Dawn Revisited by Rita Dove

 

Imagine you wake up

with a second chance: The blue jay

hawks his pretty wares

and the oak still stands, spreading

glorious shade. If you don’t look back,

the future never happens.

How good to rise in sunlight,

in the prodigal smell of biscuits –

eggs and sausage on the grill.

The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open

to a blank page. Come on,

shake a leg! You’ll never know

who’s down there, frying those eggs,

if you don’t get up and see.

Photo by William Christenberry by Kate Daniels

 Photo by William Christenberry

by Kate Daniels

Akron, Alabama, circa 1960

This is what it was like to grow up
down there, then. A pretty place
but desolate. The signs that are supposed
to tell you what to do, or be, or buy
are faded to the point of inarticulation.
You surmise people used to talk
about everything you need to know
but have grown silent for some reason.
A black man sat down in a soda shop
to eat a bite, and terrified, it seemed, the patrons.
I was there in that tense silence,
licking my strawberry cone, and it was
just like this picture of kudzu in winter,
the prettiness all covered over
with something growing too fast,
enshrouding the landscape with a sinewy
fabric that lives off the lives of others.
Or this next one of the house and car
in Akron, Alabama. The house is beat-up
and rusty, but habitable. You could live there
fine until something happens – a cross
flaming on the uncut lawn, or your housegirl’s husband
with his foot shot off. That blue car’s 
been in the yard forever just waiting
for you to need it, and now you do.
So you head out, past the washer on the porch
and down the walk. You get in and realize
you’re not going anywhere: it’s up on blocks,
overrun by families of mice and birds. Why 
did you never notice that before? How stuck here
you are with the blank sky and the fallen fences, the awful
unexplained silences of the South.

The visible and the in- by Marge Piercy

 

Some people move through your life

like the perfume of peonies, heavy

and sensual and lingering.

Some people move through your life

like the sweet musky scent of cosmos

so delicate if you sniff twice, it’s gone.

Some people occupy your life

like moving men who cart off

couches, pianos and break dishes.

Some people touch you so lightly you

are not sure it happened. Others leave

you flat with footprints on your chest.

Some are like those fall warblers

you can’t tell from each other even

though you search Petersen’s.

Some come down hard on you like

a striking falcon and the scars remain

and you are forever wary of the sky.

We all are waiting rooms at bus

stations where hundreds have passed

through unnoticed and others

have almost burned us down

and others have left us clean and new

and others have just moved in.

In the Presence of Absence

You ask: What is the meaning of refugee?

They will say: One who is uprooted from his homeland.

You ask: What is the meaning of homeland?

They will say: The house, the mulberry tree, the chicken coop, the beehive, the smell of bread, and the first sky.

You ask: Can a word of eight letters be big enough for all of these, yet too small for us?

     -  -  -  mahmoud darwish

 

The Bookstall by Linda Pastan

 

Just looking at them

I grow greedy, as if they were

freshly baked loaves

waiting on their shelves

to be broken open—that one

and that—and I make my choice

in a mood of exalted luck,

browsing among them

like a cow in sweetest pasture.

For life is continuous

as long as they wait

to be read—these inked paths

opening into the future, page

after page, every book

its own receding horizon.

And I hold them, one in each hand,

a curious ballast weighting me

here to the earth.

 

Field Guide by Tony Hoagland

 

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,

up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather

floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,

like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.

That’s all.

I mention this in the same way

that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,

so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.

Birthday by Kathleen Rooney

 

At first, birthdays were
reserved for kings and saints.
But it’s rainbow sprinkles and
face painting for everybody
these days.

The best way to avoid having
your birthday ruined is to avoid
having any expectations for
your birthday.

Without the delineation of
years, time would become
an expanse of open water.
Horizonless, shark-filled. One
of my biggest fears.

A rush of Orange Crush—that
sparkle on the tongue—and
“Make a wish!” shouted at the top
of tiny lungs are a couple of things
I recall. Balloons and streamers
and the first piece of cake. Conical
hats with elastic chin straps.

Is a birthday party an instance
of what Durkheim meant
by collective effervescence?
Profane tasks cast away for
a sacred second?

Whence my ambivalence about
birth as a metaphor? Birth for
entities not brought forth from
a womb?

“Happy Birthday to You” is
a bit of a dirge.

It’s said that the party hat may
have originated with the dunce
cap. An abrogation of social
norms? Not punishment in
school, but foolish cavorting.
Worn for the pinning of tails on
donkeys. The tossing of eggs.
Sported for a sack race.

Don’t say “A star is born” unless
you’re talking about the movie.
Don’t tell a woman her books
are her babies.

For my next birthday, please
remember that I love getting
mail. You could send me a
funny card, and maybe a
package. A package full of
money. Or a necklace made
of lapis lazuli, believed by the
ancients to ward off melancholy.

What an ego boost, to have
one’s birthday suit evaluated by
another person as cute.

“Today is the oldest you’ve ever
been, and the youngest you’ll
ever be again.” Supposedly
Eleanor Roosevelt said that.

I wouldn’t say I have a problem
with mortality. If anything,
I tend to gravitate toward the
timeworn: a neighborhood
where the roots of the trees
crack the sidewalks.

Birthdays are about pleasure—
excess and decadence.
But pleasure is painful.
Because memento mori.
Because hoary cliché: We’re
not getting any younger.

The candles gutter; the candles
go out. Better to blow them
dark yourself.

Birthdays are okay, but what
about death days? Of the
365 days we cycle through
annually, on one of them,
we’ll cease to be alive.

Should the hour of arrival be
more of a factor? Should some
of us have birthnights?

Mayonnaise is my favorite
secret ingredient for cake,
birthday or otherwise.

There’s no predicting the
days of greatest significance.
Best simply to be vigilant.
Like my friend Beth said, not
even trying to be wise, “In
my life, the piñatas come
around pretty quick—I just
swing at them with my stick.”



Kathleen Rooney’s most recent book is the novel Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey. She is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres.

The Flea by Gail Mazur

“The flea,” that’s what the year-rounders call it,

rummaging through tools or bric-a-brac then

gossiping all day at their tables in the blistering sun,

their faded beach umbrellas barely shading the tarmac.

This is what my mother did in New Hampshire

Sunday after widowed Sunday, into her eighties.

Up at dawn, her wagon packed the night before—

by noon, willing to mark down anything not to have

to re-wrap and pack the whole kit and caboodle

for the sticky hundred mile drive home….

Today, I pick up a teapot, white with a smattering

of pink and black and aqua stars, its flawed glaze

(a reject from the start), its jaunty asterisks,

its moderne form, manufactured in Syracuse

in the ’Fifties, pleases me, seven starry cups

and five chipped star-studded dinner plates—

ordinary optimistic dishes, probably used by one

Cape Cod family for decades, only dings

and cracks now to tell their homely provenance,

their good usage and keep the price down.

Not star-struck, my mother would have felt

the edges’ roughness with her thumb and found

them wanting. It wouldn’t have been the chips—

she treasured her miniatures, her broken “minnies”—

these just weren’t her thing. But like a ninny—

I can make something of this, can’t I?—I buy the lot

in her magpie memory, wrapped in old Globes,

for what a cappuccino would cost, or a Parisian mystery.

Fascism: I sometimes fear . . . by Michael Rosen

 

Tired

 

Counting Backwards BY LINDA PASTAN

 

How did I get so old,

I wonder,

contemplating

my 67th birthday.

Dyslexia smiles:

I’m 76 in fact.

There are places

where at 60 they start

counting backwards;

in Japan

they start again

from one.

But the numbers

hardly matter.

It’s the physics

of acceleration I mind,

the way time speeds up

as if it hasn’t guessed

the destination—

where look!

I see my mother

and father bearing a cake,

waiting for me

at the starting line.

Mystical Whims

 

All in the air, whimsical mist Hanging on tree tops, sunshine kissed Whipping leaves and tresses of hair Whimsical mist, all in the air Something magic travelling here Nothing wicked, nothing to fear Erasing memories tragic Travelling here, something magic It can’t be bought with pounds and pence Not tangible just felt by sense A sensation we all have sought With pounds and pence, it can’t be bought Choices made on mystical whims Not logic nor faith and sung hymns Branches, bodies and minds are swayed On mystical whims, choices made

  - - - Hat Bueckert 

Birthday Lights

Light bulbs on a birthday cake.

What a difference that would make!

     Plug it in and make a wish,

     then relax and flip a switch!

No more smoke

      or waxy mess

      to bother any birthday guests.

But Grampa says, “it’s not the same!

      Where’s the magic?

       Where’s the flame?

To get your wish without a doubt,

You need to blow some candles out!”

          BY CALEF BROWN

The Poet Dreams of the Mountain by Mary Oliver

 

Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountains, slowly, taking
The rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
Under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
That we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
And peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.”


― Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

Ode to Things by Pablo Neruda

 I love things with a wild  passion,

extravagantly.

I cherish tongs,

and scissors:

I adore

cups,

hoops,

soup tureens,

not to mention

of course–the hat.

I love

all things,

not only the

grand,

but also the infinite-

ly

small:

the thimble,

spurs,

dishes,

vases.

Oh, my soul,

the planet

is radient,

teeming wih

pipes

in hand,

conductors

of smoke;

with keys,

saltshakers, and

well,

things crafted

by the human hand, everything–

the curves of a shoe,

fabric,

the new bloodless

birth

of gold,

the eyeglasses,

nails,

brooms,

watches, compasses,

coins, the silken

plushness of chairs.

Oh

humans

have constructed

a multitude of pure things:

objects of wood,

crystal,

cord,

wondrous

tables,

ships, staircases.

I love

all

things,

not because they

might be warm

or fragrant,

but rather because–

I don’t know why,

because

this ocean is yours,

and mine:

the buttons,

the wheels,

the little

forgotten

treasures,

the fans

of feathery

love spreading

orange blossoms,

the cups, the knives,

the shears,

everything rests

in the handle, the contour,

the traces

of fingers,

of a remote hand

lost

in the most forgotten regions of the ordinary obscured.

I pass through houses,

streets,

elevators,

touching things;

I glimpse objects

and secretly desire

something because it chimes,

and something else  because

because it is as yielding

as gentle hips,

something else I adore for its deepwater hue,

something else for its velvety depths.

Oh irrevocable

river

of things.

People will not

say that only

loved fish

or plants of the rainforest or meadow,

that I only

loved

things that leap, rise, sigh, and survive.

It is not true:

many things gave me completeness.

They did not only touch me.

My hand did not merely touch them,

but rather,

the befriended

my existence

in such a way

that with me, they indeed existed,

and they were for me so full of life,

that they lived with me half-alive,

and they will die with me half-dead.

-translated by Maria Jacketti and Dennis Maloney-