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Poetry by JC Snyder

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  • Everything is Waiting For You by David Whyte

    Last Sunday, I was able to participate in a wonderful event called Dancing on the Fragile Edge of the World: A Scholarship Concert of Music and Poetry with Michael S. Glaser (my former college professor), Brian Ganz, and Deanna Nikaido. I’d like to share one of the featured readings from this event here in an effort to share the love, light, and positive energy that the event gave to me.

    Everything is Waiting for You

    Your great mistake is to act the drama
    as if you were alone. As if life
    were a progressive and cunning crime
    with no witness to the tiny hidden
    transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
    the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
    even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
    the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
    out your solo voice You must note
    the way the soap dish enables you,
    or the window latch grants you freedom.
    Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
    The stairs are your mentor of things
    to come, the doors have always been there
    to frighten you and invite you,
    and the tiny speaker in the phone
    is your dream-ladder to divinity.

    Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
    the conversation. The kettle is singing
    even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
    have left their arrogant aloofness and
    seen the good in you at last. All the birds
    and creatures of the world are unutterably
    themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

    — David Whyte
    from Everything is Waiting for You
    ©2003 Many Rivers Press

    October 4, 2017

  • Fiercely, we hold on

    We are never more rooted
    in this big universe than
    when our eyes sting and
    our heads hang heavy for loss.

    When we, a procession of sun
    glasses, watch, shifting feet,
    as life disappears back into
    those thick familiar arms.

    Our backs, clothed in black,
    savor warmth, unaware that
    we are at once joyful and empty,
    and crying for ourselves

    mirrored in the lowering. How
    we know deeply: absence
    of something weighs more than
    substance, and we fiercely hold on.

    September 29, 2017
    death, funeral, poem, poetry

  • First time asleep

    the first time i slept with him,
    that sleep unafraid, mouth open,
    not worried about drool or how my
    cheeks fold and stack unattractive, i
    felt like i had stepped out of
    my skin, unzipped, truly naked
    for the first time, thinking you’ve
    never seen me before until now, you’ve
    never realized how i would
    lie awake waiting until your breath
    cascaded slower, until your own
    mouth fell aside, your soft snore my
    signal: all clear to close your eyes.

    July 3, 2017
    sleep

  • My Blue Shirt by Gary Whited

    American Life in Poetry: Column 621

    BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

    “The next time you open your closet, this poem will give you reason to pay a little more attention to what’s hanging inside. Gary Whited is from Massachusetts and his most recent book is Having Listened, (Homebound Publications, 2013).”

    My Blue Shirt

    hangs in the closet
    of this small room, collar open,
    sleeves empty, tail wrinkled.
    Nothing fills the shirt but air
    and my faint scent. It waits,
    all seven buttons undone,
    button holes slack,
    the soft fabric with its square white pattern,
    all of it waiting for a body.
    It would take any body, though it knows,
    in its shirt way of knowing, only mine
    has my shape in its wrinkles,
    my bend in the elbows.
    Outside this room birds hunt for food,
    young leaves drink in morning sunlight,
    people pass on their way to breakfast.
    Yet here, in this closet,
    the blue shirt needs nothing,
    expects nothing, knows only its shirt knowledge,
    that I am now learning—how to be private and patient,
    how to be unbuttoned,
    how to carry the scent of what has worn me,
    and to know myself by the wrinkles.
     

    We do not accept unsolicited submissions. 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© 2013 by Gary Whited, “My Blue Shirt,” from Having Listened, (Homebound Publications, 2013). Poem reprinted by permission of Gary Whited and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2017 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.

    February 13, 2017

  • Everything is Fine, Go Back to Sleep

    I worry; you’re so good at hiding things,
    like grit between your teeth, or
    his baseball stats, her diminishing frame. Your heart is a
    container full and piled high, your hands those of a thief,
    gloved and stealthy, your chest a locked door.
    I know the spot and still cannot find it.
    Each sleep brings a chance, I think now I am here,
    but the scent dies, trail dissolves,
    your smile shakes the dream: “Everything is fine, go back to sleep.”

    July 11, 2016

  • Is this too a dream?

    I dream so well, so deep,
    sometimes I can’t tell the dreaming
    from the living. The rooms are both blue.

    Have you ever thought you awoke, only to
    find you were still dreaming? The clocks
    on the wall melt like Dali.

    When you say I Love You, the words seem
    slow. If I reach out to touch you, will you
    still be there, will you still be?

    March 18, 2016

  • 6 years ago – and the poetry

    Hard to believe this all started 6 years ago. To all my poetry lovers out there – THANK YOU! And I’m sorry for the neglect… but I’m back 🙂 #JustPressSend

    I found the words while
    cleaning. They were
    hiding in a corner I never visit anymore,
    in a house I neglect,
    their edges yellowing, those once
    tall Ts slumped, bowled over by
    gravity, and between tiny spaces,
    weeds now rooted, all but
    wrecking the leading, so many lines askew.

    what a mess, a holy mess,
    but the point is – I found them.

    February 25, 2016

  • rain and Canadian pennies

    If, when walking to a window
    to view rain in shiny opaque sheets,
    you find a Canadian penny
    sitting on the sill,

    is it still good luck?

    Or are you more alone than ever
    because the world is washing away
    and even lucky charms
    are foreign –

    Or are we luckier than we realize?
    Maybe we should thank our fellow
    traveler for such a token of a
    big and shining world.

    November 24, 2015

  • Backbones unfurled

    In the east we paint
    rebelliously, our backbones
    Unfurled. Trains, unaware
    Hum low tones “I’m here,
    I’m here.”

     

    November 17, 2015

  • Celebrate Impermanence

    Celebrate impermanence;
    wash your upturned face in scents
    like shadows, harbor, industry, earth;
    let autumn slant and shimmer
    until all becomes a checkered dock.

    Grab tight the world and squeeze in familiar
    desperation – then
    relax and open up.

    Celebrate Impermanence
    Celebrate Impermanence
    October 22, 2015

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