A FORMAL FEELING COMES
After Dickinson and Atwood
Start with what is near.
Your own hand. Knotted pine. Graying
picnic table. See before you speak.
Knotted hand, graying pine, empty
table. When you cannot
welcome what is difficult
to say, repeat a gesture—
open your hand, set
the table with familiar linen—
until it is ritual, until it calms
your need. Find your allies
in the speechless beauties—pine,
yes, and maple, hemlock, fir.
Form lends freedom, if not
ease. Take whatever
hand is offered, sit
at the table spread before you.
Let quiet include birdsong.
NOT YET
…my disordered soul thirsts
after
something it cannot name.
—Jane Kenyon
How many summer
afternoons found us
at this
lakeshore, unable to account
for our fate?
Dear whirligig,
you want what is
only possible
with stillness. We
have yet to learn the names
of nearly
everything we love. These
tiny birds in
the yellowing lilac—who are they?
Branch to
branch—in search of what?
Each winter we
earn the next summer’s light
until—not yet—it
arrives unannounced:
our last. From
the corner of an eye
we’ll see—not
yet—how perfect and brief
our bodies were—how
even one afternoon
of lakewater and
sunlight, the girlchild
splashing in the
shallows, the laughter
carried from a
far shore—
how even this was
enough, seen
from the
diminishing vista of a rearview mirror.
mirror.
WRITE YOUR POEM:
Who is your mentor? Renoir used to sit in the Louvre and paint the Master's, finding inspiration. Which poet do you emulate? Take a page out of the Washington State Laureate's book. Keep following. Keep learning. Here is one by Margaret Atwood. Write your song on the back of your electrical bill. Send the poem in the envelope and keep the lights on.
Is/Not
Love is not a profession
genteel or otherwise
sex is not dentistry
the slick filling of aches and cavities
you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,
nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller
Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,
permit yourself anger
and permit me mine
which needs neither
your approval nor your suprise
which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease
but agaist you,
which does not need to be understood
or washed or cauterized,
which needs instead
to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense.
genteel or otherwise
sex is not dentistry
the slick filling of aches and cavities
you are not my doctor
you are not my cure,
nobody has that
power, you are merely a fellow/traveller
Give up this medical concern,
buttoned, attentive,
permit yourself anger
and permit me mine
which needs neither
your approval nor your suprise
which does not need to be made legal
which is not against a disease
but agaist you,
which does not need to be understood
or washed or cauterized,
which needs instead
to be said and said.
Permit me the present tense.
