth? What particle canst share
   Of the only blessed life, the watery?
I sometimes see of ye an actual pair
   Go by! linked fin by fin! most odiously.

Indulge thy smiling scorn, if smiling still,
   O man! and loathe, but with a sort of love;
   For difference must itself by difference prove,
And, in sweet clang, the spheres with music fill.
   One of the spirits am I, that at their will
   Live in whate'er has life—fish, eagle, dove—
No hate, no pride, beneath nought, nor above,
A visiter of the rounds of God's sweet skill.

Man's life is warm, glad, sad, 'twixt loves and graves,
   Boundless in hope, honoured with pangs austere,
Heaven-gazing; and his angel-wings he craves:—
   The fish is swift, small-needing, vague yet clear,
A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapped in round waves,
   Quickened with touches of transporting fear.

Oregon’s poet laureate wakes before dawn. He takes a long walk around his neighborhood. When he returns to his home in Southwest Portland, he carries a cup of black coffee in his favorite chipped mug to his tiny writing shed in the front yard. It’s “about the size of Thoreau’s hut,” he says, “made of scrounged materials.” One of the walls is made of boards from the original Elephants Delicatessen, another with boards from a fence. The multi-paned door is from a barn sale in Camp Sherman.

His days since the novel coronavirus became a pandemic haven’t been much different — but the poems reflect the times.

Every morning Stafford goes out into the dark “to see what comes to the page.” From there, in silence and darkness, he says he can find the deepest source of inspiration.

Before the news.

Before the flurry of daily life.

Stafford, 70, was born in Portland and is the son of William Stafford, who served as Oregon’s poet laureate from 1975 to 1990. It’s been almost two years since Kim Stafford was bestowed the title in May 2018 and he’s settled into the role. Unlike his father, whom he saw as deeply private, the younger Stafford sees his duty as a poet to be a “witness to the world." For him, poetry comes from two places: One is a deeply personal place of “intuition.” And the other is a sense of trying to be a “servant of the world.”

On these recent morning walks, he’s been thinking more and more about the news.

At first, there were warnings to wash your hands more often. So he wrote a poem about washing our hands. And then the schools closed, and local businesses were forced to shutter. So he wrote a poem about that. In response to COVID-19, Oregonians received a stay-home order from Gov. Kate Brown and so he wrote something for that, too.

He shares the results on Instagram, at @kimstaffordpoetry.

But he tries to see beyond the crisis at hand. He says a poem is a source of strength “because it’s short and sometimes mysterious. It invites a reader to step aside from the problem at hand and think and breathe.”

Poetry can start with a very small seed, he says. Lately he’s been latching on to words in the news — words like “pandemic” or “shelter in place.” Stafford tells his Lewis & Clark College poetry students that the news is good, but it tells only part of the story.

So each morning, Stafford sits there in his shed — in the glow of a dim lamp — waiting to see if there’s a seed.

Here, you’ll find seven poems Stafford has written on seven days since March 7, accompanied by photographs and videos Brooke Herbert and Beth Nakamura have made in recent weeks as the novel coronavirus came to dominate our lives.

He also encourages you to write or create. “I think one of my mottos is that the most important literature of our time is what has not yet been written. I encourage everyone to do some writing. Put your thoughts down on a page. It can lead to a more settled mind.”

how many long years

this tree waited as a seed

for an animal or bird or wind or rain

to maybe carry it to maybe the right spot

where again it waited months for seasons to change

until time and temperature were fine enough to coax it

to swell and burst its hard shell so it could send slender roots

to clutch at grains of soil and let tender shoots reach toward the sun

Think how many decades or centuries it thickened and climbed and grew

taller and deeper never knowing if it would find enough water or light

or when conditions would be right so it could keep on spreading leaves

adding blossoms and dancing

Next time

you see

a tree

think

how

much

hope

it holds

to sort through my memories

and come away whole

or untroubled.

It is difficult

to sift through the stones,

the weighty moments and know

which is rare gem,

which raw coal,

which worthless shale or slate.

So, one by one,

I drag them across the page

and when one cuts into the white,

leaves a trail of blood,

no matter how narrow the stream,

then I know

I’ve found the real thing,

the diamond,

one of the priceless gems

my pain produced.

“There! There,” I say,

“is a memory worth keeping.”

I chose this poem because of the detail and the good word choiseing.

to sort through my memories

and come away whole

or untroubled.

It is difficult

to sift through the stones,

the weighty moments and know

which is rare gem,

which raw coal,

which worthless shale or slate.

So, one by one,

I drag them across the page

and...

My Switch would not play Mario,
or Donkey Kong, or Yu-Gi-Oh!,
or Minecraft, or Monopoly,
or Captain Toad, or Pikmin 3,
Jurassic Park, or Kingdom Hearts,
or any game with racing karts,
or Shovel Knight, or Dragon Ball,
or, really, any game at all.

He gave it back and said, “It’s broke.”
I had to giggle at my joke.
I switched my Switch and played a trick.
I’d given him my painted brick.

I'd rather play at hug o' war,

Where everyone hugs

Instead of tugs

Where everyone giggles

And rolls on the rug,

Where everyone kisses

And everyone grins

And everyone cuddles

And everyone wins.

And he hooted—until, alas! one day
He chanced to hear, in a casual way,
An insignificant little bird
Make use of a term he had never heard.
He was flying to bed in the dawning light
When he heard her singing with all her might,
“Hurray! hurray for the early worm!”

“Dear me!” said the Owl, “what a singular term!
I would look it up if it weren’t so late;
I must rise at dusk to investigate.
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes an Owl healthy and stealthy and wise!”

So he slept like an honest Owl all day,
And rose in the early twilight gray,
And went to work in the dusky light
To look for the early worm all night.

He searched the country for miles around,
But the early worm was not to be found.
So he went to bed in the dawning light,
And looked for the “worm” again next night.

And again and again, and again and again
He sought and he sought, but all in vain,
Till he must have looked for a year and a day
For the early worm, in the twilight gray.

At last in despair he gave up the search,
And was heard to remark, as he sat on his perch
By the side of his nest in the hollow tree,
“The thing is as plain as night to me—
Nothing can shake my conviction firm,
There’s no such thing as the early worm.”

Elizabeth Bishop - 1911-1979

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
—the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly—
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
—It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
—if you could call it a lip—
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

She goes for a walk on an ocean wave,
She fishes for cats in a coral cave;
She drinks from an empty glass of milk,
And lines her potato trees with silk.
I’m sure that fornever and never was seen
So foolish a thing as the Nonsense Queen!

She ordered a wig for a blue bottle fly,
And she wrote a note to a pumpkin pie;
She makes all the oysters wear emerald rings,
And does dozens of other nonsensible things.
Oh! the scatterbrained, shatterbrained lady so grand,
Her Royal Skyhighness of Nonsense Land!

then climbs through the truck window.   

She ignores me as I walk around it,   

hitting the flat tires with an iron rod.

The old man yells for me to help hitch the team,

but I keep walking around the truck, hitting harder,   

until my mother calls.

I pick up a rock and throw it at the kitchen window,   

but it falls short.

The old man’s voice bounces off the air like a ball

I can’t lift my leg over.

I stand beside him, waiting, but he doesn’t look up

and I squeeze the rod, raise it, his skull splits open.   

Mother runs toward us. I stand still,

get her across the spine as she bends over him.

I drop the rod and take the rifle from the house.   

Roses are red, violets are blue,

one bullet for the black horse, two for the brown.   

They’re down quick. I spit, my tongue’s bloody;   

I’ve bitten it. I laugh, remember the one out back.   

I catch her climbing from the truck, shoot.   

The doll lands on the ground with her.

I pick it up, rock it in my arms.

Yeah. I’m Jack, Hogarth’s son.

I’m nimble, I’m quick.

In the house, I put on the old man’s best suit

and his patent leather shoes.

I pack my mother’s satin nightgown

and my sister’s doll in the suitcase.

Then I go outside and cross the fields to the highway.

I’m fourteen. I’m a wind from nowhere.   

I can break your heart.

I like and chose this poem because it tells the story of her or another (not specified) person that could relate to memories from her childhood. It's a little gory but it makes a good poem when you can see the imagery while reading.

at a bad time, or bad news at a good?

 

 

Okay: Bad times don’t last forever.

 

 

Good times don’t last forever, either.

 

So news is, basically, Things change?

 

When it’s bad, we need the good.

That’s new, old, and always.

three shades of blue

evoke minnie's can do,

soo chow's, yori wada

2.

jimbo's bop city,

john lee's boom boom room,

history riffing vlue matzoh balls,

fried chicken, soba

3.

the jigoku club inside

j town, bold rebels jamming

cross from black town, udon,

grits, barbecue

4.

cherry blossoms vlooming

in lady day's hair, greens & fat back,

sashimi staining kimonos

5.

you walking filmore,

crossing geary with duke,

street cars running over ghost-tracks,

pigfeet in vinegar

6.

indigo-blue & white,

red satin, sticky fingers handling

chops sticks, hot cornbread,

sweet potato pie

7.

memories brought back

in a blue mirror, gefilte fish,

kimochi, lox & bagels

8.

filmore auditorium

jamming beneath miles of blue,

bird, mink, nihomachi.

a fake dividing line

9.

mixing it all up

this cultural jambalaya stew,

kabuki, white linen,

silk, coltrane

10.

music the glue singing

new images of multi-you

rapping in the sweet blue air

Goodbye! :) :D 

And dreams in the sky,

Hoping that, someday, the roots of one

Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.

 

It has not happened yet.

We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:

 

Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,

Even as we stand on uncertain ground.

 

The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,

Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.

 

The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,

Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.

 

The sky is our common home, the place we all live.

There we are in the world together.

 

The dream of sky requires no passport.

Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.

 

Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.

Know that you always have a home here.

I’ve made it my profession.

Let me tell you how many

ways things can go wrong.

Every dream I cherish I

break down in short order.

Give me a night, I’ll wrestle

any vision to surrender. I’m

where ideas come to die.

I’m worried that’s why

my friends don’t call.

I like this poem because I can relate to a bit of the worry that this poet is feeling. I also like the word choice. They cut the dense fat, but still have a unique way of writing that makes you think.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

For if you ever, ever, ever,
If you ever, ever, ever
If you ever, ever, ever touch its tail,
You will never, never, never,
You will never, never, never,
You will never, never
Meet another whale.

  

No gold comb can move through

This mane. My skin is not translucent.

Mine is a tail to fear. I know.

And though a mother may destroy,

She too sees fit to create beauty

That would eventually grow into forms

I would swallow if I gave in

To my hungers. But, up from my wounds—

From this goat's body—

Up from my wood-smoke lungs, from

The milk of me, comes a song, a melody

To open yours, then lick them clean.

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

I picked this poem because I think it is a cool way to look at hope.

They were positively passionate
and truly in the groove,
and by watching very closely
I could almost see them move.

 — Kenn Nesbitt

I like playing soccer. This was funny. My mom loves Sloths.