For KB who gets us together for weekly mountain meanderings

today's hike, originally uploaded by emdot.

We get together once a week
To trek up on old volcanic tower
On Tuesdays we hike Bishop Peak

After work we form our clique
A hodge-podge group on trail for hours
We get together once a week

With eagerness and interest piqued
We take a path of dust and flowers
On Tuesdays we hike Bishop Peak

Somedays sunny and others bleak
We'll stay inside if the sky showers
We get together once a week

Hushed rabbits hide while vultures seek
Hear bird songs, cow moos, nature's bellowers
On Tuesday we hike Bishop peak

On Sundays we ready for the week
On Mondays - sigh - we're underpower
On Tuesdays we hike Bishop Peak
We get together once a week

— Marya Figueroa

The Villanelle

The villanelle is a favorite poetic form for me. I want to write one. I'm afraid I couldn't be quite so clever. My favorite villanelle is Sylvia Plath's Mad Girl's Love Song. So brilliant. So brilliant. But I quite like the Elizabeth Bishop poem "One Art" (see below) as well.

Maybe some day. :)

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

Mad Girl's Love Song

Mad Girl's Love Song is not a well-known Plath poem, and is definitely not one of her more notoriously dark or abstract poems. But for me it has a sweetness and a realness that has always made it one of my favorites.

Mad Girl's Love Song

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade
Exit seraphim and Satan's men
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

— Sylvia Plath