Against Panic - by Molly Fisk - for 10/13/21

I found this poem in an anthology called How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. The editor is James Crews, but I picked it up because the foreword is by Ross Gay, who is an amazing poet in his own right. Ross Gay suggests that witnessing the world is a way of making the world, especially if we make poetry from that witnessing. This poem seems to me to do that.

By the way, I've linked to the poet's own blog, where the title of this poem is Against Panic and Pandemic. I'm not sure why she changed it for this anthology (or if the editor did it for her).

Against Panic

by Molly Fisk 

You recall those times, I know you do, when the sun  

lifted its weight over a small rise to warm your face,   

when a parched day finally broke open, real rain   

sluicing down the sidewalk, rattling city maples   

and you so sure the end was here, life a house of cards   

tipped over, falling, hope's last breath extinguished   

in a bitter wind. Oh, friend, search your memory again —   

beauty and relief are still there, only sleeping. 

Blue and Green/Gold - Teasdale and Frost on Color - Poems for 10/12/21

I've been reading a book called Through the Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different in Different Languages, by Guy Deutcher, which is about the balance of natural and cultural influences on language. The first half (which is as far as I've read so far) is about color, specifically the way human languages tend to develop color terminology is a predictable way, moving from black and white, then to red, then to green and/or yellow, and only lastly to blue. The primary thesis is that we humans come up with words for things we need to talk about. Since there is little in nature that is blue (besides the sky and sea, neither of which requires much discussion), it is generally one of the later words to develop in most languages. In any case, these two poems, which I found together in a high-school anthology of poetry, both concern color...

The Net

by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

I made you many and many a song,

Yet never one told all you are --
It was as though a net of words
Were flung to catch a star;

It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Robert Frost (1874–1963)

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

If God Is a Virus - by Seema Yasmin - 10/11/21

 If God Is a Virus

by Seema Yasmin

from her book of the same name

She is vexed.

Absolutely done

with your shit.

God wants to know

why you didn't get a flu

shot; why her minions

made your left lung collapse

white out on the X-ray,

rack up a six-figure ICU

bill when all they wanted

was a warm vacation,

tropical waters, champagne

plasma to sip—not to bring

about death—not to turn

prunes in pleural fluid. No

body wants that. God thinks

anti-vaxxers have a death wish.

Wonders how they eat organic,

snort coke and laundry detergent

on weekends. Don't

they know yogi detox tea

is hepatotoxic? God knew

Charles Darwin. Clever

woman, she said. Who would

want your lot extinct?

In Maine - by Connie Rabinovitz - Poem for 10/6/21

 In Maine

by Connie Rabinovitz

A trio of birchs

guard cabin and lake

like sentinels.

Bare limbs punctuate the blue

while earth-bound roots are hidden.

Shadows form

horizontal grids

and stripe the caked snow.

These three mark our Land

as steadfast guides.

Who else before

tramped the ice?

searched the woods?

hunted the deer?

fished for sleeping pecrh?

as red-capped hopefels do now?

Who made a mark?

carved a boat?

sent a messape?

Hidden messages tease me.

To Autumn - John Keats - Poem for 10/6/21

To Autumn

John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

   Steady thy laden head across a brook;

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 

 

One Night

Juan Ramón Jiménez

translated by Thomas Walsh The ancient spiders with a flutter spread    Their misty marvels through the withered flowers, The windows, by the moonlight pierced, would shed    Their trembling garlands pale across the bowers.  The balconies looked over to the South;    The night was one immortal and serene; From fields afar the newborn springtime’s mouth    Wafted a breath of sweetness o’er the scene.  How silent! Grief had hushed its spectral moan    Among the shadowy roses of the sward; Love was a fable—shadows overthrown    Trooped back in myriads from oblivion’s ward.  The garden’s voice was all—empires had died—    The azure stars in languor having known The sorrows all the centuries provide,    With silver crowned me there, remote and lone.     La soledad sonora, XI Las antiguas arañas melodiosas, temblaban maravillosamente sobre las mustias flores… sus cristales, heridos por la luna, soñaban guirnaldas temblorosas de pálidos colores…     Estaban los balcones abiertos al sur… Era una noche inmortal, serena y transparente… de los campos lejanos, la nueva primavera mandaba, con la brisa, su aliento, dulcemente…     ¡Qué silencio! Las penas ahogaban su ruído de espectros en las rosas vagas de las alfombras… el amor no existía… tornaba del olvido una ronda infinita de trastornadas sombras…     Todo lo era el jardín… Morían las ciudades… Las estrellas azules, con la vana indolencia de haber visto los duelos de todas las edades, coronaban de plata mi nostalgia y mi ausencia…

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on September 26, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poem for 10/4/21

Apologies to anyone who has looked here for a poem during the Jewish holidays! But I'm back, hoping to post every Monday through Thursday... Lover

Ada Limón

Easy light storms in through the window, soft             edges of the world, smudged by mist, a squirrel’s              nest rigged high in the maple. I’ve got a bone  to pick with whomever is in charge. All year,  I’ve said, You know what’s funny? and then,             Nothing, nothing is funny. Which makes me laugh             in an oblivion-is-coming sort of way. A friend writes the word lover in a note and I am strangely excited for the word lover to come back. Come back             lover, come back to the five and dime. I could              squeal with the idea of blissful release, oh lover, what a word, what a world, this gray waiting. In me, a need to nestle deep into the safe-keeping of sky.             I am too used to nostalgia now, a sweet escape             of age. Centuries of pleasure before us and after us, still right now, a softness like the worn fabric of a nightshirt and what I do not say is, I trust the world to come back.             Return like a word, long forgotten and maligned              for all its gross tenderness, a joke told in a sun beam, the world walking in, ready to be ravaged, open for business.

Copyright © 2021 by Ada Limón. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 4, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.