giselle wrote:Thanks for this Dwill, great poem.

Very nice.

I recieve a poem a day in my email from Poets.org. Many of them I can't make heads or tails of and just when I think I will discontinue the poems a good one comes along. Here is todays good one -


Man in Stream
by Rosanna Warren

You stand in the brook, mud smearing
your forearms, a bloodied mosquito on your brow,
your yellow T-shirt dampened to your chest
as the current flees between your legs,
amber, verdigris, unraveling
today's story, last night's travail . . .

You stare at the father beaver, eye to eye,
but he outstares you—you who trespass in his world,
who have, however unwilling, yanked out his fort,
stick by tooth-gnarled, mud-clabbered stick,
though you whistle vespers to the wood thrush
and trace flame-flicker in the grain of yellow birch.

Death outpaces us. Upended roots
of fallen trees still cling to moss-furred granite.
Lichen smolders on wood-rot, fungus trails in wisps.
I wanted a day with cracks, to let the godlight in.
The forest is always a nocturne, but it gleams,
the birch tree tosses its change from palm to palm,

and we who unmake are ourselves unmade
if we know, if only we know
how to give ourselves in this untendered light.

This is really good. One you want to read over and over again.

I've had a poem stuck in my head for the last 2 weeks, a friend sent to to me on an email and every time I get a quiet moment it pops back into my head.

The Alter
by Charles Simic

The plastic statue of the Virgin
On top of a bedroom dresser
With a blackened mirror
From a bad-dream grooming salon.
Two pebbles from the grave of a rock star,
A small, grinning windup monkey,
A bronze Egyptian coin
And a red movie-ticket stub.

A splotch of sunlight on the framed
Communion photograph of a boy
With the eyes of someone
Who will drown in a lake real soon.

An altar dignifying the god of chance.
What is beautiful, it cautions,
Is found accidentally and not sought after.
What is beautiful is easily lost.

AndiSGraham wrote:I've had a poem stuck in my head for the last 2 weeks, a friend sent to to me on an email and every time I get a quiet moment it pops back into my head.

The Alter
by Charles Simic

Thanks for posting.

A Poem on the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy by Nikki Giovanni

Trees are never felled … in summer … Not when the fruit …
is yet to be borne … Never before the promise … is fulfilled …
Not when their cooling shade … has yet to comfort …

Yet there are those … unheeding of nature … indifferent to
ecology … ignorant of need … who … with ax and sharpened
saw … would … in boots … step forth damaging …

Not the tree … for it falls … But those who would … in
summer’s heat … or winter’s cold … contemplate … the
beauty …

I like the Charles Wright poem. Serendipity that it ends with the dog - I was just going to post a poem I heard today called "Dog". Now I have to go find it.

Saffron wrote:I like the Charles Wright poem. Serendipity that it ends with the dog - I was just going to post a poem I heard today called "Dog". Now I have to go find it.

Poem found!

Dogs

by Aaron Kramer

Looking foolish next to the tree in a one o'clock rain:
umbrella aloft, the leash in my other hand—
I wanted my late-coming neighbor to understand
that dogs are worth the expense, inconvenience, and pain;

their tails are truthful, no coiled rebellion beneath
a loving look; they are quick to kiss you, and quick
to fetch for you, and —should you raise a stick
threateningly—they are quick to show their teeth;

and better still (but this I never revealed),
when you bring downfall home, the death of a hope,
their nonchalant manner does more for you than a drink;
and best of all, when triumph's to be unsealed,
such lack of respect they show for the envelope,
—your fingers halt, the brain cools, and you think.

"Dogs" by Aaron Kramer, from Wicked Times. © University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Saffron wrote:I like the Charles Wright poem. Serendipity that it ends with the dog - I was just going to post a poem I heard today called "Dog". Now I have to go find it.

That is kind of coincidental! Thanks for the 'Dog' poem, its great. I thought the Wright poem was quite clever in its transition to the dog (is that like 'going to the dogs'?!) ... its an interesting thought ... we might end as a small dog stuck on the porch barking into the darkness at the unknown and unseen. Almost funny in a dark way, definitely ironic and kind of sad at the same time ... much like life is sometimes.