Sunday

        the mind has to sink down out of sight

                                              — Lorine Niedecker

wait until the bubbles disappear

                                                    nonstop twitter

                                                    predawn jitter

egret westing

                      enough morning can’t enter the house

                      cardinal the red flower

                      three ducks safe landing

mirror lake

                  amoeba-shaped white web southeast

                                                                                 evaporates

a third of a moon beams at the not yet sun

no cloud except low in the east

lavender swath

                          white streak

                                               cornflower blue

do birds listen to songs of other species?

buzz, chirp, whistle, wheep

I see no feeders

                           not a wild yet fed by wild

the bigger birds could eat mole crickets

armored brown the size of a peanut

lake green, gray, silver

                                     grows blue

duck splayed tilts to a landing

gravel croaks of too many males

                                                      swath of gold

fish swirls, melting circles

one duck flies above the water

                                                   a second flies below

double chevron duck wake

                                             straight for the dock

where white prints prove yesterday’s heron

sun

      the sun’s yellow flare bleeds red

                                                            blinds

moon’s curve below a white contrail

male & female mallard cross the lawn

a gull flies into the sun

ducks belly down into the water

fly up with two more

                                 slap, flutter

flash of red

                   cardinal on dock

                                                partner in the wax myrtle

Easter

by Lorine Niedecker

A robin stood by my porch

     and side-eyed

              raised up

                      a worm

Get a load

        of April’s

                    fabulous

frog rattle —

     lowland freight cars

        in the night

Faux

across the lake a loud machine —

gas powered — blows a yard, don’t let’s revert

to weeds & wildflowers, let’s pay to prune

& sculpt, whack & shave our native earth’s

life — dollarweed pays no bills, chickweed raises

no chickens, the noise exposes the tool’s id —

blower, vile invention, only laggards choose

gas over arms pulling a rake, soil & mold

flying through air allergic & asthmatic victims

wheeze on — exile the mow-blow-&-go teams

down below where blades cut & turbulence flays

week after week, let faux-gardeners pay

with perpetual pain, let’s reweave Gaia’s threads

liberate suburbia from perpetual dread

Process

by Yannis Ritsos

Day by day he disarmed himself. First he stripped off his clothing,

a little later his underwear, then later his skin,

and finally his flesh and bones until in the end

only this simple, warm, limpid essence remained

which indiscernably and without hands he shaped

into small jars, poems, and men.

And most likely he was one of these things.

Morning
by Yannis Ritsos

She opened the window shutters, spread the bedsheets on the
windowsill, saw the day.
A bird stared her in the eyes. "I am alone," she whispered.
"I am alive." She went back into the room. The mirror too is a
window.
If I leap from here, I shall fall into my hands.

the story of my life in five minutes, #2

aside from ear infections, the screaming that entailed, & trying to hide behind coats in the front hall closet from the doctor with his little black bag who came to the house every day to give me a shot of penicillin, aside from that my mother said I was a perfectly behaved child, silent, played for long periods with the nearest toy, not until I was three did the doctor explain that I was deaf & that taking my tonsils out would fix it, mostly it did — the black & white earsplitting spiral of anesthesia, waking in the green ward in a bed between beds, two long rows of beds, at a distance a uniformed nurse, my soft white mother, my tall suited father — my throat hurt, I clung to her, I hid from him, not that he cared, he was the beast, I terrified, begging her to take me home where I could once more become invisible

Bending the Bow [excerpt]

by Robert Duncan

For these discords, these imperatives of the poem that exceed our proprieties, these interferences — as if the real voice of the poet might render unrecognizable to our sympathies the voice we wanted to be real, these even artful, willful or, it seems to us, affected, psychopathologies of daily life, touch upon the living center where there is no composure but a life-spring of dissatisfaction in all orders from which the restless ordering of our poetry comes.

Penelope's Weaving

every day Penelope weaves — huphaino —

suitors, flaunting their hubris, wait like dogs

for her finished cloth, the pause wherein

she will choose — oh, likely they praise

the story she weaves, even her colors

while rowdy they swill at the household’s

plenty, feed until blind with overdose

fail to notice her unpickings — humnos —

hymns she fashions by day dissolve by night

the dreams fade as the dissolutes awake

dull bestial forms sentenced to pose

& bluster, tricked by her faultless song

who lives the fuller life? Odysseus?

lured & snared like all men, or Penelope?

boundlessly creating — cat, fox, swift

on clever paws, various weeds flower

on both sides of a wake the water is still

[Let's say you forgot me]

by Susan Laughter Meyers

Let's say you forgot me —

no, not forgot: were unable to reach,

one of us out of the country,

say, me this time

writing in France, I put down line

after line, shapes anyone could make

something out of,

black ink on cream paper, waiting for you

to call. Your phone, my phone,

somebody's phone isn't working.

My thoughts are growing remote,

and the words come to me

in a language I can't translate.

Weeks pass, as weeks will do.

My handwriting becomes illegible

and the ink is starting to fade.

A Working Brain

It’s not about pleasure. Someone’s child

who cannot see or speak or walk expresses

pleasure, & grief. Someone’s wife cries

if her wine is withheld & cries wanting

to go home, doesn’t know why she’s not

home, the space where her mind thrived

before it unraveled. Someone survives

for more than forty years absent speech

or reason, potent with fear & violence,

unable to mend. Meanwhile the able we

fashion selves, register claims, engage

in agon day after day after mortal day

until we too miss the warp thread

& follow our shuttle rocketing far away.

Ode to Psyche

by John Keats

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung

        By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,

And pardon that thy secrets should be sung

        Even into thine own soft-conched ear:

Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see

        The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?

I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,

        And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,

Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side

        In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof

        Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran

            A brooklet, scarce espied:

Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,

        Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,

They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass;

        Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;

        Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,

As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,

And ready still past kisses to outnumber

        At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:

            The winged boy I knew;

But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?

            His Psyche true!

O latest born and loveliest vision far

        Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!

Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star,

        Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;

Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,

            Nor altar heap'd with flowers;

Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan

            Upon the midnight hours;

No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet

        From chain-swung censer teeming;

No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat

        Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,

        Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,

When holy were the haunted forest boughs,

        Holy the air, the water, and the fire;

Yet even in these days so far retir'd

        From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,

        Fluttering among the faint Olympians,

I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir'd.

So let me be thy choir, and make a moan

            Upon the midnight hours;

Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet

        From swinged censer teeming;

Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat

        Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

        In some untrodden region of my mind,

Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

        Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees

        Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;

And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,

        The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep;

And in the midst of this wide quietness

A rosy sanctuary will I dress

  With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,

        With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,

With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,

        Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:

And there shall be for thee all soft delight

        That shadowy thought can win,

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,

        To let the warm Love in!