“Everyone needs inside them an ocean or a river.”
—Gail Jones, in Dreams of Speaking (adapted from puddlenotes)
August 2011
“if i love You
(thickness means
worlds inhabited by roamingly
stern bright faeries
if you love
me)distance is mind carefully
luminous with innumerable gnomes
Of complete dream
if we love each(shyly)
other,what clouds do or Silently
Flowers resembles beauty
less than our breathing” —“if i love You” (poem LVI) by E. E. Cummings (in Complete Poems 1904 - 1962)
(thickness means
worlds inhabited by roamingly
stern bright faeries
if you love
me)distance is mind carefully
luminous with innumerable gnomes
Of complete dream
if we love each(shyly)
other,what clouds do or Silently
Flowers resembles beauty
less than our breathing” —“if i love You” (poem LVI) by E. E. Cummings (in Complete Poems 1904 - 1962)
“september is a month like any other and unlike any other. it seems in september everything awaited will arrive: in the calm air, in a particular scent, in the stillness of the quay. when september comes, i know i’m going to lose myself.”
—Reina María Rodríguez, from memory of water
“Everything was already here and I am the last to be born.
Small questions fill her mind like birds circling. Skeleton trees, stripped of their flesh by frost, are changing again. Green tips harden at last year’s final moments.
She waits at the wild end of the garden, leaning on a gate in her coat—the one she wouldn’t wear. But now everything seems beautiful—especially the buttons; small tusks discolored by a thousand meals. The mystery of pockets.
At the farthest end of the wood, where no one comes, is where her life begins and ends.” —First lines to Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy
Small questions fill her mind like birds circling. Skeleton trees, stripped of their flesh by frost, are changing again. Green tips harden at last year’s final moments.
She waits at the wild end of the garden, leaning on a gate in her coat—the one she wouldn’t wear. But now everything seems beautiful—especially the buttons; small tusks discolored by a thousand meals. The mystery of pockets.
At the farthest end of the wood, where no one comes, is where her life begins and ends.” —First lines to Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy
“
On the threshold of this poem shake off the dust
the powder of hate from your soul
set aside passion
so as not to defile words
Into this space step alone
and the tenderness of things will enfold you
and lead you toward the dark
as if you had lost worldly sight
There whatever was named will return
and stand in the radiance so you and I
can find each other
like two trees that were lost in fog
I remember
too much
or not enough
Man Like You
Patrick Watson
Man Like You by Patrick Watson (from the wonderful album Wooden Arms)
I knew a boy who was swallowed by the sky
By the flashing lights
I knew a man who got lost in the big dark blue
And came out alive
I knew a boy I knew a man that looked a lot like you
I knew a time you could stand still beside
Never rushing by
I knew a place you’d go for your head to explode
Into peace of mind
I knew a time I knew a place that felt a lot like you
I knew a boy I knew a man who looked a lot like you
Just like you
I knew a friend that would hold on to the flames
Keep them from burning you
I knew a smile like that could see through all of the stones
That the world had thrown
I knew a smile I knew a friend who looked a lot like you
I knew a boy I knew a man who looked a lot like you
“An odd phrase, “by heart,” he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.”
—A. S. Byatt, Possession
“
The world comes into the poem.
The poem comes into the world.
Reciprocity – it all comes down
To that.
As with lovers:
When it’s right you can’t say
Who is kissing whom.
Lighten up, lighten up.
Let go of the heaviness.
Was it a poem from the Book
That so weighed you down?
Impossible. Less than a feather.
Less than the seed a milkweed
Pod releases in the breeze.
“I think I see you in the wind
but then I think I see the wind.” —Malachi Black, from Quarantine (via the-final-sentence)
but then I think I see the wind.” —Malachi Black, from Quarantine (via the-final-sentence)
