Hold this Thought - Poetry

Unseen Rain: Jon Minton

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

Rumi lived most of his life in Turkey during the 13th century. He wrote short poems, several of which have been translated by John Moyne and Coleman Barks in the book Unseen Rain. In one, he advises us to "Listen to presences inside poems. Let them take you where they will." Here are some selections, taken in no particular order:

"I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside!"

"I pretended to leap
to see if I could live there.
Someday I must actually arrive there,
or nothing will be left to arrive."

"Don't let your throat tighten
with fear. Take sips of breath
all day and night. Before death
closes your mouth."

"My ego is stubborn, often drunk, impolite.
My loving: Finely sensitive, impatient, confused.
Please take messages from one to the other,
Reply and counter-reply."

"Begin as creation, become a creator.
Never wait at a barrier.
In this kitchen stocked with fresh food,
why sit content with a cup of warm water?"

"Pledge": Gretchen Diemer

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

"Pledge" by Gretchen Diemer

"Here is the flag I can
salute, hand
on my heart, I

pledge to honor the great branch
of aspen, leaves beating
in the September wind, to hold dear

twisted limbs and white
bark, the red and yellow

leaves suspended above the water and
silt of the Matanuska, of any
meandering river, I

pledge to honor the bear, the harmful
and harmless, the ravens
circling the spawned out salmon beds, I

pledge to scatter the fallen leaves
as if they were the ashes

of soldiers cremated and
tossed about by an arbitrary wind."

"Dive for Dreams:" Jimmi Ware

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 01:00:00 -0700

"Dive for Dreams" by E.E. Cummings

dive for dreams
or a slogan may topple you
(trees are their roots
and wind is wind)

trust your heart
if the seas catch fire
(and live by love
though the stars walk backward)

honour the past
but welcome the future
(and dance your death
away at this wedding)

never mind a world
with its villains or heroes
(for god likes girls
and tomorrow and the earth)

"The Last Wolf": Marybeth Holleman

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 01:00:00 -0700

"The Last Wolf" by Mary TallMountain:

"the last wolf hurried toward me
through the ruined city
and I heard his baying echoes
down the steep smashed warrens
of Montgomery Street and past
the few ruby-crowned high-rises
left standing
their lighted elevators useless

passing the flicking red and green
of traffic signals
baying his way eastward
in the mystery of his wild loping gait
closer the sounds in the deadly night
through clutter and rubble of quiet blocks

I heard his voice ascending the hill
and at last his low whine as he came
floor by empty floor to the room
where I sat
in my narrow bed looking west, waiting
I heard him snuffle at the door and
I watched
he trotted across the floor

he laid his long gray muzzle
on the spare white spread
and his eyes burned yellow
his small dotted eyebrows quivered

Yes, I said.
I know what they have done."

Anchorage: Joan Kane

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:00:00 -0700

"Anchorage"

"How rapidly the tide turned, turns.
Still, turning now, gray wash and silt
Pivots on a finger of foam.

One could count time in its long
Trough, or lose it altogether:

Winter may thicken the air
Earlier than expected. Or,

An inflection in the shadow
Of the long crest is an increment,
And a small variation.

With it, we are joined, and continue.
A sharp-shinned hawk now wheels

Overhead, as each spring tends,
And shows its white underbelly."

August: Susan Derrera

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:00:00 -0700

This is Susan Derrera, and this is my poem, "August" from Crosscurrents North:

This evening
as I rowed away
from the house,
my feet cool
under the collected
rainwater
on the bottom
of the boat,
I looked at the lake,
at how the rain
thrown across it
like children's jacks,
flashed
then disappeared--
and at that moment,
while rain curled
silver fingers
through my hair
releasing the wildness
there, I knew exactly
who I was
and what I loved,

and I thought of
you, whoever you are,
however lost you may be,
and I brought you
here
to listen
to the music
of the rain
on leaves and
the feathered backs
of grebes
and your own warm
skin.

When we rounded the island
the sky began to
lift and even the depths
were made clear-the smooth
gray rocks at the bottom,
your own
jeweled heart,

and after we were done,
tied off at the dock,
I brought you in
all wet and new
and offered coffee
in a small blue cup
and a piece of
rhubarb pie
hot from the oven,
the juices flushed
and running
on the plate.

Bones: Amy Purevsuren

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 01:00:00 -0700

This is Amy Purevsuren, and these are several stanzas from my poem "Bones."

"I am a thing sculpted by footfall
day after day, over rocks and tundra,
along game trails or no trails on high passes.

I cross over bear tracks laid in sand,
just formed, nearly warm. We each pass
our ways privately. In my tent

I read, write, invent sense out of this life,
humming words into lines: words,
raining thoughts, water for my landscape.
...
Sometimes I am visited.
After the wind spends days blow-
drying the sky, no breath left,
the valley lies stark naked of sound.
I lie at night under the giant starless silence
listening to flower petals curl to sleep
like wolf tails, to vole bellies
whisper through grass, and for
the breath of a bear, which does
come, if you travel for a time in the north.
Usually, we are equally startled;
I holler hey hey hey and the bear
grunts and thunders off.
I crawl from my tent and stand naked
so as to see the maker of sounds."

Low to the Ground: Libby Roderick

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 01:00:00 -0700

This is from "Low to the Ground."

"We stand on the edge of a cliff in the deepest night I've
ever seen
People looking for light, people who cherish a dream
But the light's shining out from our eyes
And the dream's resting deep in our souls
If it's magic we're needing to keep us from falling
It's magic we already know

It's music that keeps us alive
It's dancing that sets our hearts free
It's children remember the laughter in life
It's animals teach us to see
Stay low to the ground
Live close to the earth
Don't stray very far from your soul
It's simple things show us the reason we're here
And it's simple things keeping us whole."

On Its Own Terms: Alice Galvin

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:00:00 -0700

It's December, and I rely on poet Hal Borland to remind me there's more than one way to experience this month. He offers us a more colorful way to look at December in his poem "On Its Own Terms."

   ‘It wasn't an outdoor poet who coined
the phrase "bleak December." It was some-
one who probably slept late, had sluggish
circulation and was afraid of catching
cold. December was bleak because it wasn't
June, loud with bees and bright with
blossoms.

   True, December can be raw and cold and
its days sometimes are dark, but it is
neither bleak nor colorless. Go outdoors
soon after sunup, which now comes late,
and even on a lowering day you probably
will find a frosty scene of dazzling
beauty. If the day is clear it can be a
world transformed by frost or snow, newly
created, fragile as spun glass, ephemeral
as the passing hour.
...
   Taken on its own terms, no December day
is really bleak. December wasn't meant to
be June.'

A Prayer for Old Age: Wayne Mergler

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:00:00 -0700

"A Prayer for Old Age" by William Butler Yeats

"God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow bone;

From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
O what am I that I should not seem
For the song's sake a fool?

I pray -- for fashion's word is out
And prayer comes round again--
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man."

Morning: Heather Lende

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:00:00 -0700

Here's what Billy Collins had to say about the way a good day begins, from his poem "Morning":

"Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,

then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?

This is the best--
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso--

maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins--
but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,

dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,

and, if necessary, the windows--
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning."

Band-Aids: Chloe Miller

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:00:00 -0700

This is Chloe Miller. I've been a finalist in the Letters About Literature contest, sponsored here in Alaska by Alaska Center for the Book. This is part of the letter Hannah Boyer of Fairbanks wrote to Shel Silverstein for the 2008 contest.

"Dear Shel Silverstein (somewhere up in heaven),

I really enjoyed your book entitled Where the Sidewalk Ends, and my favorite poem in the book is "Band-Aids." ...

I always have a spare band-aid or two in my pocket in case I need one, and as my family knows, I need one quite often. ... Sometimes my parents get mad that I am always using up all the band-aids in the house for no good reason and I always leave the peel strips in the drawer or on the counter. This drives my mom nuts. But for me, there is ALWAYS a reason to put on a band-aid! I like the way the band-aids look and feel. They remind me that I am hurt in some way and my parents need to treat me like I am actually hurt. Sometimes I am lucky and I get hurt on my left hand and I get out of violin practice for a week or so. This is a good thing for me, but not for my parents. Sometimes I put on a band-aid just because I feel special when I have one on."

The Moving Out: John Morgan

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:00:00 -0700

This is John Morgan. In 1976, my wife, Nancy, and I moved from New York to Fairbanks, Alaska, and this poem is called "The Moving Out."

"After sunset when the grieving
move further into their grief
and the stars are revealed by their master, the darkness,
I have left the cities of the blind
along tracks straight and cold as the north.

Here I sit listening on the shore
of a white and glacial distance.
The voice of a girl like an opening flower
begins to curl forth from the inner shell of the mind.
So many nights I have waited.

In cities the darkness gobbled me up and spat me out,
my fears scuttled back and forth outside the door.
Now the first birds waken and peck among fresh snow.
The light begins to open
with a pink and icy whisper along her cheek."

The Ecology of Subsistence: Cathy Rexford

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:00:00 -0700

This is Cathy Rexford, and this is part of my poem "The Ecology of Subsistence" from the anthology Scrimshaw.

"On the edge of the open lead, a toggle-head harpoon
waits to launch: bowhead sings to krill.

Thickened pack ice cracking; a baleen fishing line
pulls taut a silver dorsal fin of a round white fish.

A slate-blade knife slices along the grain of a caribou
hindquarter; the ice cellar lined in willow branches is empty.

Saltwater suffuses into a flint quarry, offshore
a thin layer of radiation glazes leathered walrus skin.

Alongside shatters of a hummock, a marsh marigold
flattens under three black toes of a sandhill crane.

A translucent sheep horn dipper skims a freshwater stream;
underneath, arctic char lay eggs of mercury.

Picked before the fall migration, cloudberries
drench in whale oil, ferment in a sealskin poke.

A tundra swan nests inside a rusted steel drum;
she abandons her newborns hatched a deep crimson."

I, Too: Vivian Melde

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:00:00 -0700

In 1855, Walt Whitman wrote "I Hear America Singing:"

"I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
...
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,"

Just about 70 years later, Langston Hughes answered Whitman with his own poem, "I, Too," written after he'd been denied passage on a ship because of his color.

   "I, too, sing America.

   I am the darker brother.
   They send me to eat in the kitchen
   When company comes,
   But I laugh,
   And eat well,
   And grow strong.

   Tomorrow,
   I'll be at the table
   When company comes.
   Nobody'll dare
   Say to me,
    'Eat in the kitchen,'   Then.
   Besides,
   They'll see how beautiful I am
   And be ashamed--

   I, too, am America."