thanks

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways an in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like the cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
and we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

- w.s. merwin 

image: waiting by vilhelm hammershoi via silent storyteller

happy valentine's day!

"the boy at the far end of the train car
kept looking behind him
as if her were afraid or expecting someone

and then she appeared in the glass door
of the forward car and he rose
and opened the door and let her in

and she entered the car carrying
a large black case
in the unmistakable shape of a cello.

she looked like an angel with a high forehead
and somber eyes and her hair
was tied up behind her neck with a black bow.

and because of all that,
he seemed a little awkward
in his happiness to see her,

whereas she was simply there,
perfectly existing as a creature
with a soft face who played the cello.

and the reason i am writing this
on the back of a manila envelope
now that they have left the train together


is to tell you that when she turned
to lift the large, delicate cello
onto the overhead rack,

i saw him looking up at her
and what she was doing
the way the eyes of saints are painted

when they are looking up at God
when he is doing something remarkable,
something that identifies him as God."

love, by billy collins


image via weheartit

wake-up call

this poem is probably my favorite of all the poems i've managed to read in my life (probably very few compared to all those sitting on library shelves and in anthologies everywhere). i actually cried the first time i read it because i feel like it perfectly captures life and the inescapable passage of time. in every experience i feel like there's something we'll miss. a little part of ourselves that is left behind in a specific moment as we move forward and take only the memory of the experience with us. but at the same time, the opportunity to live those experiences is worth the pain of leaving them behind. enjoy...

wake-up call

The water is slapping wake up, wake up, against the boat
chugging away from Venice, infinite essence
of what must end because it is beautiful,

Venice that shrinks to a bobbing, pungent postcard
and then to nothing at all as the automatic
doors at the airport obligingly shut behind you.

Re-enter a world where everything is the same,
where you’ve gone slack again, and don’t even know it,
so unaware that you actually shrug to yourself,

I’ll be back, and yes, for some lucky stiffs it’s true,
sometimes it’s you, you’re sure to get more chances
at Venice, and Paris, and that blessed, unmarked place

where you sat on a bench and he kissed you that first time,
so many kisses, you hoped he would never stop,
you can hope, at least, not ever to forget it,

or forget how your babies, latching onto your breast,
would roll up their eyes in an ecstasy that was comic
in its seriousness, though your joy was no less grave,

but you’re not going back to so much, and more and more,
the more you live there’s more not to go back to,
and what you demand in your gratitude and greed

is more life in which to get so attached to something,
someone or someplace, you’re sure you’ll die right then
when you can’t have it back, something you don’t even know

the name of now, but will be yours before receding
as an indispensable ache; what you’re saying
is Lord, surprise me with even more to miss.

- mary jo salter

image via maryjanes and galoshes

peonies

"heart transplants my friend handed me:
four of her own peony bushes
in their fall disguise, the arteries
of truncated, dead wood protruding
from clumps of soil fine-veined with worms.

'better get them in before the frost.'
and so i did, forgetting them
until their june explosion when
it seemed at once they'd fallen in love,
had grown two dozen pink hearts each.

extravagance, exaggeration,
each one a girl on her first date,
excess perfume, her dress too ruffled,
the words he spoke to her too sweet -
but he was young; he meant it all.

and when they could not bear the pretty
weight of so much heart, i snipped
their dew-sopped blooms, stuffed them in vases
in every room like tissue-boxes
already teary with self-pity."

- mary jo salter

image via emequalsme

year one

"i was still standing
on a northern corner.

moonlit winter clouds the color of the desperation of wolves.

proof
of Your existence? there is nothing
but."

- franz wright from walking to martha's vineyard (2003)


image via mhatfield182.xanga