(Poem #163)Waiting Left off the highway and down the hill. At the bottom, hang another left. Keep bearing left. The road will make a Y. Left again. There's a creek on the left. Keep going. Just before the road ends, there'll be another road. Take it and no other. Otherwise, your life will be ruined forever. There's a log house with a shake roof, on the left. It's not that house. It's the next house, just over a rise. The house where trees are laden with fruit. Where phlox, forsythia, and marigold grow. It's the house where the woman stands in the doorway wearing the sun in her hair. The one who's been waiting all this time. The woman who loves you. The one who can say, "What's kept you?" |
Waiting -- Raymond Carver
Letter to N.Y. -- Elizabeth Bishop
(Poem #162)Letter to N.Y. In your next letter I wish you'd say where you are going and what you are doing; how are the plays, and after the plays what other pleasures you're pursuing: taking cabs in the middle of the night, driving as if to save your soul where the road goes round and round the park and the meter glares like a moral owl, and the trees look so queer and green standing alone in big black caves and suddenly you're in a different place where everything seems to happen in waves, and most of the jokes you just can't catch, like dirty words rubbed off a slate, and the songs are loud but somehow dim and it gets so terribly late, and coming out of the brownstone house to the gray sidewalk, the watered street, one side of the buildings rises with the sun like a glistening field of wheat. —Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid if it's wheat it's none of your sowing, nevertheless I'd like to know what you are doing and where you are going. |
I Knew a Woman -- Theodore Roethke
(Poem #161)I Knew a Woman I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain! Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew up on Greek (I'd have them sing in a chorus, cheek to cheek). How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin, She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand; She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin; I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand; She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake, Coming behind her for her pretty sake (But what prodigious mowing we did make). Love likes a gander, and adores a goose: Her full lips pursed, the errant notes to seize; She played it quick, she played it light and loose; My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees; Her several parts could keep a pure repose, Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose (She moved in circles, and those circles moved). Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I'm martyr to a motion not my own; What's freedom for? To know eternity. I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways). |
Man Writes Poem -- Jay Leeming
(Poem #160)Man Writes Poem This just in: a man has begun writing a poem in a small room in Brooklyn. His curtains are apparently blowing in the breeze. We go now to our man Harry on the scene, what's the story down there Harry? "Well Chuck he has begun the second stanza and seems to be doing fine, he's using a blue pen, most poets these days use blue or black ink so blue is a fine choice. His curtains are indeed blowing in a breeze of some kind and what's more his radiator is 'whistling' somewhat. No metaphors have been written yet, but I'm sure he's rummaging around down there in the tin cans of his soul and will turn up something for us soon. Hang on—just breaking news here Chuck, there are 'birds singing' outside his window, and a car with a bad muffler has just gone by. Yes ... definitely a confirmation on the singing birds." Excuse me Harry but the poem seems to be taking on a very auditory quality at this point wouldn't you say? "Yes Chuck, you're right, but after years of experience I would hesitate to predict exactly where this poem is going to go. Why I remember being on the scene with Frost in '47, and with Stevens in '53, and if there's one thing about poems these days it's that hang on, something's happening here, he's just compared the curtains to his mother, and he's described the radiator as 'Roaring deep with the red walrus of History.' Now that's a key line, especially appearing here, somewhat late in the poem, when all of the similes are about to go home. In fact he seems a bit knocked out with the effort of writing that line, and who wouldn't be? Looks like ... yes, he's put down his pen and has gone to brush his teeth. Back to you Chuck." Well thanks Harry. Wow, the life of the artist. That's it for now, but we'll keep you informed of more details as they arise. |