Category Archives: poem

written by an old woman

around me in a stillness, a lonlieness
composed of slow shadows and lights
this old house takes its rest with a creak
echoing down the hall to my musty bedroom
shared by only one, the creaks reminding me
of how my knees used to climb stairs
and how these bedsprings used to jump when
he was alive and how the kids used
to clatter and creak through the kitchen
how the years turn like a watch rusting

click click creak

how memories torture me daily but at night they
meekly creak a complaint before I tie them up
and flush them with the efficiency of a proud soldier.

Braiding

We, with long fingers and
deft movements,
tame freshly washed hair
into three equal parts.

Without thought,
strands become one,
twisting over and
over to fall gently down
a smooth bare back

in the mirror,
we turn, preening-
smooth the sides
stroke the length of braid.
Ghostly generations
nod approval.

Burial Rites on White Island Volcano (haibun)

The way the sulfur burns our throats on this molten prison
This smoking island “it can’t possibly be worth it” digging
Yellow neon sweating rock – but oh how on some sun-filled days
The deep water around us seems gentle and free and how the birds
May have returned to say goodnight as we settle in, bones aching
From hard labor, our feet covered in volcanic dust, our nostrils
Burnt with the sulfur, oh it is ungodly quiet when we settle in to sleep,
It is quiet when the lahars bury us at sea….

End of days foretold
swiftly the darkness becomes
a light to walk towards.

[written about the the White Island volcano in New Zealand: “Attempts were made in the mid 1880s, 1898–1901 and 1913-1914 to mine sulphur from White Island but the last of these came to a halt in September 1914, when part of the western crater rim collapsed, creating a lahar which killed all 10 workers. They disappeared without trace, and only a camp cat survived.”]

The Silver Fish by Shawn Pittard (guest)

Really enjoyed the poem below ~ hope you do as well!
 
American Life in Poetry: Column 380
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Lots of contemporary poems are merely little personal anecdotes set into lines, but I prefer my
anecdotes to have an overlay of magic. Here’s just such a poem by Shawn Pittard, who lives in
California.

The Silver Fish

I killed a great silver fish,
cut him open with a long

thin knife. The river carried
his heart away. I took his

dead eyes home. His red flesh
sang to me on the fire I built

in my backyard. His taste
was the lost memory of my

wildness. Behind amber clouds
of cedar smoke, Orion

drew his bow. A black moon rose
from the night’s dark waters,

a sliver of its bright face
reflecting back into the universe.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org),
publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of
Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Shawn Pittard, from his most recent book of poems,
Standing in the River, Tebot Bach, 2011. Poem reprinted by permission of Shawn Pittard and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry ©2006 The Poetry Foundation
Contact: alp@poetryfoundation.org
This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.