April 7

Those Winter Sundays

 

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made 

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. 

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house, 

speaking indifferently to him, 

 who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices?

- Robert Hayden

April 4

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness   

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.   

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.   

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me   

And nuzzled my left hand.   

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

 

- James Wright

April 3

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-  
  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding  
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding  
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing  
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding  
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding  
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!  
  
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here  
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!  
  
  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion  
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,  
  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

G. M. Hopkins 

April 2

Nothing Gold Can Stay

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. 

- Robert Frost 

April 1, 2016

This year I am writing prose--prosaic indeed. So instead of posting my own poems, I'll post some of my favorites from the greats. Beginning (and probably ending) with, of course, Dickinson.

239

"Heaven"—is what I cannot reach!
The Apple on the Tree—
Provided it do hopeless—hang—
That—"Heaven" is—to Me!

The Color, on the Cruising Cloud—
The interdicted Land—
Behind the Hill—the House behind—
There—Paradise—is found!

Her teasing Purples—Afternoons—
The credulous—decoy—
Enamored—of the Conjuror—
That spurned us—Yesterday!

- Emily Dickinson

Where does she go in her third stanzas? It's so typical of her to take off in stanza 3, as if the first two allow her to accelerate to the speed of ascent.

April 30

In the early days before

we’d seen the stars we

sat beside ourselves on

the shadowed stoop

waiting for a sign but

the sign that came

was not what we

were waiting for

a sparse flicker

in the murk

a nod in the

bleak dark

April 29

In the meantime while waiting

you just have to say words

they don’t have to mean

everything they don’t have

to save time or bring

memory to mind they don’t

have to spare the truth or

the lie that loosens it: what

you want is to go home

April 28

The music comes and goes

my hands are old

but still game to try

the long hiatus

hasn’t seemed to make

much difference:

that is the modest

advantage of original

mediocrity

April 27

This time of year

I think of Frost,

his Nothing Gold

Can Stay, and wish

I’d written that.

Yes, “leaf subsides

to leaf,” but just

before then, just

at that moment

of gold, all is held in

being, all is possible

before the fall.

April 26

The drylands don’t attract me;

I grew up under dark evergreens

and over water—sheets of it,

spreading like silver foil to the

horizon. From the air it looked

solid and even when my father

put his small plane down

on it, the floats kept us from

disappearing under the shining

mantle. Flat, like sand, but not

empty, not that kind of place

where souls and thirsts are exposed.