Poem of the Day
December
December 31, 2009
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as for as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
--Robert Frost
(published in ROBERT FROST SELECTED POEMS)
December 30, 2009
A Sick Child
The postman comes when I am still in bed.
Postman, what do you have for me today?
I say to him. (But really I'm in bed.)
Then he says--what shall I have him say?
This letter says that you are president
Of--this word here; it's a republic.
Tell them I can't answer right away.
It's your duty. No, I'd rather just be sick.
Then he tells me there are letters saying everything
That I can think of that I want for them to say.
I say, Well, thank you very much. Good-bye.
He is ashamed, and turns and walks away.
If I can think of it, it isn't what I want.
I want...I want a ship from some near star
To land in the yard, and beings to come out
And think to me: So this is where you are!
Come. Except that they won't do,
I thought of them...And yet somewhere there must be
Something that's different from everything.
All that I've never thought of--think of me!
--Randall Jarrell
(published in RANDALL JARRELL SELECTED POEMS
edited by William H. Pritchard)
December 29, 2009
To Turn Back
The grass people bow
their heads before the wind.
How would it be
to stand among them, bending
our heads like that...?
Yes...and no...perhaps...
lifting our dusty faces
as if we were waiting for
the rain...?
The grass people stand
all year, patient and obedient--
to be among them
is to have only simple
and friendly thoughts,
and not be afraid.
--John Haines
(published in CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETRY
edited by Donald Hall)
December 28, 2009
Warning Lights On
Kate Lynn's two year old vagina
flashes red against exam table white paper
like the sirened light
of an ambulance wanting to pass.
You say she keeps
rubbing herself there
with objects found at play.
If she's showing us a way
she has learned to explore,
I wonder if you fear asking
who led her this way before?
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE YOUR TIME WILL COME)
December 27, 2009
Rock Music
Sex is a Nazi. The students all knew
this at your school. To it, everyone's subhuman
for parts of their lives. Some are all their lives.
You'll be one of those if these things worry you.
The beautiful Nazis, why are they so cruel?
Why, to castrate the aberrant, the original, the wounded
who might change our species and make obsolete
the true race. Which is those who never leave school.
For the truth, we are silent. For the flattering dream,
in massed farting reassurance, we spasm and scream,
but what is a Nazi but sex pitched for crowds?
It's the Calvin SS: you are what you've got
and you'll wrinkle and fawn and work after you're shot
though tears pour in secret from the hot indoor clouds.
--Les Murray
` (published in SUBHUMAN REDNECK POEMS)
December 26, 2009
Calling Down the Geese
He's calling down the geese,
my uncle, low in the gray hull.
His face billows with blowing
through a wooden throat
a note all December, all bird.
He's blind. Once a savage--
beating his wife on Christmas.
I know that, watching him
listen downwind. He smiles, suddenly,
holding my arm to be still. Be still.
I forgive. I love this moment.
He's calling down the geese,
the gander's ear, its memory,
breath drawn across the bony reeds.
--Henry Hughes
(published in MEN HOLDING EGGS)
December 25, 2009
Life Cycle of Ideas
An idea whistles with your lips,
laughs with your breath.
An idea hungers for your body.
An alert, hot to dissemble and share,
it snatches up cases of its style
from everywhere, to start a face.
An idea is a mouth that sells
as it sucks. It lusts to have
loomed perpetual in the night colours:
an idea is always a social climb.
Whether still braving snorts,
ordering its shootings, or at rest
among its own charts of world rule,
a maturing idea will suddenly want
to get smaller than its bearers.
It longs to be a poem:
earthed, accurate immortal trance,
buck as stirrups were,
blare as the panther.
Only art can contain an idea.
--Les Murray
(published in SUBHUMAN REDNECK POEMS)
December 24, 2009
Rick and Sue's Guest House
On the window, partly blocking
images of Oregon's rock rugged
coast, a plastic paste-on cornucopia
proclaims (in July) Happy Thanksgiving
while on the wall to the left
a cute cat tail swings out the clicking
clock seconds--innocent scythe
menacing the plaque placed below it
to announce Christ as the head of this house
AND the unseen guest.
But don't look down at the clear-cut below,
for that's what provides this ocean view.
Turn to the walls around you
and see Sue's photos on the wall.
In the dark of late night man's light
illuminates dung-rimmed rock
still above inky ocean
where clouded sky meets
imagined horizon.
Between me and the windowed wall
stands Rick speaking of his mistakes
which weren't his responsibility
and his accomplishments
which were.
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE YOUR TIME WILL COME)
December 23, 2009
A Woods Still Intact
Farmer says he'll take his cat back there
to clear the land to plant firs and hemlock.
I don't see heavy tracks. No slashed branches
or severed limbs hang brown
like sausage aging in the smokehouse.
There's still bear scat to give a wild smell.
And dried horse turds not even kicked aside--
yes, this path still serves the slow trot ride.
--Tim Van Ert
December 22, 2009
Mixed Greens
Like the newspaper tumbling away in a wind
Our life tantalizes us with knowledge--
If only we could catch up, hold in in hand.
What magic place will teach us these tricks?
In the ocean waters below Esalen's hot springs
See otters dive and duck the waves with grace
Then surface to stare the world face-to-face
Suggesting we all can speak together.
So, planet earth, point your exit doors to Esalen
Where all growth is earthy, shammanic, organic--
Mixed salad greens sown, grown and eaten
By the green, the mixed-up and the Work Scholars.
Feeling like peasants herded into Rome's coliseum
We sweat the thumbs-down work assignments--
Thrown in the duck pond or tossed to toilet-duty for cabins.
And pray for grounds, office or (heaven!) farm and
garden crew.
Garden power from the sun, power in the seed, power to the bloom.
Go there, to the goddess, to broadcast the harvest heart-promised.
Watch the sprout diva color her life-burst lunch tray palette.
Lay your life at garden Buddha feet before this one moment's missed.
Body-work sounds harder than massage.
Which sounds softer than end-organs sangre-engorged;
No one leaves Esalen without the lingo
Of the long, liquid and languid touch.
Where else can a dozen adults snake blindfolded to hot tubs
where, uplifted with song, folks float past the Friday night voyeurs?
Or stand topless in line to sweat, chant and trade painful secrets
With red-hot rocks answering back sparklers and steam?
At Esalen the work is never complete
As long as the Work Scholars are eager to repeat;
To work week-end shifts, pay, play, pray
And to process, without violence or drugs, the feelings of the day.
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE YOUR TIME WILL COME)
December 21, 2009
Wishing Kisses
Dark words dart
out of my mind--
overhead assault
deranged hunger for manna
melting from the roof of your mouth.
Cryptic tunnels
embark your cavern yawn.
Chipped tooth fixes
my attention;
some eyes easily adjust to dark viscera.
Dreams roam range
wobble their way
to your cavernous room
where I hope to tumble behind my tongue
sphere into sphere.
--Tim Van Ert
December 20, 2009
Men Holding Eggs
I'm walking over the Brooklyn Bridge
with my eight-year-old sister.
I can throw her over the wall, I think.
Physical laws make it so. Easy. There are no
nets, no arms beneath the stone.
The idea sparrows through my head,
holding a Song vase at the Chait Gallery.
A thousand years of celadon blue
breaking between my black shoes.
For years I really did it--matchbox cars,
crowded jets, an HO caboose
pulled from the Christmas tracks
and tossed out a window. In the car sometimes I panicked--
made my father stop. He'd yell, I'd cry,
cry for some G.I. Joe rolling off the shoulder.
I feel it on this bridge, clasping my sister's
lemon hand. She's whistling something, her hair
bouncing light feathers
down her back. She asks about a black schooner
tacking toward the Hudson.
There are men on deck holding eggs.
--Henry Hughes
(published in MEN HOLDING EGGS)
December 19, 2009
Song of Being a Child
When the Child was a child
It walked with arms hanging
Wanted the stream to be a river
and the river a torrent
And this puddle, the sea
It didn't know
It was a child
Everything for it was filled with Life
and all life was one
Saw the horizon without trying to reach it
Couldn't rush itself
And think on command
Was often terribly bored
And couldn't wait
Passed up greeting the moments
And prayed only with its lips
It didn't have an opinion about a thing
Had no habits
Often sat cross-legged, took off running
Had a cow lick in its hair
And didn't put on a face when photographed
It was the time of the following questions
Why I am me and why not you
Why am I here and why not there
Why did time begin and where does space end
Isn't what I see and hear and smell
Just the appearance of the world in front of the world
Isn't life under the sun just a dream
Does evil actually exist in people
Who really are evil
Why can't it be that I who am
Wasn't before I was
And that sometime I, the I, I am
No longer will be the I, I am
It gagged on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding
And on steamed cauliflower
And now eats all of it, and not just because it has to
It woke up once in a strange bed
And now time and time again
Many people seemed beautiful
And now not so many and now only if it's lucky
It had a precise picture of Paradise
And now can only vaguely conceive of it at best
It couldn't imagine nothingness
And today shudders in the face of it
Dove for the ball
Which today rolls between its legs
With its "I'm here" it came
Into the house which is now empty
It played with enthusiasm
And now only with such former concentration
Where its work is concerned
When the game, task, activity, subject
happens to be its work
It was enough to live on apples and bread
And it's still that way
Berries fell
Only like berries into it's hand, and still do
The fresh walnuts made its tongue raw, and still do
Atop each mountain it craved
Yet a higher mountain, and in each city it craved
Yet a bigger city, and still does
Reach for the cherries in the tree top
As elated as it still is today
Was shy in front of strangers, and still is
It waited for the first snow, and still waits that way
It waited restlessly each day for the return of the loved one
And still waits that way
It hurled a stick like a lance into a tree
And its still quivering there today
The child, the child was a child
Was a child, was a child, was a child, was a child
Child, child, child
When the child, when the child, when the child
When the child, when the child
The child, child, child, child, child
--Peter Handke
(recorded by Van Morrison on PHILOSOPHER STONE)
December 18, 2009
Tilt-a-Whirling
Oh, twirling girly, tell me,
how did we get here,
holding onto the edge
of a pink teacup swizzing
under a cantaloupe moon?
The lights--green, yellow, and gumball blue--
twist round my neck like birthday streamers.
Mommy, mommy, you whisper,
I'm feeling kinda hectic inside,
touch your ten fingertips to mine,
I don't want to die.
Oh, love,
I think you're sitting on my cotton candy,
pillow against me, then, and, if you must,
please, please, please, into my cold hand,
press your salt lake palms.
Your clenched neck pinching my cradling elbow,
jalapeno juice blinding your tilting eyes,
you loved me before, do you love me now?
I didn't think the end would be like this--
running shrieking circles
around each other like beauty contestants
in the breakneck of fancy holiday lights,
two blue lovers in a heavy cup.
--Melissa Huseman
(published in NORTHWEST REVIEW)
December 17, 2009
The Wiser Buds' Toads
Summer of '64 my brother and I jumped our window
to meet up with Doug La Fleur five midnights running.
With flashlights gripped tight we were gunning
to flush out them toads--since Doug had found two
in his mother's flower bed, we had to find four more
between our mom's snapdragons and roses.
That December Mike and I moved to a house
six hundred miles north on a lot so bare
a helicopter must have dropped it, complete, right there.
No southern eternal summer could prepare two city kids
for northern California's winter of '64:
we'd heard of floods--but not of sounds!
Still had the flashlights, and now new rubber boots.
Into a snowy midnight we stole, following the symphonic sound.
Deep in the tan oak woods across the street we found
a pond lined with peepers caught blowing bubble gum
balloons to power their jazz riot. Unlike their slothful
cousins, these amphibians were beyond our grasps.
But now, after all these decades, a passion grips me
so I want to squeeze the air from such tensile throats--
Budweiser's celebrity frogs have so gotten my goat!
A nauseating reminder that childhood's precious memories
are not impervious to the psychology of consumption--
and of the price we pay for watching television.
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE YOUR TIME WILL COME)
December 16, 2009
Tree Choreography
Planting a row of trees
Some person choreographies
A line dance only time sees
As poplars rise, firs lean and saplings freeze.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A 1st EDITION OF HAI-CHOO:
little sneezes of profound dittycism)
December 15, 2009
Sea Being
In tides of life, in storms of
action,
Up and down I wave,
Weave I hither and yon,
Birth and the grave,
A sea without bound,
A changeful weaving,
A radiant living.
(Faust, Goethe)
Standing at the window I plucked
from your left thigh smoke we shared
and, pausing, broke it in two.
We inhaled,
held our breaths,
heralded our transformation:
watching this remaining half
drifting down
through the open window, swirling below;
not watching
the other half disappearing.
Serpentine ribbon threads the plasma.
Sacred object rides the hemmed-in surf.
Smooth undulations part waters
Sailing vibrations back among themselves.
Softly the shedding snake slides from shore to shore
Endlessly encircling, embracing, excorporating.
Push and pull being felt,
ebbing and flowing smelt.
The song of barking
seals our open letter.
Together we call to sea,
Mother of our beings.
Her vitalization
meets our stillness
in waves of elution.
Cleansed, we turn in salty tribute:
our humble creation
returns.
Serpentine ribbon threads the plasma.
Sacred object rides the hemmed-in surf.
Smooth undulations part waters
Sailing vibrations back among themselves.
Softly the shedding snake slides from shore to shore
Endlessly encircling, embracing, excorporating.
Perched on the coast's bluff,
in unadorned shamelessness
lay the pink bed--
nor more dirty nor brave
than the miner's lettuce
in full flesh around it.
Here the ocean is in recital,
the walls Monterey pines,
and the lovers naked in their adornments.
--Tim Van Ert
(from CREATE THAT LOVE THAT LOVE CREATES)
December 14, 2009
Foraging
Sedulous eyes search for what will be
smoothly grabbed by tutored talons,
processed by gut instinct,
then regurgitated consonant and vowel
to keep vigorous
generation of growth.
--Tim Van Ert
December 13, 2009
A Catechism
Who challenged my soldier mother?
Nobody.
Who kept house for her and fended off the world?
My father.
Who suffered most from her oppressions?
My sister.
Who went out into the world to right its wrongs?
My sister.
Who became bitter when the world didn't listen?
My sister.
Who challenged my soldier sister?
Nobody.
Who grew up and saw all this and recorded it and
kept wondering how to solve it but couldn't?
Guess who.
--William Stafford
(published in THE WAY IT IS)
December 12, 2009
Sonnet in Search of an Author
Nude bodies like peeled logs
sometimes give off a sweetest
odor, man and woman
under the trees in full excess
matching the cushion of
aromatic pine-drift fallen
threaded with trailing woodbine
a sonnet might be made of it
Might be made of it! odor of excess
odor of pine needles, odor of
peeled logs, odor of no odor
other than trailing woodbine that
has no odor, odor of a nude woman
sometimes, odor of a man.
--William Carlos Williams
(published in PICTURES FROM BRUEGHEL [1962])
December 11, 2009
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
--William Carlos Williams
(published in SPRING AND ALL [1923])
December 10, 2009
ANTHEM
When you THINK
LOVE
Is only for the LUCKY
OR
the STRONG
you REMEMBER
LOVE
Is always there for the
EXPERIENCING
both RIGHT and WRONG.
--Tim Van Ert
(from COLLECTED WORDS)
December 9, 2009
I, ME, MEEE
V
O
L
V
E
My image the disciplined eclectic:
Striving to expand and enfold
Distinct discipline of the specialist.
Strong with the force of flexibility
I am rebounding to affirm
Steadiness of grounding in One being.
See here my Work and see here is my Play--
A volatile combination
Igniting life energy day to day!
Discipline offers a key to the self;
Which, free, is alone discipline--
Transcending work and play through their fusion.
--Tim Van Ert
(from COLLECTED WORDS)
December 8, 2009
Something Amiss in the Isles of Langerhans
Isles are always so far away
one needs a boat, to be patient
and trusting that the oarsman,
the tide, the wind will carry you
safely to these isolated reminders:
speckles, sparklers, dots in the center--
bull-eyes.
Out, ye specks--I bear no blood
of guilt, nor defect deserved.
I'll grow to be a sailor
laughing on the back of dolphins.
The isles will just be spots
in the corners of my deeply diving
blue eyes.
Bound for a journey over fitful seas,
clasp my other hand tighter
than I clasp cool iron rungs before
teetering down these aisles.
If you accept my devil's bargain,
if you love me too hard--
I'll die.
I shiver standing here.
These are cold, treeless islands.
Where's the hand I see out of
the corner of my eye as I dive
further into my fitful dreams
floating alone in waters'
dulled sky?
I remember a pleasing song,
specks and dots on the sheet;
not pinned like a common thief
to a leafless tree,
more like fruits presented without a note
on my doorstep so I can cuddle
a newborn fantasy with each
warm bite.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NOTHING ELSE MATTERS)
December 7, 2009
Anticipation
Under a half moon
my mouth moves round,
empty as the night,
before devouring the light
I imagine from your full mouth.
--Tim Van Ert
(from A 1ST EDITION OF HAI-CHOO : little sneezes of profound dittycism)
December 6, 2009
Marengo
Out of the sump rise the marigolds.
From the rim of the marsh, muslin with mosquitos,
Rises the egret, in his cloud-cloth.
Through the soft rain, like mist, and mica,
the withered acres of moss begin again.
When I have to die, I would like to die
on a day of rain--
long rain, slow rain, the kind you think will never end.
And I would like to have whatever little ceremony there might be
take place while the rain is shoveled and shoveled out of the sky.
and anyone who comes must travel, slowly and with thought,
as around the edges of the great swamp.
--Mary Oliver
(published in NEW AND SELECTED POEMS)
December 5, 2009
Brainstorm
The house was shaken by a rising wind
That rattled window and door. He sat alone
In an upstairs room and heard these things: a blind
Ran up with a bang, a door slammed, a groan
Came from some hidden joist, a leaky tap,
At any silence of the wind, walked like
A blind man through the house. Timber and sap
Revolt, he thought, from washer, baulk and spike.
Bent to his book, continued unafraid
Until the crows came down from their loud flight
To walk along the rooftree overhead.
Their horny feet, so near but out of sight,
Scratched on the slate; when they were blown away
He heard their wings beat till they came again.
While the wind rose, and the house seemed to sway,
And window panes began to blind with rain,
The house was talking, not to him, he thought,
But to the crows; the crows were talking back
In their black voices. The secret might be out:
Houses are only trees stretched on the rack.
And once the crows knew, all nature would know.
Fur, leaf and feather would invade the form,
Nail rust with rain and shingle warp with snow,
Vine tear the wall, till any straw-borne storm
Could rip both roof and rooftree off and show
Naked to nature what they had kept warm.
He came to feel the crows walk on his head
As if he were the house, their crooked feet
Scratched, through the hair, his scalp. He might be dead,
It seemed, and all the noises underneath
Be but the cooling of the sinews, veins,
Juices, and sodden sacks suddenly let go;
While in his ruins of wiring, his burst mains,
The rainy wind had been set free to blow
Until the green uprising and mob rule
That ran the world had taken over him,
Split him like seed, and set him in the school
Where any crutch can learn to be a limb.
Inside his head he heard the stormy crows.
--Howard Nemerov
(published in THE WINTER LIGHTNING)
December 4, 2009
Alley Oops
This alley stretches out like a depressive's day.
Sax's notes were flat as my view of the future
walking Memphis back alleys.
I'm thrown into darkness like Mother would toss
our alley tabby at night.
My heart's like an alley to a youth--purposeful but forgotten,
waiting to be discovered.
Alleyways colorful as a black and white documentary.
This one stretches longer than all the runways I fear to fly.
He turned to find the way empty as the last alley bottle at 2 a.m.
A view of peoples' yards from the alley is like finding a stranger's
diary at a yard sale.
Long and unreachable, like the alleys of my childhood,
your love felt to me then.
Forgotten, unkempt as depression-era alleys were your kisses
that night.
I slip on the gravel of your words, the way my bike would falter
as I tore across our alley on way to school.
Alley shows your decapitated sunflowers--lots returned
to wild ways of weeds.
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE YOUR TIME WILL COME)
December 3, 2009
HE CALLS IT CUNNING
A conning man
Appearing to go straight,
Inwardly cannot wait
To try again.
Daily compelled
By rearranging life --
New job, new home, new wife --
He won't be held.
Trained to be good,
But sports tug him forward
To cash in for rewards
That virtues should.
Programmed in genes?
Or encoded by faults
Of parents without thoughts
On what life means?
It's the playful,
Shallow world of pain
That calls to him again:
Endless cycle.
--Tim Van Ert
(from IF YOU LIVE YOUR TIME WILL COME)
December 2, 2009
The great malady of the 20th century, implicated
in all of our troubles and affecting us individually
and socially, is "loss of soul." When soul is neglected,
it doesn't just go away; it appears symptomatically in
obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning.
Introduction to Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore
COMPULSIONS
Charcoal smudge whispers
compel thoughts which carry
swirling, cold, and urgent:
child floated on papyrus,
man immersed in words,
soul spraying over falls.
Obsessions work the mind
as a child's magnet
pulls paper clips from behind
crisp, white, lined paper --
empty of study's signs
except for disguised trace
this show of force has left
in a developing
imagination.
Red dogs approach as friends
with pup-like whimpers
that we pick wild berries
they may nuzzle from hands
to spare themselves the thorns.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in NOTHING ELSE MATTERS)
December 1, 2009
Ex Libris
His stare wades through a wide window
into the stream of February weeks
past cherry tree's
sated woman
pregnant with love.
This moment holds bouquets
leaves frozen in ground,
petals' leaves in night ink drowned.
Below the window
he scribbles praise
to the wood iris.
--Tim Van Ert
(published in SEEDS ON A WIND RIDE)