National Poetry Month 2008

The List

By Chip Cain | Published April 30, 2009

By Naomi Shihab Nye

A man told me he had calculated
the exact number of books
he would be able to read before he died
by figuring the average number
of books he read per month
and his probable earth span,
(averaging how long
his dad and grandpa had lived,
adding on a few years since he
exercised more than they did).
Then he made a list of necessary books,
nonfiction mostly, history, philosophy,
fiction, and poetry from different time periods
so there wouldn’t be large gaps in his mind.
He had given up frivolous reading entirely.
There are only so many days.

Oh, I felt sad to hear such an organized plan.
What about the books that aren’t written yet,
the books his friends might recommend
that aren’t on the list,
the yummy magazine that might fall
into his hand at a silly moment after all?
What about the mystery search
through the delectable library shelves?
I felt the heartbeat of forgotten precious books
calling for his hand.

Poverty

By Chip Cain | Published April 29, 2009

By Pablo Neruda

Ah you don’t want to,
you’re scared
of poverty,
you don’t want
to go to the market with worn-out shoes
and come back with the same old dress.

My love, we are not fond
as the rich would like us to be,
of misery. We
shall extract it like an evil tooth
that up to now has bitten the heart of man.

But I don’t want
you to fear it.
If through my fault it comes to your dwelling,
if poverty drives away
your golden shoes,
let it not drive away your laughter which is my life’s bread.
If you can’t pay the rent
go off to work with a proud step,
and remember, my love, that I am watching you
and together we are the greatest wealth
that was ever gathered upon the earth.

I Shall Be Released

By Chip Cain | Published April 28, 2009

by Kevin Young

What we love
will leave us

or is it
we leave

what we love,
I forget—

Today, belly
full enough

to walk the block
after all week

too cold
outside to smile—

I think of you, warm
in your underground room

reading the book
of bone. It’s hard going—

your body a dead
language—

I’ve begun
to feel, if not

hope then what
comes just after—

or before—
Let’s not call it

regret, but
this weight,

or weightlessness,
or just

plain waiting.
The ice wanting

again water.
The streams of two planes

a cross fading.

I was so busy
telling you this I forgot

to mention the sky—
how in the dusk

its steely edges
have just begun to rust.

Amaryllis

By Chip Cain | Published April 27, 2009

by Ted Kooser

A flower needs to be this size
to conceal the winter window,
and this color, the red
of a Fiat with the top down,
to impress us, dull as we’ve grown.

Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb
half above the soil
stuck out its green tongue
and slowly, day by day,
the flower itself entered our world,

closed, like hands that captured a moth,
then open, as eyes open,
and the amaryllis, seeing us,
was somehow undiscouraged.
It stands before us now

as we eat our soup;
you pour a little of your drinking water
into its saucer, and a few crumbs
of fragrant earth fall
onto the tabletop.

Love In Black And White

By Chip Cain | Published April 24, 2009

by Bianca Rossini with photographs by Michael Kenna

Children in a Field

By Chip Cain | Published April 23, 2009

by Angela Shaw

They don’t wade in so much as they are taken.
Deep in the day, in the deep of the field,
every current in the grasses whispers hurry
hurry, every yellow spreads its perfume
like a rumor, impelling them further on.
It is the way of girls. It is the sway
of their dresses in the summer trance-
light, their bare calves already far-gone
in green. What songs will they follow?
Whatever the wood warbles, whatever storm
or harm the border promises, whatever
calm. Let them go. Let them go traceless
through the high grass and into the willow-
blur, traceless across the lean blue glint
of the river, to the long dark bodies
of the conifers, and over the welcoming
threshold of nightfall.

Silent Music

By Chip Cain | Published April 22, 2009

by Floyd Skloot

My wife wears headphones as she plays
Chopin etudes in the winter light.
Singing random notes, she sways
in and out of shadow while night
settles. The keys she presses make a soft
clack, the bench creaks when her weight shifts,
golden cotton fabric ripples across
her shoulders, and the sustain pedal clicks.
This is the hidden melody I know
so well, her body finding harmony in
the give and take of motion, her lyric
grace of gesture measured against a slow
fall of darkness. Now stillness descends
to signal the end of her silent music.

Editors note: Did you notice this was in sonnet form?

New Water

By Chip Cain | Published April 21, 2009

by Sharon Chmielarz

All those years–almost a hundred–
the farm had hard water.
Hard orange. Buckets lined in orange.
Sink and tub and toilet, too,
once they got running water.
And now, in less than a lifetime,
just by changing the well’s location,
in the same yard, mind you,
the water’s soft, clear, delicious to drink.
All those years to shake your head over.
Look how sweet life has become;
you can see it in the couple who live here,
their calmness as they sit at their table,
the beauty as they offer you new water to drink.

They Sit Together on the Porch

By Chip Cain | Published April 20, 2009

by Wendell Berry

They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.

A Body Distant Brought Near

By Chip Cain | Published April 17, 2009

by Kathleen Adcock

Sitting on the moon’s rim
all that can be seen
is her mountains, flatland,
a pale asphalt.
Tonight

you pull me from my
poems.
We view a new crescent
from our roof.
You tweak the lens
of your telescope,
steer me into

the ocular
where in the black velvet void,
the moon’s inner arc
is a filigree
of bright white lace.

Tell Yourself

By Chip Cain | Published April 17, 2009

by Mark Strand; read by Mary Louise Parker.

And when you done watching and listening take some time to browse all the nooks and crannys of PBS’s Poetry Everywhere.

Flirtation

By Chip Cain | Published April 16, 2009

By Rita Dove – The first African-American woman to be named Poet Laureate of the United States

After all, there’s no need
to say anything

at first. An orange, peeled
and quartered, flares

like a tulip on a wedgewood plate
Anything can happen.

Outside the sun
has rolled up her rugs

and night strewn salt
across the sky. My heart

is humming a tune
I haven’t heard in years!

Quiet’s cool flesh—
let’s sniff and eat it.

There are ways
to make of the moment

a topiary
so the pleasure’s in

walking through.

"Since why to love I can allege no cause"

By Chip Cain | Published April 15, 2009

by Roger Mitchell

“Since why to love I can allege no cause,”
I will love instead, leaving reasons
to better minds than mine, those for whom laws
create allowance for the seasons
of feeling. I cannot create what creates
me, unless in loving, love begets love,
though in begetting that, what first mates
with love to get that which it wants more of?
And so on, ad infinitum.
Better to look out the window and ponder
the weather, how quickly autumn
left, how quietly winter
slipped into town. It was looking for us,
afraid, I think, thinking the obvious.

A SONNET FOR NAPALM

By Chip Cain | Published April 14, 2009

by H. PALMER HALL

“Tell me something,” she says.  “Do any flowers look
just like that, those blossoms of black, orange, red?”
She points at the screen, napalm flowering in the dawn.
“Some strange beauty from far enough not to feel
or smell, riots of deep embers glowing like fierce clouds?”
He nods, cannot find the words, remembers that
one time. That moment on the mountain he looked down
into a too green valley, B-52s so high he could not see

the spot in the sky where bombs dropped, some odd
whistling noise, some in-rushing of air, down and down
until in one moment, one space of time, dark green
turned to some color it had never meant to be and the smell
of the morning changed to nothing anyone could love,
a smell of heat and decay and green things turning gray.

Word

By Chip Cain | Published April 13, 2009

by Madeleine L’Engle‏

I, who live by words, am wordless when
I try my words in prayer. All language turns
To Silence.
Prayer will take my words and then
Reveal their emptiness. The stilled voice learns
To hold its peace, listen with the heart
To silence that is joy, is adoration.
The self is shattered, all words torn apart
In this strange patterned time of contemplation
That, in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me,
And then, in silence, leaves me healed and mended.
I leave, returned for language, for I see
Through words, even when all words are ended.
I, who live by words, am wordless when
I turn me to the Word to pray.
Amen

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward

By Chip Cain | Published April 10, 2009

by John Donne

Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is’t, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I’almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc’d with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag’d, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish’d thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom’d us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They’are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may’st know mee, and I’ll turne my face.

Poetry Out Loud

By Chip Cain | Published April 9, 2009

Worth the watch!  Poetry Out Loud

Ox Cart Man

By Chip Cain | Published April 8, 2009

by Donald Hall

In October of the year,
he counts potatoes dug from the brown field,
counting the seed, counting
the cellar’s portion out,
and bags the rest on the cart’s floor.

He packs wool sheared in April, honey
in combs, linen, leather
tanned from deerhide,
and vinegar in a barrel
hoped by hand at the forge’s fire.

He walks by his ox’s head, ten days
to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes,
and the bag that carried potatoes,
flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose
feathers, yarn.

When the cart is empty he sells the cart.
When the cart is sold he sells the ox,
harness and yoke, and walks
home, his pockets heavy
with the year’s coin for salt and taxes,

and at home by fire’s light in November cold
stitches new harness
for next year’s ox in the barn,
and carves the yoke, and saws planks
building the cart again.

Three Poems by Jane Kenyon

By Chip Cain | Published April 7, 2009

Jane Kenyon is another favorite poet of mine. Her poems are usually short often touching someplace personal within the reader’s own psyche: or at least this readers psyche. I love all three of these poems but the third poem presented here, titled Otherwise, strikes a melancholic tone that always resonates with me no mater how often I read it. Otherwise is also the title to her collected poems published by  www.graywolfpress.org and is the only book of poetry that my wife has read from cover to cover. She did it in three days.

Biscuit

The dog has cleaned his bowl
and his reward is a biscuit,
which I put in his mouth
like a priest offering the host.

I can’t bear that trusting face!
He asks for bread, expects
bread, and I in my power
might have given him a stone.

The Shirt

The shirt touches his neck
and smooths over his back.
It slides down his sides.
It even goes down below his belt—
down into his pants.
Lucky shirt.

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

To my friends who have read these poems inpast years, having recieved it by email from me, I ask your patience while I share Jane with the rest of the world.

My Sister, Who Died Young, Takes Up The Task

By Chip Cain | Published April 6, 2009

by Jon Pineda

A basket of apples brown in our kitchen,
their warm scent is the scent of ripening,

and my sister, entering the room quietly,
takes a seat at the table, takes up the task

of peeling slowly away the blemished skins,
even half-rotten ones are salvaged carefully.

She makes sure to carve out the mealy flesh.
For this, I am grateful. I explain, this elegy

would love to save everything. She smiles at me,
and before long, the empty bowl she uses fills,

domed with thin slices she brushes into
the mouth of a steaming pot on the stove.

What can I do? I ask finally. Nothing,
she says, let me finish this one thing alone.

Forgetfulness – Billy Collins Animated Poetry

By Chip Cain | Published April 5, 2009

Poetry  has always had an oral side to it’s history, now with video added we have a third way of receiving poetry.This poem by Billy Collins incorporates the written text, the spoken word and the visual images for a different way to take in poetry. Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America’s best-selling poets, reads his poem “Forgetfulness” with animation by Julian Grey.

Prayer On Leaving The Body

By Chip Cain | Published April 3, 2009

by James Deahl

O taste and see that the Lord is good. –Psalm 34: 8

These feet that have carried me
over switchback trails in Appalachian darkness
I give up; they are left in tall grass
by the Baltimore and Ohio right of way
where steel rails cut close to the orange creek.

And these legs, so useful when climbing trees,
I relinquish to a boyhood now faded
to mere memory, perhaps belonging
to someone else who lived when I did,
climbed the very trees I now think I conquered.

I also cast off this intricate machinery
that gave me such ecstasy
and three miraculous daughters;
it floats mindlessly out to sea
where the currents are blue houses of desire.

My lungs I abandon to the early morning wind
that sung so well in them I thought
its music could never end;
an opera filling a concert hall
with a new day, with light.

And, yes, I even close forever these blue eyes
that just the other day watched astonished
while a plummeting hawk took a sparrow in mid-air
beside the frozen river
so quickly it seemed but a dream.

And in my dream I reluctantly
pass my hands to my children;
good hands, sturdy, comfortable
in their domesticity — kneading bread,
slicing garlic for the evening soup.

Arms, heart, that worn, battered spine;
I leave it all behind. Nothing but bones,
flesh, and the tired circulation of fluids;
things of this world. A sunrise, a sunset,
the longing in the heart to taste and see . . .

Like the Irish magus I too
pray for an old man’s frenzy,
though I would turn his word to fury
and seek the goodness in creation,
not its night.

Visualizing Poetry

By Chip Cain | Published April 2, 2009

Here are two very different ways of visualizing poetry. Click on the pictures to be taken to the websites to find out how they were created.

Keep Trying to Tell Him

By Chip Cain | Published April 2, 2009

by Hiram Larew

Pretend for a minute
That you’re a duck
In muddy water
And that whatever’s teasing your legs
Is starting to make you nervous

Pretend that you’re around sixty
And you’re not so sure if you want to know
What’s in the message
Even though someone who’s skipping
And smiling
Just handed it to you

Pretend that today you’ll have the chance
To say whatever’s important
Just before something drags the love of your life
Away feet first
Pretend you can tell by the woodsy smell
Out back
That it’s now or never.

I rarely think of  a poet as being my favorite but if I was forced to choose it might well be Hiram Larew.

National Poetry Month 2009

By Chip Cain | Published April 1, 2009

April 1st begins this blogs most active time of the year. April is National Poetry Month and as always it’s my excuse to encourage the reading of poetry by the masses. This is my chance to prove that poetry isn’t as painful as what your teachers made it out to be.

Here is a very small sample:

The Coming of Light
by Mark Strand

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.

I give myself to it

By Chip Cain | Published May 1, 2008

Although April 30th signals the end of National Poetry Month I sincerely hope you have enjoyed the poems and are inspired to pursue some on your own.

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
-Rilke

Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes

By Chip Cain | Published April 30, 2008

The Day Is Gone, And All Its Sweets Are Gone

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone!
Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast,
Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone,
Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and lang’rous waist!
Faded the flower and all its budded charms,
Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise—
Vanished unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday—or holinight
Of fragrant-curtained love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight;
But, as I’ve read love’s missal through today,
He’ll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

by John Keats

Why, then, do I reject the bliss

By Chip Cain | Published April 29, 2008

On Preparing to Open the Bible

Why must I measure my accomplishments
against sick
and dying, the saint, the confessor, Mary
mourning the passage of a son
so superior to ordinary man
the He, according to our Lord, could die for one
and all. I live, and do the best I can.
And yet I worry over this
strange and lasting story
told by a bunch of martyrs. Will I miss
the opportunities of heavenly glory
if I get drunk, and fall asleep tonight
on the couch, stinking like a goat?
I guess I hope
my incontinence and flight
will be construed as human in the end.
I wish to be forgiven. Don’t we all?
Today I heard a friend,
a little boy, got picked up at a mall
and was abruptly sodomized
by some dumb bastard professing love to him.
Tomorrow I must look him in the eyes
and tell him to begin
by going back to life
and the fullness thereof. It makes me sick.
God won’t set things right.
Does He think. “You are much too quick
to judge My ways
when you should suffer like the rest
the mysteriousness of all your days
and nights. Read Me. I know what’s best.”
And so I meditate,
looking out the window into fields,
and wait
to read of Him who healed
the dying, who comforted the sick.
I’d like to think that I’m too smart for this.
But I am lying.
Why, then, do I reject the bliss
of giving in to Him, whom I like nonetheless?
In fact, I am like all the rest,
bewildered, odd – the earth is not enough
for those who wonder what they’re doing here.
I blow my nose,
supposing I have nothing more to fear,
then close
the book which I had flung
back in a rage
to think of that vastly superior age
when Christ came down from the clouds
to drink, and speak, blessing the human figure.
It is not the same.
The butcher, the baker, the unbeliever
hold fast to the things that make them glad
again and again. I am one of them.

by Dennis Sampson

'May you live in interesting times.' Chinese curse

By Chip Cain | Published April 25, 2008

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 and passion – I’ve used up a tankful.

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.

 

by  Wendy Cope

An apology to William Doreski and Nancy Henry

By Chip Cain | Published April 24, 2008

If you read today’s poem ‘Death of An Old Dog’ earlier today and cameback to it again and thought the author’s name is different, you would be correct. I errantly assiged the poem to William Doreski when it was written by Nancy Henry.

Both poets are personal favorites of mine which is in part why the error. I apologize to them both and to you the readers. At least now you get to follow up on two fine poets.

She lies down there to be sipped up by the dewy grasses

By Chip Cain | Published April 24, 2008

Death of the Old Dog

It is time for the old dog to slip down
beneath the grass, to taste the sharp iron
of earth on her broad lolling tongue,
to yield the sap of her eyes to the blind worm
and her thick brown pelt to the cold roots
of the twisted Northern Spy behind the barn.
Her deep moans will shudder in its branches
with the wind that rattles the storm door
as she once did, let me in
to my coiled rag rug by the fire,
let me in.
She lies down there to be sipped up by the dewy grasses
to be swept, a colored dust-cloud,
painting the high sweep of canyon wind,
to be dropped from a hawk’s lizardy talons
becoming hawk, wind and all,
the clear substance that they swim in,
the slow honey amber of memory and light.

by Nancy Henry

There is time to read

By Chip Cain | Published April 23, 2008

The Perfect Day

You wake with
no aches
in the arms
of your beloved
to the smell of fresh coffee
you eat a giant breakfast
with no thought
of carbs
there is time to read
with a purring cat on your lap
later you walk by the ocean
with your dog
on this cut crystal day
your favorite music and the sun
fill the house
a short delicious nap
under a fleece throw
comes later
and the phone doesn’t ring
at dusk you roast a chicken,
bake bread, make an exquisite
chocolate cake
for some friends
you’ve been missing
someone brings you an
unexpected present
and the wine is just right with the food
after a wonderful party
you sink into sleep
in a clean nightgown
in fresh sheets
your sweetheart doesn’t snore
and in your dreams
and old piece of sadness
lifts away

by Alice N. Persons

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

By Chip Cain | Published April 22, 2008

The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

by Philip Larkin

To coax an inquisitive soul

By Chip Cain | Published April 21, 2008

Happiness

Because yesterday morning from the steamy window
we saw a pair of red foxes across the creek
eating the last windfall apples in the rain –
they looked up at us with their green eyes
long enough to symbolize the wakefulness of living things
and then went back to eating –

and because this morning
when she went into the gazebo with her black pen and yellow pad
to coax an inquisitive soul
from what she thinks of as the reluctance of matter,
I drove into town to drink tea in the café
and write notes in a journal – mist rose from the bay
like the luminous and indefinite aspect of intention,
and a small flock of tundra swans
for the second winter in a row was feeding on new grass
in the soaked fields; they symbolize mystery, I suppose,
they are also called whistling swans, are very white,
and their eyes are black—

and because the tea steamed in front of me,
and the notebook, turned to a new page,
was blank except for a faint blue idea of order,
I wrote: happiness! it is December; very cold,
we woke early this morning,
and lay in bed kissing,
our eyes squinched up like bats.

Robert Haas

I am burned out of it like the melody underneath

By Chip Cain | Published April 18, 2008

Diary

Spring is not so very promising as it is the thing
that looking back was fire, promising:
ignition, aspiration; it was not under my thumb.

Now when I pretend a future it is the moment
he holds the thing I say new-born,
delicate, sure to begin moving but

I am burned out of it like the melody underneath
(still not under my thumb)–
was he ambiguous, amphibian?

Underneath, his voice, the many ways
he gathers oxygen; it will not stop raining
until the buds push through the brittle trees.

If they fail we will not survive,
washed and washed with rain, will we?
No,we are not there yet.

She is pushing me two ways until
I am inside the paradox, the many lungs,
and they’re at it again, gathering oxygen;

no wonder I am wrung out
holding out for the promise of
something secret, after–

by Rachel Zucker