A vagueness comes over everything, as though proving color and contour alike dispensable: the lighthouse extinct, the islands’ spruce-tips drunk up like milk in the universal emulsion; houses reverting into the lost and forgotten; granite subsumed, a rumor in a mumble of ocean.                                Tactile definition, however, has not been totally banished: hanging [...]]]> FOG

A vagueness comes over everything,
as though proving color and contour
alike dispensable: the lighthouse
extinct, the islands’ spruce-tips
drunk up like milk in the
universal emulsion; houses
reverting into the lost
and forgotten; granite
subsumed, a rumor
in a mumble of ocean.
                               Tactile
definition, however, has not been
totally banished: hanging
tassel by tassel, panicled
foxtail and needlegrass,
dropseed, furred hawkweed,
and last season’s rose-hips
are vested in silenced
chimes of the finest,
clearest sea-crystal.
                               Opacity
opens up rooms, a showcase
for the hueless moonflower
corolla, as Georgia
O’Keefe might have seen it,
of foghorns; the nodding
campanula of bell buoys;
the ticking, linear
filigree of bird voices.

  — Amy Clampitt (1920 – 1994), American poet.

Coming at an end, the lovers Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where Did it end? There is no telling. No love is Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves’ boundaries From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye Like death. Coming at an end. Rather, I would [...]]]> A BOOK OF MUSIC

Coming at an end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where
Did it end? There is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves’ boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons. Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.

  — Jack Spicer (1925 – 1965), American poet

BRIGHT EYES – I MUST BELONG SOMEWHERE

Leave the bright blue door on the white-washed wall. Leave the death ledger under city hall. Leave the joyful air in that rubber ball today.

Just leave the lilac print on the linen sheet. Leave the bird you killed at [...]]]>

BRIGHT EYES – I MUST BELONG SOMEWHERE

Leave the bright blue door on the white-washed wall.
Leave the death ledger under city hall.
Leave the joyful air in that rubber ball today.

Just leave the lilac print on the linen sheet.
Leave the bird you killed at your father’s feet.
Let the sideways rain in the crooked street remain.

Leave whimpering dog in his cold kennel.
Leave the dead starlet on her pedestal.
Leave the acid kids in their green fishbowls today.

Leave the sad guitar in its hard-shell case.
Leave the worried look on your lover’s face.
Let the orange embers in the fireplace remain.

Cause everything must belong somewhere.
The train off in the distance, bicycle chained to the stairs.
Everything must belong somewhere.
I know that now, that’s why I’m staying here.

Leave the ocean’s roar in the turquoise shell.
Leave the widower in his private hell.
Leave the liberty in that broken bell today.

Leave the epic poem on its yellowed page.
Leave the grey macaw in his covered cage.
Let the travelling band on the interstate remain.

Cause everything must belong somewhere.
Sound-stage in California, televisions in Times Square.
Everything must belong somewhere.
I know that now, that’s why I’m staying here.
Yeah I know that now that’s why I’m staying here.

Leave the secret talk on the trundle bed.
Leave the garden tools in the rusted shed.
Leave those bad ideas in your troubled head today.

Just leave the restless ghost in his old hotel.
Leave the homeless man out in that cardboard cell.
Let the painted horse on the carousel remain.

Cause everything must belong somewhere.
Just like the gold around your finger or the silver in his hair.
Yeah, everything must belong somewhere.
I know that now, that’s why I’m staying here.
I know that now, that’s why I’m staying here.

In truth, the forest hears each sound,
Each blade of grass as it lies down.
The world requires no audience.
no witnesses, no witnesses.

Leave the old town drunk on his wooden stool.
Leave the autumn leaves in the swimming pool.
Leave the poor black child in his crumbling school today.

Leave novelist in his daydream tune.
Leave the scientist in her Rubik’s cube.
Let true genius in the padded room remain.

Leave horses hair on the slanted bow.
Leave the slot machines on the riverboat.
Leave the cauliflower in the casserole today.

Leave the hot white-trash in their shopping malls.
Leave the hawks of war in their capitals.
Let the organs moan in the cathedral remain.

Cause everything must belong somewhere.
They lock the devil in the basement, God up into the air.
Yeah, everything must belong somewhere.
I know it’s true, I wish you’d leave me here.
I know it’s true, why don’t you leave me here?

On the first full day of summer the sun is up the sky as far as it will get and now it will head south to warm the Antipodes, where today it rains and gales blow up from the Antarctic.

Here it is summer already, the lawn mowed, garden weeded and nostalgia for summers [...]]]>

SOLSTICE

On the first full day of summer the sun is up
the sky as far as it will get and now it will
head south to warm the Antipodes, where today
it rains and gales blow up from the Antarctic.

see another summer coming, relentless in
its blooms and breeze and thunder rolling up
the valley and apple blossoms strewn like snow
flakes on the ground.

From The Geographic Cure by Ellen Dudley. Copyright © 2007 by Ellen Dudley.

The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat, It sank from sight before it [...]]]>

SNOW-BOUND [The sun that brief December day]  

The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
    A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
    The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east: we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.
Meanwhile we did your nightly chores,—
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd’s-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold’s pole of birch,
The cock his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.

As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back,—
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art
The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks’ heads on the andirons glowed;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme: “Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,
There the witches are making tea.”
The moon above the eastern wood
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the somber green
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemed where’er it fell
To make the coldness visible.

  — John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 – 1892), Quaker, Abolitionist, Poet.

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 17.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find out about it until well past half-way through the day … but still, in [...]]]> Celebrate the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day!

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 17.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find out about it until well past half-way through the day … but still, in honour of:

A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres
        to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor
        hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

  — Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892), American poet and essayist.

Do not look for him In brittle mountain streams: They are too cold for any god; And do not examine the angry rivers For shreds of his soft body Or turn the shore stones for his blood; But in the warm salt ocean He is descending through cliffs Of slow green water And the [...]]]>

ELEGY

Do not look for him
In brittle mountain streams:
They are too cold for any god;
And do not examine the angry rivers
For shreds of his soft body
Or turn the shore stones for his blood;
But in the warm salt ocean
He is descending through cliffs
Of slow green water
And the hovering coloured fish
Kiss his snow-bruised body
And build their secret nests
In his fluttering winding-sheet.

  — Leonard Cohen (b. 1934), Canadian poet, composer, author

The changing light                  at San Francisco        is none of your East Coast light                 none of your                             pearly light of Paris The light of San Francisco                         is a sea light                                        an island light And the light of fog                    blanketing the hills           drifting in at night                       through the Golden Gate [...]]]> THE CHANGING LIGHT

The changing light
                 at San Francisco
       is none of your East Coast light
                none of your
                            pearly light of Paris
The light of San Francisco
                        is a sea light
                                       an island light
And the light of fog
                   blanketing the hills
          drifting in at night
                      through the Golden Gate
                                       to lie on the city at dawn
And then the halcyon late mornings
       after the fog burns off
            and the sun paints white houses
                                    with the sea light of Greece
                 with sharp clean shadows
                       making the town look like
                                it had just been painted

And then another scrim
                  when the new night fog
                                        floats in
And in that vale of light
                      the city drifts
                                    anchorless upon the ocean

  — Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919), from How to Paint Sunlight, copyright © 2000.

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets towards your oceanic eyes.

There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens     and flames, its arms turning like a drowning man’s.

I send out red signals across your absent eyes that move like the sea near a lighthouse.

You keep only darkness, [...]]]>

Leaning into the Afternoons

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.

The night gallops on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land.

  — Pablo Neruda (1904 – 1973), Chilean writer and Communist politician.
     Translation by W.S. Merwin