poetry ed. 4
on cozying and the coming year
back with another poetry edition1! this time is a a round-up of poems i am finding refuge in, as the year nears its end and the days get shorter and the weather gets gloomier and the wind gets nastier but the heart, oh the heart, only gets warmer.
✨
1. “Famous”
- by Naomi Shihab Nye
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
small, slow, grateful life. impact not only in how you change the world in bigly ways, but in how you affect every life you touch every day. not every place welcomes you with open arms, and not every room offers you warmth, but out there is always a place, always a room, always a purpose that is yours. and maybe that’s the way we were meant to think of purpose and meaning you know? to find our room, and make it better. it reminds me to be content, and think of the depth of the impact of my actions. not everything needs to be scaled.
2. “Letter in April”
- by Marie T. Martin
Do you still receive letters from the dead? I’m writing you
in the year after your death—without eyes, what do you see?
Here, the blue bean shrub and glimmerweed grow, later
revealing themselves, which sentences would have been
important. Do you still write letters, I’m writing to myself
the year I was born, a painted scroll unfurled
in a parking lot, the calligraphy of tires. Have you gotten
older, does the passing subway car see you, does the maple
tree hold you in between? Promise me you’ll stay awake, promise
me a speech for the soul in an arrangement of
white hawthorn and juniper. Promise me you’ll wake.
Promise me never to leave you.
each new year, while an arbitrary passage of time, does offer an excuse to introspect and leave some things behind in the year gone by. sometimes you don’t get a choice in what gets left behind. and often the thing you least want to leave behind, is the one that will drag you the most. it’s okay to leave that thing behind2.
3. “An Invitation”
- Mary Oliver
Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busyand very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistlesfor a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the airas they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mineand not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude –
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thingjust to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.
it really is a rather serious business that we are alive, isn’t it? mary oliver is a master of making you feel in the moment, and indeed bring focus back to the ‘one precious life’. deep breaths as i read this one. it is often gloomy now, outside my window. but every morning the birds do chirp by. at night, sometimes the fox croons, or i think it’s the fox. the rain drizzles and dances under the streetlamp faintly lit outside. and one time this young girl laughed raucously. i peeped out. i saw nothing. the mundane is truly magic. it is, afterall, what makes us human. and that does mean everything.
4. “96 Vandam”
- by Gerald Stern
I am going to carry my bed into New York City tonight
complete with dangling sheets and ripped blankets;
I am going to push it across three dark highways
or coast along under 600,000 faint stars.
I want to have it with me so I don’t have to beg
for too much shelter from my weak and exhausted friends.
I want to be as close as possible to my pillow
in case a dream or a fantasy should pass by.
I want to fall asleep on my own fire escape
and wake up dazed and hungry
to the sound of garbage grinding in the street below
and the smell of coffee cooking in the window above.
there is discomfort in progress. but i have learnt to find comfort in the resilience3.
5. “Questions for the New Year”
- by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Why not believe in magic?
Can I soften? Can I soften some more?
Does truth exist? How are stones alive?
What if I never learn
what happens when we die?
What’s the next nice thing
I can do for someone else?
What’s for breakfast? What’s at stake?
When I dream of my beloveds, is it them?
Where am I in my own way?
How might I be more river, less dam?
Which comes first, forgiveness or the peace?
Which comes last, unknowing or the known?
What is love? What is now? What is home?
What is it in us that knows how to wonder?
What is it in us that knows how to grow?
Who are we really? What is courage?
What’s worth it? What’s asked of me now?
Should I be in this moment a blade or a bloom?
What’s the nature of higher ground?
Can I ask without longing for answers?
Can I feel I am one with it all?
How does life live through me?
Can I be in service to that?
What do I believe I can’t give away?
What if I say nothing and listen?
Will I choose awe today?
choose awe, choose beauty. choose laughter, choose love. choose abundance, choose grace. choose peace, choose warmth. choose better, choose yourself. new year new we :)
until next time & new reads!
🌻
~ rufus
all images are sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive
especially if that thing is an older version of your own self :)
something something about being anti-fragile and conditioning yourself to ‘hard mode’