How to read a poem

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It's the middle of National Poetry Month, time to pause for a lesson. Believe it or not, my grandson is nearly three months old. He's a good teacher, and I should not keep his lessons to myself.

How to read a poem

Take him in your lap.

Look deep into his dark eyes.

Watch his arms while they

loop orbits in space

for no apparent purpose.

Let him ride his invisible

bicycle somewhere far—pumping,

pumping, pumping tiny legs,

making your thighs tremble.

See how still his eyes remain.

Fossick the meaning in his fists

where unknown words

are hidden and twirled.

(Don’t worry about the meaning

of those incomprehensible words now.

You can look for them later, together.)

He is telling you something

of where he has so recently been,

where you are desperately

trying to go in your perfectly

silent and heavy red chair.

He is showing you every truth

he has ever known

in a very small package.

When at last he smiles

in the otherwise motionless

residue following the flailings of his body,

you will understand what he means.

April 2012

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April wind

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April wind

On a day when April wind
has tumbled clouds into mile-high
snowy hills like in Chinese paintings

I wonder what strength
and precision it costs the honey bee
to aim his hovering windblown tongue

into frail blossoms fluttering open
out of tight Brandywine buds.
And how he does not spill nectar-

drops on me lying on the blanket—
a risk under sky and tree to him, to me
and to the small gold star of a spider

walking ellipses across my gold pillow
suddenly visible in movement
like the satellite we wait and watch for

every night, “There!” as it crawls
toward the sun on the other side
of the world on its articulate path
that looks so random to me.


April 2012 

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Comparison

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Comparison is a rational exercise of analysts and politicians.
It is necessary for science, important for business,

and desirable for historians. However, comparison

is not necessary or desirable in matters

of soul and spirit, art and music, nature and beauty.

Does this feel true to you?

Art notes
Top: "Sharecropper" by Elizabeth Catlett, 1952
Bottom: Crop of "Birth of Venus" by Sandro Boticelli, 1486

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Poem: 29 Ways of the Soul on February 29

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29 Ways of the Soul on February 29

1
The soul is free
of pain, nothing
quick or slow,
hot or cold,
heavy or airborne.

2
Color—
the copper mum almost silent
until the polishing light
of a stormy sky.
This July memory.

3
Rosemary mid-winter.
Silver threads,
smoke and camphor.

4
Drops of rain
hanging on
to the tips
of pine needles.
Not the rain,
the needles.

5
Five shades of green
in one square inch of grass.
One bent yellow blade.

6
A head inside
a tight hood; sounds muffled:
feet falling; rain falling;
heart falling.

7
Muddy deer hooves
in the woods fidgeting
while my eyes
seek the bottom
of two-pronged well-tracks
filling with water.

8
The wind
when it stops.

9
Patches of snow
on the ground
look like clouds.
This source.

10
The wet log.
That darkness.
That shine.

11
The hiding place
inside the log.

12
The log hibernating
inside the arcing
bare forsythia.

13
The desire to move.

14
The longing to be still.

15
The sky sitting
on the earth
like Buddha.

16
My arms swinging
when my legs walk.
My heart floating
like my head.
I’m not sure what,
or who, does the carrying.

17
Glasses pearled
with rain. Seeing anyway
with everything else
a little.

18
No birds
to be seen. But
they’re here.

19
The cry of a bird
in the sumac when I walk past.
Intuition. His and mine.

20
Beneath the rust
of the sumac,
the curve of the blossom.

21
This white page
before I typed
the words
that were already here.

22
The countries
on my shoulders
that hurt, where wings
could be.
Flying above
that failing.

23
The space that desire
plows ahead of itself.

24
The courage
of one foot. One leaf.
One inch. The courage
not to measure.

25
Arousal’s eddies
at the edges of the ocean,
which is far from here.
But I feel the pull
in this spray.

26
Mountains with snow.
Or these no-mountain
fields. I am at the top.
Is there a difference?

27
The fur around my face,
synthetic, that tells me
there is another
that is animal and alive.
We are real.

28
The number 29
in February—nowhere—
until it pierces time
out of nonexistence.

29
Out of emptiness
she comes talking
just like dawn
opening the fog.
But not every day
that I can tell.

February 29, 2012

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S.O.S.

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Through the window this morning, flickering behind poplar leaves, the sun rose. Was it S.O.S. he coded? I was on the phone, but I wanted to end it, someone else was calling. What if I, and only I, were the last hope of the sun, losing his way? Now tonight, three flaming candle wicks in glass duck and bob in the corner of this dimly lit bathtub like ladies urgently gossiping around a red tablecloth. I can almost hear them lisping. Yellow heads beat toward each other, but not toward me, and too rapidly and quietly to be comprehended while I am submerged, steamed and exhausted into stillness—eyes fixed on them and nearly hypnotized into sleep. I am an outsider, the last to know, and then, slow to respond. Is it urgency when poplar leaves twist and flutter like drowning hands? Or are they not drowning, but waving? Earthy sheaves of leaf and flesh lace over what burns and glows. Even just atmosphere alone flips the flame into frenzy. Glimpsing, we see some truth of it. But the light is still, in itself, and does not need rescuing.

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