Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Spring incantation

oh, these needles of rain 
the skies are full of surprises

my only choice of speech
is a quiet, topographical melody 

for I bring us to forsythia
and crocus, tulip, and daffodil

a readying redbud now, then
a promise of hellebore and more 
__________
Pic: A redbud getting ready by the Red Cedar.

Friday, March 15, 2024

visions

Pic: I prepped copies of poems to hand out at the Gaza panel on Monday. 

I felt so rich in poetry after I collated this collection to pass on to the organizers. 

I had visions of myself just standing in the hallway shoving poetry under classroom doors, putting them on bulletin boards,  and throwing fistfuls of paper into the air so it would rain poetry... like Regina George distributing copies from the "Burn Book" in Mean Girls, but more meaningful.

I hope I do a good job at the event on Monday. And I'm excited for Mosab Abu Toha's event on Tuesday--to which I have online tickets.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

companion song

desire turning into decision 
at once terrifying, free
I am moved

into the path of turning knives
their rhythms familiar
I am here

afraid of turning the page
my mind un-scrolling
I am opened

like a hinge into the world
I've been here before--
I return once more
_____________________
Pic: Max and Huck, my writing companions, snoozing in the sunshine.

Monday, March 11, 2024

a private communion

I dream of tangerines
sweet with summer
how I will wait 

for the right moment  
to touch, peel them 
with reverence

their flesh like that
of a new beloved
still secret

our meeting--kisses 
sluicing nectarine 
in blessing 
________________________
Pic: Geese on the banks of the Red Cedar. I thought there was something very balletic about their pose...

Saturday, March 09, 2024

scenic/cynic

When I leave this country of fog
my bags of salt fall into the river
carried away like tears
*
breezes blow out birthday candles
whistle through my aching head
lift thoughts like kites
*
every day I make my body stronger
it will build a city, knock out bullies
I dream as fast as I can 
_____________________

Pic: The Red Cedar behind L's house. L will be gone for a month, so we had an extra long walk-and-talk this week.

Wednesday, March 06, 2024

upcoming

"A book must be an axe for the frozen sea inside us." 
Kafka in a letter to Oskar Pollak 

As it happens: 
I have some books
I have at least two axes
I have the frozen sea
so I have all 3/3
*
the day is cloud-colored
my hair is in my eyes
I travel inside the love 
I have built for you
where it is windy
*
but this time tomorrow
Spring will be closer
these shoots coming up
groping their way into 
the air, would agree 
________________
Pic: Tulips (I think) coming up... Not my garden (I wish). From a quick walk to MSU this morning.

Tuesday, March 05, 2024

a koan noting nothing

look, I said to the sky
my yearning is born 
in the wrong time

these hands that held
books and babies 
now hold air 

even falling like beauty 
this light is silent
oh, cold god  
___________________
Notes: I like knowing "nothing" was pronounced "noting" in Elizabethan English. The "nothing" itself didn't come from emptiness but from a very long 12-hour (14 with the commute) work day.

Pic: The REDress Project by Jaime Black-Morsette at MSU. From my walk yesterday.

Saturday, March 02, 2024

just killing time/filling the silence

mothers look away from me now
seconds abscond with sense 
in glissandos of angst

dreams pour out their sure poison 
I play it safe and then pretend 
--what? I don't understand

watching homes bloom in flame
and wart and scab into craters 
--I am an earnest surveyor

of everything left unsaid, noting
the news burns the day when 
it could be lit up with peace 
_____________________________

Note: Someday I will write a poem about Aaron Bushnell, but this is not it.
Pic: A mallard couple by themselves... they took to the water as we neared and I felt bad for disturbing their peace. Baker Woods Bog with L and T.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

I am not alone

I live for the broad roofs
of wide skies lately
I'm thinking of making up 
my own cosmology

a sister sun, a mother moon
I'll urge on a webbing,
make belonging a whole world 
build like an animal

trusting one, another, and another 
where all of us are lost
--and it's okay and it's expected 
as everywhere is safe

kindness a patina to shine on  
the knots of this world
this goddamned beautiful world 
winding down slowly

surely, but still with so many
of those we love here...
still here, so I release to air
the ones who 

have been handfuls of sawdust
and ash
to live on as kin and stardust
everywhere 
_______________________________
Pic: Sunset today over the Maple on my way home. 

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

bleak week

I'm having a tough time this week. It's not that I can't go on... I am. But I keep feeling like I can't... On the surface, things look normal, but it feels like my sense of reality is being eroded--like the sandy shore slipping from under my feet in a dream yesterday. 

What's it all for if I can see the horror every day and am absolutely incapable of saving a single child? The amputations and caesareans without anesthesia, the firing at U.N. food distribution camps, the six-year-old calling emergency services trapped in a car full of her dead family... This is truly the stuff of horror.  And yet.... yet again... The U.S. has vetoed a ceasefire in Gaza for the third time. A ceasefire! 

BOL's cat who saw them through undergrad and grad school died and I want to be there to support them the way they supported me when Scout was dying... But also, it brought me back to that month of slowly losing Scout... the dread of every day. I'm surprised that it will be a whole year without my darling in just about two months.

Pic: E.D. Wilson's poem "My Phone is Full of Cute Cats and Dead Children."

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

The Sun: a poem and a pic

Mary Oliver: The Sun
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower...

Full poem here: http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_thesun.html 
Pic: Sunset on my way home. Despite everything, the beauty of our world is just so breathtaking...

Saturday, February 17, 2024

the first cousin to die

for Sunil

I'm always eight, you're always fourteen
in the long time ago that lasts forever 
I know now I'll never see you again

you have other people to haunt and anyway
 they probably want to hang with you--
the dad you lost at two, your young uncle...

all those men in your family who died young
it's why your mother, grandmother, sister 
 dote on you, as if to try to keep you forever 

I wondered how you had more friends than books
I confused you too--I remember when you 
congratulated me about my school exams, 

and seemed so confused why it was important...
 I mean--you were so rich you didn't have to work
--and I don't think you did even at 40, right?

but you were always kind... if a bit ganja-fueled 
when a single kindness could keep me happy
for days. I wonder at my dad saying

I shouldn't be alone with you... I feel you loved 
my gentle dad, wished he were yours
in the sheerness of the childhood--

which brightened us up... now only if this end
too could lift us up... instead it sets us adrift... 
as if to warn us we're going... extinct 
_________________________________________

Pic: An icy, windy day--but oh, such brilliantly blue, sunshiny skies. A long walk with Big A to the MSU Baseball stadium. 

Friday, February 16, 2024

what we do

the sky is full of bright 
holes, so whatever falls
from  them  is starry-- 
starting from distance 
but  now  lodged here

like empathy turned
into  a fact,  eternal
and  then carefully
teaching us to crest 
in  announcements

on  days  when  our
world seems ready to 
ignite, we can shout:
"I love you so much"
in a room of strangers
_________________________________

Pic: Max and Nu in yesterday's surprise snow. 

Thursday, February 15, 2024

in every register

my thoughts grow still 
in a landscape slowing
with  sleep, reckoning
now embalms the day

today  I  have  filled
my  heart  again  and 
again... today I willed
my soul to feel beauty 

for on learning in me 
the enduring vapor 
of stars; the brilliant 
 brevities of  flowers

I choose from the new
the needed next step... 
I will see the end arrive
still speaking only love 
_____________

Pic: Saying goodbye to Huckie and Maxie is the toughest part of my morning.

Thursday, February 08, 2024

on not meeting expectations

I don't like my grade the student says
You're not from here, are you?
the student says

So where are you actually from? 
(India!) I thought so...
student smiles

I got the assignment wrong because
of your language (English?) 
the student says

It is so rude of you, the student says
to say... that my assignment 
didn't meet expectations
____________________________________________

Note: This came from a long and unsettling office-hour exchange with my one disgruntled student today. It felt demeaning and I was so... crushed. Luckily, it was also the day our PR team had alerted me to an alumni interview which spoke glowingly of me, so I had some balance. But I'd been working on a new version of our land and labor acknowledgment, so it also felt like I'd been wrestling with issues of prejudice all day. 

Pic: No pic today--it was too, too hectic. My Thursdays are so long that they've become standard Subway-for-dinner days--Big A picks them up between his clinic and hospital shifts.

Wednesday, February 07, 2024

an infinity

the curl of this wave... like
the undeniable curl of a smile
the curl of my hand inside yours

I may be in love with 
the unbothered way it spills
over... of how its crimped cusp

holds in everything: 
laughter erupting unruly
the turns and returns of grief 

look how tightly it wraps
itself around us, so we know 
its whorl could swallow us whole  
_________________________

Pic: Not Michigan. On the beach in Cabo a few days ago. 

Saturday, January 27, 2024

not here

the seasons may be changing 
but longing is replaced with
longing over here

I can hear you calling for me
and turn around eagerly
but all is empty here

you must have moved away 
where did you go--you 
who were once here?

I pretend I'm with you and alive
supposing I live only because 
you haunt me here
_____________________
Pic: Oh, the irony! A sudden thaw and now there are giant puddles in the backyard everywhere... except in the pond we dug! I laughed every time I caught sight of this today. 

Thursday, January 25, 2024

from a place of absence

Scout's  harness in a Ziploc
stays a  door always ajar
becomes a souvenir in
a sweet completeness 
of loss... nostalgia

Scout's photo on the altar 
has guarded so fiercely 
hellish trails of regret 
just my two eyes...
all these tears

___________________________

Pic: Snow and sky in the backyard this weekend. The last couple of days have been so foggy... I've been white-knuckling it to and from work as visibility is very low, especially in low-lying pockets, and it's easy to imagine shapes where there aren't any and miss objects that only loom up at the last minute.

Saturday, January 20, 2024

winter afternoon

the book forgotten in my hands
this blood rush in my wrists 
leaves of light and insight 
quickly extinguished 

by my impatience for happiness
the dear, vulgar excitements--
where I embrace your 
suspended grace 

expecting your face will soften
when I say my wild gladness 
doesn't know where to end--
has only learned to bloom 
_____________
Pic: From this afternoon's walk with Big A. The Red Cedar is frozen upstream, but here by the rapids, there were crowds of mallards with their emerald plumage and ridiculous orange feet. 

Friday, January 19, 2024

infinitesimal

falling  where I  stand
fireworks and splinters 
of every moment's joy 
waving back like seas.
Every time  I  wonder--
if  this  is the  last time

Every time I remember--
it could be the last time 
I keep  up  conversations
with my body, its  borders 
while stars fall into my lap,
songs dissolve into laughter.

Pic: One of Max's many cuddly contortions with Big A.

Spring incantation

oh, these needles of rain  the skies are full of surprises my only choice of speech is a quiet, topographical melody  for I bring us to fors...