“How to Not Be a Perfectionist” (by Molly Brodak)
A love poem by Grace Paley
“The Red Poppy” (by Louise Glück)
The great thing is not having a mind. Feelings: oh, I have those; they govern me. I have a lord in heaven called the sun, and open for him, showing him the fire of my own heart, fire like his presence. What could such glory be if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters, were you like me once, long ago, before you were human? Did you permit yourselves to open once, who would never open again? Because in truth I am speaking now the way you do. I speak because I am shattered. Photo credit
“Place” (by W.S. Merwin)
On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree
what for
not for the fruit
the tree that bears the fruit
is not the one that was planted
I want the tree that stands
in the earth for the first time
with the sun already
going down
and the water
touching its roots
in the earth full of the dead
and the clouds passing
one by one
over its leaves
“Snowdrops” (by Louise Glück)
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring–
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
Bird
As when we awaken startled from a damp sleep
and realize that what we thought was love
was not love was not even the hollow kindness we show
a neighbor we hardly know when we say “sorry for your loss”
was not even a “there, there” we offer a friend
of a friend whose husband took up with a younger woman
was not even the feigned pity we show a coworker
whose stepfather fell down a flight of stairs, broke his
neck, and left behind an ample wife
was never even like the small gasp
that leaves our lips when through a car window
we see the blur of black bird with an injured wing
lying still in the road.
“Anyone Who Has Left Love” (by Sharon Olds)
Anyone who has left love,
who has stepped out of the boat, onto
the water, learns what they had not known
or wanted to. Anyone
who turns their back on love, as if
it might not take too long for them to go
all the way around and come up behind it—
anyone who lets love go,
opens their hand while walking through
a crowd, as if getting, piece by piece,
rid of evidence, will lose,
along with evidence of the thing,
the thing itself. Anyone
who sets love down, and takes their eyes
away, anyone who travels far
when love is home, anyone
who homes alone when love is far,
will lose what cannot be found. Maybe they
thought love was the earth under
the road, or the road under the sole
of the shoe or the foot under the body but by now it is
back there. It was a bush like a fire,
and now—no more fragrance or light
will be inhaled, or seen, as when
you die you will not see the world again.
Even if you thought you had not
believed you were loved, something in you
knew that you were—and you stepped right off love’s roof.
“Well anyway
the dead
are dead”
hushed but
busted wide
with want
that Jim
still begging
for one
last go
and Francie
so starved
she’s throwing
down fries
just minutes
before closing
those eyes
of hers
and the
dog’s ball
was buried
last fall
but what
a shedder
she was
that pup
this one
time gobbling
up chocolates
with franks
poor girl
nearly died
then but
didn’t so
look
the sun
it’s white
the wind
it’s up
the bits
of straw
skitter across
granite and
grass these
rose petals
dying, yes,
but still
so fragrant
nonetheless
October
I will tell you about the naked oak in our yard and about
my dead robin, June, who couldn’t fly south for winter
and about the Cooper’s hawk that swooped down to eat
the poor thing, pecking first at a dull eye, while close by
two cracked eggs, each the size of a large jelly bean,
lay oozing yolk and about the cold sky pulled thin and
plumed across my low horizon and about Hyena, with
his pail full of silver buckshot, who shouted from across
the avenue, “Wanna lick my lollipop, pancake tits?”
while behind him two fat boys cackled, with Br’er
Rabbit, the older by some years, in Daddy’s pink shirt
and about mother leaving for the City, her thin
lips painted plump, and about my gray lunch
congealing in a tin pan that sat on the top rack of a
cold oven and about the canned peaches she dumped
into a tea cup and placed on a shelf in her
refrigerator. But not yet and not here
…
ruminationville 