Take Love for Granted

 

Assume it's in the kitchen,

under the couch, high

in the pine tree out back,

behind the paint cans

in the garage. Don't try

proving your love

is bigger than the Grand

Canyon, the Milky Way,

the urban sprawl of L.A.

Take it for granted. Take it

out with the garbage. Bring

it in with the takeout. Take

it for a walk with the dog.

Wake it every day, say,

"Good morning." Then

make the coffee. Warm 

the cups. Don't expect much

of the day. Be glad when

you make it back to bed.

Be glad he threw out that

box of old hats. Be glad

she leaves her shoes

in the hall. Snow will

come. Spring will show up.

Summer will be humid.

The leaves will fall

in the fall. That's more

than you need. We can

love anybody, even

everybody. But you

can love the silence,

sighing and saying to

yourself, "That's her."

"That's him." Then to

each other, "I know!

Let's go out for breakfast!"

--Jack Ridl

Night thinks it's crying again

      

Night thinks it's crying again and I
keep listening to a song about autumn where
an apple tastes like longing and every leaf
in the maple tree tries to explain loss
through a series of colors—hectic orange,
indifferent red, a kind of gold that speaks
directly to god or moonbeams and in the dark
as I drive down wet roadways watching
for deer, the only thing I can see clearly
are the yellow leaves christening
my windshield and I think how we are taught
not to love too many, too much, the night,
the darkness, and I think I am crying but it is
only rain.

--Kelli Russell Agodon

Autumn

 

Look, the migrating birds

Are leaving us, small souls

That brave three thousand miles

To Africa, to warmth;

They populate the sky,

They take the last

Attributes of summer;

They are gone, and now

The winds will have them,

Their journey starts

In the knowledge that this,

Like the seasons, has to be.

Autumn is a time of reflection;

Of the making of lists,

Of books to be read now

That the nights are drawing in;

Of letters to be written,

Friends to be remembered,

The things they said

To be thought about further.

Perhaps, in short, to think

About what it is that makes

This life so precious

Of what it is that breaks the heart.

--Alexander McCall Smith

[Photo of fall camping with our dogs.]

For When People Ask

 

I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
more than that: a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
I want the word that says
I feel it all all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird
singing only one note at a time,
more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
and simultaneously
two or three harmonics high above it—
a sound, the Tuvans say,
that gives the impression
of wind swirling among rocks.
The heart understands swirl,
how the churning of opposite feelings
weaves through us like an insistent breeze
leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
blesses us with paradox
so we might walk more openly
into this world so rife with devastation,
this world so ripe with joy.

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

[Photo of our twins meeting their baby sister.]

.]

An Ode We Owe

 

“How can I ask you to do good,

When we’ve barely withstood

Our greatest threats yet:

The depths of death, despair and disparity,

Atrocities across cities, towns & countries,

Lives lost, climactic costs.

Exhausted, angered, we are endangered,

Not because of our numbers,

But because of our numbness.

We’re strangers

To one another’s perils and pain,

Unaware that the welfare of the public

And the planet share a name–

–Equality

Doesn’t mean being the exact same,

But enacting a vast aim:

The good of the world to its highest capability.

The wise believe that our people without power

Leaves our planet without possibility.

Therefore, though poverty is a poor existence,

Complicity is a poorer excuse.

We must go the distance,

Though this battle is hard and huge,

Though this fight we did not choose,

For preserving the earth isn’t a battle too large

To win, but a blessing too large to lose.

This is the most pressing truth:

That Our people have only one planet to call home

And our planet has only one people to call its own.

We can either divide and be conquered by the few,

Or we can decide to conquer the future,

And say that today a new dawn we wrote,

Say that as long as we have humanity,

We will forever have hope.

Together, we won’t just be the generation

That tries but the generation that triumphs;

Let us see a legacy

Where tomorrow is not driven

By the human condition,

But by our human conviction.

And while hope alone can’t save us now,

With it we can brave the now,

Because our hardest change hinges

On our darkest challenges.

Thus may our crisis be our cry, our crossroad,

The oldest ode we owe each other.

We chime it, for the climate,

For our communities.

We shall respect and protect

Every part of this planet,

Hand it to every heart on this earth,

Until no one’s worth is rendered

By the race, gender, class, or identity

They were born. This morn let it be sworn

That we are one one human kin,

Grounded not just by the griefs

We bear, but by the good we begin.

To anyone out there:

I only ask that you care before it’s too late,

That you live aware and awake,

That you lead with love in hours of hate.

I challenge you to heed this call,

I dare you to shape our fate.

Above all, I dare you to do good

So that the world might be great.”

--Amanda Gorman

[Photo of Amanda Gorman reciting her poem at the United Nations General Assembly, 9/19/22]

Honey at the Table

 

It fills you with the soft

essence of vanished flowers, it becomes

a trickle sharp as a hair that you follow

from the honey pot over the table

and out the door and over the ground,

and all the while it thickens,

grows deeper and wilder, edged

with pine boughs and wet boulders,

pawprints of bobcat and bear, until

deep in the forest you

shuffle up some tree, you rip the bark,

you float into and swallow the dripping combs,

bits of the tree, crushed bees – - – a taste

composed of everything lost, in which everything lost is found.

--Mary Oliver

[Photo of honey we bottled today from our two hives].

Poems Are Not Words

 

Poetry is a life-cherishing force.  And it requires a vision--a faith, to use an old-fashioned term.  Yes, indeed. 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.  

--Mary Oliver [Final lines from A Poetry Handbook].