2233 (dogwood)

A year—& through branches light comes,
A pilgrim out of March from a farther world.
There is a flaw in the air. I breathed it
From the swamp, a kiss of damp
Translated to a plague that would remote me
From care & corroding solicitudes, crown me
With this headdress of red-painted deer-hair
& weight my ears with wheels of copper.
My face painted blue & silver, my body
Washed in crimson dye, they would greet me
First with lamentations to mourn my old life,
Then by psalms I could enter
Purged & reborn & singing in a tongue
Not mine I know not where to go. (I know.)

-- Averill Curdy, from 'Ovid in America'

Averill Curdy

2164 (redbud)

After all, we sleep among secrets
and wake to their burden.
If we could pay attention at all points then
theory would be what really is there. But then
another intimacy begins…

-- Ann Lauterbach, lines from "Stepping Out"

2138 (cherry)

Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

-- A.E. Housman

0574

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs 

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time 

To behold the junipers shagged with ice, 

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind, 

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind 

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow, 

And, nothing himself, beholds 

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

-- Wallace Stevens

On "The Snow Man"

8141

From A Notebook

The whiteness near and far.
The cold, the hush . . .
A first word stops
The blizzard, steps
Out into fresh
Candor. You ask no more.

Each never taken stride
Leads onward, though
In circles ever
Smaller, smaller.
The vertigo
Upholds you. And now to glide

Across the frozen pond,
Steelshod, to chase
Its dreamless oval
With loop and spiral
Until (your face
Downshining, lidded, drained

Of any need to know
What hid, what called,
Wisdom or error,
Beneath that mirror)
The page you scrawled
Turns. A new day. Fresh snow.

-- James Merrill, from Collected Poems

Collected Poems

0139

That night frost stretched
the fields into stiff white sheets;
from post, strut and roof glinting
ice-fingers pointed to the ground.
But within walls, reed-woven,
mud-baked, we warded off
the wind-beast's bellow and bite.
Herded in the wool of our own warmth,
near red-gold flames that licked
logs, then leapt to find the hole
to heaven, we defeated winter's pikes.
That festive night we filled
our bodies' troughs with roasted meats,
with mead that honeys the senses, muzzes
the mind. As ever I kept quiet,
stoked myself with the comfort rising
from the rush-strewn floor, the goodwill
steaming through talk and laughter.

-- Myra Schneider, from 'Caedmon'

Interview with Myra Schneider

Cædmon

Cædmon's Hymn

0680

#258

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons–
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes–

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us–
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are.

None may teach it –Any–
'Tis the Seal, Despair–
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air–

When it comes, the Landscape listens–
Shadows– hold their breath–
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death–

-- Emily Dickinson

Read: 'Forms of Reticence' by Saskia Hamilton

4504

late shadows gather in the dark

words unwrite
as they are written
unspeak
as they are spoken

songs sprung
from heart and lung
to tongue

unsung

drunk winds stumble over shuffling roofs
shake his sleep who dreams
a lost love
will not
let
go

recurring swirls
of old gold
blown light

you can't help
but be in it

as it opens
and falls back on itself
unfolds and unsays

I do not want to die
without writing the unwritten

pleasure of water

-- Tom Pickard, lines from "Lark & Merlin"

Lark & Merlin

4540

Soup

I make soup and name the seasonings:
parsley, the damp tears that,
homesick, I planted in the loved earth.
Tiny black pepper eyes. Mice in the walls,
the bullets we will have to bite,
sharp clove stars inside the blue pillow
I put over my feet every night
so nothing gets away. I add
sweet basil, mint or saint;
a small procession of bay leaf,
laurel. Salt stream, salt water,
sea anemone. The chatter of barnacles
stuck to the rocks, gull cry and kestrel.
Chicken carcass, soft bone marrow,
once feathered, this bed
for vegetables I know to speak to:
the riven onions, train whistle.
Limp celery stalks I hold up to the light
and try to see through, cold hands.
Potato skins, weathered leather,
cinched saddles and compost.
Rutabaga, sore toe, a sudden
drop in barometric pressure,
rich Minnesota farmland
where yellow leaves were swept
across the burned fields.
What floats through the blue air
is feathers, is white rice,
falling into pottage, into hunger,
wet snow that vanishes,
the steaming ground.

-- Maggie Anderson

Maggie Anderson

4409

sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness

--Galway Kinnell, lines from "Saint Francis and the Sow"

Saint Francis and the Sow