The northern lights. I wouldn’t have noticed them
if the deer hadn’t told me
a doe her coat of pearls her glowing hoofs
proud and inquisitive
eager for my appraisal
and I went out into the night with electrical steps
but with my head held also proud
to share the animal’s fear
and see what I had seen before
a sky flaring and spectral
greenish waves and ribbons
and the snow under strange light tossing in the pasture
like a storming ocean caught
by a flaring beacon.
The deer stands away from me not far
there among bare black apple trees
a presence I no longer see.
We are proud to be afraid
proud to share
the silent magnetic storm that destroys the stars
and flickers around our heads
like the saints’ cold spiritual agonies
of old.
I remember but without the sense other light-storms
cold memories discursive and philosophical
in my mind’s burden
and the deer remembers nothing.
We move our feet crunching bitter snow while the storm
crashes like god-wars down the east
we shake the sparks from our eyes
we quiver inside our shocked fur
we search for each other
in the apple thicket—
a glimpse, an acknowledgment
it is enough and never enough—
we toss our heads and say good night
moving away on bitter bitter snow.
Copyright Credit: Hayden Carruth, “I Know, I Remember, But How Can I Help You” from Collected Shorter Poems. Copyright © 1992 by Hayden Carruth. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press.
For my grandmother
I am water, only because you are the ocean.
We are here, only
because old leaves have been falling.
A mulching of memories folding
into buried hands.
The cliffs we learn to edge.
The tree trunk hollowed, humming.
I am a tongue, only because
you are the body planting stories with thumb.
Soil crumbs cling to your knees.
Small stacks of empty clay pots dreaming.
I am an air plant suspended, only
because you are the trunk I cling to.
I am the milky fish eye, only
because it’s your favorite.
Even the sound you make
when your lips kiss the opelu
socket is a mo‘olelo.
A slipper is lost in the yard.
A haku lei is chilling in the icebox.
I am a cup for feathers, only
because you want to fill the hours.
I am a turning wrist, only
because you left the hose on.
Heliconias are singing underwater.
Beetles are floating across the yard.
Donovan Kūhiō Colleps, “Kissing the Opelu” from Poetry (July/August 2016). Copyright © 2016 by Donovan Kūhiō Colleps. Used with the permission of the author.
The senseless leaf in the fevered hand
Grows hot, near blood-heat, but never grows
Green. Weeks ago the dove’s last cooing strain
Settled silent in the nest to brood slow
Absence from song. The dropped leaf cools
On the uncut grass, supple still, still green,
Twining still these fingers as they listless pull
The tangle straight until the tangle tightens
And the hand is caught, another fallen leaf.
The poetry of the earth never ceases
Ceasing — one blade of grass denies belief
Until its mere thread bears the grasshopper’s
Whole weight, and the black cricket sings unseen,
Desire living in a hole beneath the tangle’s green.
Dan Beachy-Quick, untitled sonnet in “Romanticisms” from gentlessness. Originally published (as “The Cricket and the Grasshopper”) in Poetry (February 2013). Copyright © 2013, 2015 by Dan Beachy- Quick. Used with the permission of Tupelo Press, tupelopress.org.
God washes clean the souls and hearts of you,
His favored ones, whose backs bend o’er the soil,
Which grudging gives to them requite for toil
In sober graces and in vision true.
God places in your hands the pow’r to do
A service sweet. Your gift supreme to foil
The bare-fanged wolves of hunger in the moil
Of Life’s activities. Yet all too few
Your glorious band, clean sprung from Nature’s heart;
The hope of hungry thousands, in whose breast
Dwells fear that you should fail. God placed no dart
Of war within your hands, but pow’r to start
Tears, praise, love, joy, enwoven in a crest
To crown you glorious, brave ones of the soil.
My house is the red earth; it could be the center of the world. I’ve heard New
York, Paris, or Tokyo called the center of the world, but I say it is
magnificently humble. You could drive by and miss it. Radio waves can
obscure it. Words cannot construct it, for there are some sounds left to sacred
wordless form. For instance, that fool crow, picking through trash near the
corral, understands the center of the world as greasy strips of fat. Just ask
him. He doesn’t have to say that the earth has turned scarlet through fierce
belief, after centuries of heartbreak and laughter—he perches on the blue
bowl of the sky, and laughs.
Copyright Credit: Joy Harjo, “Don’t Bother the Earth Spirit” from Secrets from the Center of the World. Copyright © 1999 by The Arizona Board of Regents. Used by permission of The University of Arizona Press.
Oh could I raise the darken’d veil,
Which hides my future life from me,
Could unborn ages slowly sail,
Before my view—and could I see
My every action painted there,
To cast one look I would not dare.
There poverty and grief might stand,
And dark Despair’s corroding hand,
Would make me seek the lonely tomb
To slumber in its endless gloom.
Then let me never cast a look,
Within Fate’s fix’d mysterious book.
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
O quam te memorem virgo ...
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.
She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.
The lords of life, the lords of life,—
I saw them pass,
In their own guise,
Like and unlike,
Portly and grim,—
Use and Surprise,
Surface and Dream,
Succession swift and spectral Wrong,
Temperament without a tongue,
And the inventor of the game
Omnipresent without name;—
Some to see, some to be guessed,
They marched from east to west:
Little man, least of all,
Among the legs of his guardians tall,
Walked about with puzzled look.
Him by the hand dear Nature took,
Dearest Nature, strong and kind,
Whispered, ‘Darling, never mind!
To-morrow they will wear another face,
The founder thou; these are thy race!’
