Friday First Drafts

This Morning Song

Your class sang of the hole in the bottom of the sea.

My arm ached from holding it aloft, camera-heavy,

just as I sometimes ache from holding you aloft,

you and your brother, so small and dense and full

of the life you have lived and have yet to live.

I birthed you.  An astonishing reality, some say miracle.

You emerged, not breathing, life-giving cord turned 

murderous, malicious intent pulsing along its every fiber.

The midwife's hands were skilled, her spirit alert to

your needs, she moved to save you, she birthed you too.

In the car this morning, you asked your brother

to look at your long legs, the way they reach to the floor,

almost, or stretch so far from the hem of your shorts.

I look each day and at the space your brother's toes

now touch in his bed and am quieted by your grace.

--

A little sentimental this morning, a little rushed.  As always, feel free to comment, make a suggestion, or participate on your own.  I will be glad to post a link.

Friday First Drafts

I'm reviving this feature today, even though I don't have a quiet office in which to compose.  There are legos being built in the next room and a Justin Roberts song trickling down the stairs.  The dog is bringing his breakfast to eat at my feet, and the washer is humming its quiet tune.  The ironing is piled nearby, and the newspaper is still in plastic, and someone has just started up a leafblower on campus.  How's a girl supposed to write a poem under these circumstances?  We'll just see what happens.

The Meaning of Good

A durable product:
TV, microwave, couch
Yielding utility over time,
an index of our shared wealth,
a constant buying and selling
for the greater good.

Perhaps a common nicety:
an act of everyday kindness like
feeding a stranger or his meter.
Loaning a book or holding
the door at the bank.
We call these things good.

But this day is more:
it is deep, dark, exacting
in its blood and crown,
whip and taunt and cry.
The temple veil was rent,
and we call it good.

We call it good
and raise a lamentation
We call it good
and return in penitence
We call it good
and remind ourselves
that we know not what we do
or what it means to be good.

---
Feel free to comment, provide feedback, or make a suggestion.  And if you want to participate in Friday First Drafts,  please share!  I will be glad to post a link.

National Poetry Month 2012

Welcome to April, friends!  Perhaps you're like me, and you didn't notice that March was almost over until it was gone?  Well, I'm here to remind you that April is here, and (at least where I'm from) it is gorgeous.  Also, it is National Poetry Month.  Many of you may know Serena who blogs at Savvy Verse & Wit, and if so, you may appreciate her encouragement to read and discuss more poetry.  This month, she is hosting a blog tour to celebrate National Poetry Month, and I am happy to be participating on this first day of the tour.

Lately, I've been writing little to no poetry, but I have been reading some beautiful poems and thinking about poetry, especially as I've been reading Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook.  Oliver is a poet I haven't read extensively, but I love to dip into her collected poems because it always provides such a satisfying return.  And her handbook is no different.  It is simplistic and instructive, so it is possible, I suppose, for a reader to find it boring or overly didactic.  I don't, and I don't think even the most accomplished of poets would have much to quibble over in this passage from the first chapter:

If Romeo and Juliet had made appointments to meet, in the moonlight-swept orchard, in all the peril and sweetness of conspiracy, and then more often than not failed to meet -- one or the other lagging, or afraid, or busy elsewhere -- there would have been no romance, no passion, none of the drama for which we remember and celebrate them.  Writing a poem is not so different -- it is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.  They make appointments with each other, and keep them, and something begins to happen.  Or, they make appointments with each other but are casual and often fail to keep them: count on it, nothing happens.

I love the way she paints this image for us while also reminding us of the importance of discipline.  The contrast between the foolhardy passion of Romeo and Juliet and the disciplined writerly life is surprising and intentional and, at least in my mind, highly effective.   She reminds me that to be a writer I have to write.  I have to make room for my work if I want the words to come.

She also provides good, solid instruction on such matters as meter, scansion, and rhyme.  She stresses the importance of reading "widely and deeply," going on to say, "Good poems are the best teachers.  Perhaps they are the only teachers" (10).  She tackles free verse, tone, and diction, and throughout she scatters such phrases as:

There is a seed of silence at the edge of the sound. (24)

and

language is a living material, full of shadow and sudden moments of up-leap and endless nuance. (43)

and at the end

For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.  Yes, indeed. (122)

This April, whether you read Mary Oliver's handbook or her poems or those of the countless amazing poets out there, join us in appreciating Poetry.  Considering poetry.  And, perhaps, writing poetry.  For my part, I plan to revive my Friday First Drafts feature, so come back on Friday to read and give me some feedback or even to share your own work.  I'd love to hear it.

Friday First Drafts

Aphasia

He sits in the front row.
always early, eager, prepared,
the stereotype of overachievement,
and during a lengthening lecture, his gaze
glosses over slightly, he relaxes his grip
and a thin bead of drool taffies from his mouth
unnoticed until it strikes his hands limp in his lap.
Gnarled.  Is there a better word for those hands
hovering and pecking at the laptop before him?
How do you describe his eyes if not searching?
What is the word for his joyful struggle
with verbs, sentences, the spoken exchange
that flows effortlessly from his classmates,
the twinkle behind his damaged smile,
the brain wreck left (no horn was sounded)
after strokes as a child
mentioned in stumbling passing?
How do you tell him - again -
that he cannot achieve what he is
convinced he can?
I'm at a loss for words.

Friday First Drafts

Corner of 4th and 23rd

When they leave their perch in uniform-swoop, it is a
breathing, pulsating motion but no less lock-step than
the brown-shirted children marching for their Vaterland,
winging willingly down the rabbit hole, and we stir,
shaking from dream at the base of this tree feathered
with language, selling its wares, hawking its goods
in tongues foreign and familiar, each leaf alive, steady.
When one departs, another alights to take its place
sending quiet tremors down the line, affecting the
solitary peace, interrupting the talk that tingles along
these high wire branches and tangles between the toe
of each grasping stem, each lingering adornment.

Friday First Drafts

Istanbul was Constantinople.  Now it's Istanbul and Constantinople's been a long time gone.  Used to be Tuesday First Drafts.  Now I have an 8 am class and don't get to my computer until 11 or after.  I just ain't feelin' it, folks.  Plus, Friday provides a much nicer alliterative thing.  Now, for the first draft...

Midwifery

The miracle of lunar birth -
once one and now two.
Did the Girls think of our
silent satellite
when first they sang
of the spinning,
spitting turmoil
of this Earth?
Allow that surging and
violent thrusting, a hurtling
into unknown before gentle
suspension in orbit, to remind you
of your own birth
or that of your children.
See the moon now
swaddled in
atmospheric shelter,
protected and inextricably
linked to our Mother
Earth and prostrate before
the overseer of this birth
and infinite others.
Eternal midwifery.
The hands of God.