in which i express my thanks to the poet who allows me to keep my head raised high while i write rhymes about my lunch and snacks

Ogden Nash we owe you mightly
For your verse compacted tightly

(What I'm struggling with omitting
Is a rhyme that's not quite fitting

Still if you had lived this time of blight
i'm sure you'd rhyme the slang ai-ight)

Lunch, redux

O Trader Joe's Green Burrito
So tasty hot, a little spicy
I've said before that you were neato
(And you'd go nicely with some iced tea)

(O Ogden Nash I owe you largely
for your rhyming of the ord'nry
I think this lunch would suit you smartly
tasty and it's alimentary)

An ode to my breakfast

ottawa bagels., originally uploaded by heather.

Thank you dear bagel with jelly
You're tasty from my mouth to belly
You're doughy, you're sweet
You're so good to eat
Inspiring rhymes that are silly

Dear jelly on top of this bagel
A great meal to find at my table
Your sweetness is tasty
My eating is hasty
Devour? I'm willing and able

Elizabeth Bishop

baywood: later, originally uploaded by emdot.

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

—Even losing your (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

— Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems, 1927–1979

Two Poems

poppies and morninglories, originally uploaded by emdot.

Two poems that have meant a lot to me over the years.
maybe they will touch your heart, too.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

— Mary Oliver

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

— David Wagoner

Rain Travel

by W. S. Merwin

I wake in the dark and remember
it is the morning when I must start
by myself on the journey
I lie listening to the black hour
before dawn and you are
still asleep beside me while
around us the trees full of night lean
hushed in their dream that bears
us up asleep and awake then I hear
drops falling one by one into
the sightless leaves and I
do not know when they began but
all at once there is no sound but rain
and the stream below us roaring
away into the rushing darkness



this is a repeat posting of this poem. but tonight it is raining and for more reasons than one, it feels perfect.

skyline

skyline
Originally uploaded by emdot.

Good lord I'm up late. I blame the road buzz. Traveling always messes with my ability to get some sleep. Like my car was traveling 80, but my chi was only traveling 9 mph, so I'm still in journey mode. Or something. What? Reaching?

So, great to be back (though loved the away time, too). I missed everyone and it was so nice to be welcomed back so warmly.

Meanwhile. I love serendipity. I just checked my other email address, the one that is being phased out. And this is what was waiting for me:

Wake Up; Time to Die

There will be a moment
When I realize it’s time to die.
This thought occurred sitting
At the kitchen table,
Having eaten cow,
And the wind came up
In a gust, blowing through
The open window.
I saw the clouds
and the sun outside.
The experience was of a piece
Like a twenty year old snapshot.
It was prophetic, like the
Time you didn’t get on the airplane
And met someone you wouldn’t have met…
Went somewhere you wouldn’t have gone.
There’s no analysis in this. It is what is.
It is the senses opening to the magic,
Suddenly, without thinking.
Magic is only knowing what time it is.
— John Tischer
9/9/04

Another favorite Tischer poem is here.

Czeslaw Milosz dies at 93

Encounter

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

— Czeslaw Milosz
won the nobel prize in literature in 1980

{ the end of april }

the last poem for april, 2004...

Still I Rise
by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

» ms. angelou's official site

since feeling is first
by e. e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis

Pretend You Live in a Room
by William Stafford

Play like you had a war. Hardly anyone
got killed except thousands of the enemy,
and many go around starving, holding
their hands out in pictures, begging.

Their houses, even the concrete and iron,
they've disappeared. These people
now live camped in the open. Overhead
stars keep telling their old, old story.

You have this world. You wander the earth.
You can't live in a room.

» about william stafford

The Last Invocation
by Walt Whitman

At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful fortress'd house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.

Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,
Set ope the doors O soul.

Tenderly—be not impatient,
(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,
Strong is your hold O love.)

» the walt whitman archive

Little Song of Service and Pride
(in memory of Henry Pollard)
by Jim Lindsay

In the middle of serving,
pride.

In the middle of so much pride,
still serving.

Nothing more than this!
Nothing less than this!

With This Love
by Franz Wright

It is late afternoon and I have just returned from
the longer version of my walk nobody knows
about. For the first time in nearly a month, and
everything changed. It is the end of March, once —
more I have lived. This morning a young woman
described what it's like shooting coke with a baby
in your arms. The astonishing windy and altering light
and clouds and water were, at certain moments,
you.

There is only one heart in my body, have mercy
on me.

The brown leaves buried all winter creatureless feet
running over dead grass beginning to green, the First
    scentless
violet here and there, returned, the first star noticed all
at once as one stands staring into the black water—

Thank you for letting me live for a little as one of the
sane; thank you for letting me know what this is
like. Thank you for letting me look at your frightening
blue sky without fear, and your terrible world without
terror, and your loveless psychotic and hopelessly
lost

    with this love

» wright wins the pulitzer
» interview with the new yorker

That's the kind

That's the kind
of being that I am:
seeing that I am.

And you...what do you
call your life?
What words do you use?

If I am killed by a gasoline bomb
in the streets of any city, or,
starve to death in any country,

how does that make me
different from you? And if I
achieve great deeds

and have a life acclaimed
how does that make
me different from you?

I die now.
That makes us even.

— Tischer 2003

The Ocean Is Closed for the Season

The ocean is closed for the season.
Hauled and stripped, her booms unshipped,
our playmate sits gathering snow,
her charts by the fire laid out to dry,
her main and mizzen, checked for wear,
to be stowed in the loft, not to mildew.

Rogue's Roost, Bald Rock, East Ironbound, the Ledges,
noteworthy anchorages, islands in the offing, hazards to avoid,
names in flying spray on the wind written large,
an expanse to the landbound no more tactile than a star,
if stars can be seen where they are. And now here we are,
returned to the heathen, with the ocean closed for the season.

Now the armored storms promenade, with the clear days
the coldest of all. More than bulletproof, the space
between Prospect and Betty’s, only three miles out, where autumn saw
a silver anniversary, champagne and cake and more, for the children
kites, kayaks, cranberry-picking, a trip to the lighthouse on the outer shore
(old Algiers laid out and snoring till the tide reached his privates).

And now Betty’s through the kitchen window is our contemplation.
Closed? The lobsterman says no, his red and green lamps in the grey dawn
glowing as he leaves the harbour, swallowed outside by the seas and the snow.
And now the amateur sailor concurs. Children, dinners, village issues intervene,
our own work if we have any, and as the frost flowers mask the pane,
love ever beckoning, an Atlantic within, without beginning or end.

Jim Lindsey
2 December 2002

It's e.e. cummings' birthday

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

in time of daffodils(who know

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remembering how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with praise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)
and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

yes is a pleasant country:

yes is a pleasant country:
if's wintry
(my lovely)
let's open the year

both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear

love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april's where we're)

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

may my heart always be open to little

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

Garrison Keiler was talking through my car radio this morning on the way to work....

Being Boring
'May you live in interesting times,' Chinese curse

If you ask me 'What's new?', I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it's better today.
I'm content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears of passion-I've used up a thankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last.
If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.

I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don't need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I've found a safe mooring,
I've just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.

— Wendy Cope
If I Don't Know (Faber & Faber)
As heard this morning on The Writer's Almanac

We can make a gate which opens to the world

(a poem)

Mismatched/Mixmatched

Believing that we can fall in love
We make a mistake.
Believing that we can trust each other
We become clumsy.
Believing that we could make our last stand
We take a chance.

In spite of ourselves
We can't help being gentle.
In spite of our love affair
We can't help being cynical.

When we are together with moonlight and candles and passion
Then no one is at fault.
When we share the candlelit telephone bill
Then we have a victorious marriage.

Working hard doesn't produce any comfort.
Loving you is more than the world can provide.
Although practicing meditation does not produce sourdough bread,
Practicing with you makes this tedious world good food.
Seeing you makes me smile without effort.

If you think we can make a world which is brilliant and kind and tender,
Let us love each other with no concern for our private world.
Let us love each other without wondering whether our love affair is good or bad.
Let us love each other until the dawn breaks.
And when it does,
Let us celebrate our love affair.
Let us marry ourselves to the continuous proclamation of true love.

We can pay the bills.
We can build a picket fence.
We can plant a rose garden.

We can make a gate which opens to the world.
I love you forever, because you are who you are.

— Vajra Regent Osel Tenzel
January 26 1980
L.A.

The Song of Impermanence

Kye ma, the dharmas of samsara are futile.
Impermanent, impermanent, they are futile.
Changing and changing, they are futile.
Uncertain, uncertain, they are futile.

When there is land but no owner, it is futile.
An owner, but no land is futile.
Even land and owner together are futile.
The dharmas of samsara are futile.

When there is father but no son, it is futile.
A son but no father is futile.
Even son and father together are futile.
The dharmas of samsara are futile.

When there is father but no mother, it is futile.
A mother but no father is futile.
Even a mother and father together are futile.
The dharmas of samsara are futile.

Even father, mother, and son, all three together are futile.
The dharmas of samsara are futile.

When there is man but no wealth, it is futile.
Wealth but no man is futile.
Even man and wealth together are futile.
Even happiness and prosperity together are futile.
The dharmas of samsara are futile.

Whatever one does brings suffering and is futile.
Whatever one thinks is impermanent and futile.
Whatever one achieves is illusory and futile.
Even if one has it all, it is futile.
The dharmas of samsara are futile.

Since this is the nature of futility,
Let us yoginis now accomplish
The esssential truth: well, then!
Vajradhara, whose essence is Akshobhya,
Grant your blessings so that this lowly one may keep to retreat.

— Milarepa