i exist differently. i am
the breath between
breaths, the gap. a golden hue
between day and night, your
pause between no and yes, i am
a living rift.
i see a girl at a crowded deck party.
she says “look, that girl is all alone” and
i am both
proclaimer and vision.
i want to be like so many
rows of seeds planted
over hard long years, who
now in the light of new sun
carefully test a path.
i want to be groomed to grow
tall, like a tomato plant up a rod.
but i am a poet, a seeker.
a dandelion unplanted, unplanned,
so ruinous to fields
but joyous to winds.
i am rain
drops. how so definitively
i collapse into a puddle
only to rebound skyward. have you ever
seen rain in this incredible dance?
i fall, i rise, fall again.
my skin expands in ever increasing waves
before settling into a universe
quietly dying in the exact same way.
My great-grandmother, Alice B. Johnson, author of three poetry books and The Complete Scandinavian Cookbook.
Kiss my hip bones if
you want to know me.
Stubborn mouth, a lack
of venture grounds you.
Hip bones are grave lovers.
If you kiss mine, you’ll
taste certain ash and stars
promised again, so soon.
I apologize readers for the lack of poetry! I’ve compiled a few from Mays gone by to keep you going while I get myself together and start writing again 🙂
I love the immediacy of this poem. The raw feel of it~ Enjoy!
American Life in Poetry: Column 474
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Let’s celebrate the first warm days of spring with a poem for mushroom hunters, this one by Amy Fleury, who lives in Louisiana.
First Morel
Up from wood rot,
wrinkling up from duff
and homely damps,
spore-born and cauled
like a meager seer,
it pushes aside earth
to make a small place
from decay. Bashful,
it brings honeycombed
news from below
of the coming plenty
and everything rising.
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. Copyright © 2013 by Amy Fleury from her most recent book of poems, Sympathetic Magic, Southern Illinois University Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of Amy Fleury and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2014 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 provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Loved this poem today – and was compelled to share. See Ted Kooser’s comments below as an intro into Hedin’s piece. Enjoy!
******************************
American Life in Poetry: Column 473
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
I was born in April and have never agreed with T.S. Eliot that it is “the cruellest month.” Why would I want to have been born from that? Here’s Robert Hedin, who lives in Minnesota, showing us what April can be like once Eliot is swept aside.
This Morning I Could Do A Thousand Things
I could fix the leaky pipe
Under the sink, or wander over
And bother Jerry who’s lost
In the bog of his crankcase.
I could drive the half-mile down
To the local mall and browse
Through the bright stables
Of mowers, or maybe catch
The power-walkers puffing away
On their last laps. I could clean
The garage, weed the garden,
Or get out the shears and
Prune the rose bushes back.
Yes, a thousand things
This beautiful April morning.
But I’ve decided to just lie
Here in this old hammock,
Rocking like a lazy metronome,
And wait for the day lilies
To open. The sun is barely
Over the trees, and already
The sprinklers are out,
Raining their immaculate
Bands of light over the lawns.
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 Robert Hedin from his most recent book of poems, Poems Prose Poems, Red Dragonfly Press, 2013. Poem reprinted by permission of Robert Hedin and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2014 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 provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
some people say
“the die is cast”
when they should say “I have taken my turn,
I have made my bed,
and must now lie down to rest
with all these decisions.”
each minute my hair greys, I can either
believe the earth spins in dark space alone or
expel hot air into a spring blue sky with purpose.
Poetry by JC Snyder 