The damp among the shoots

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L e a v e   M e   H e r e

Belleview Cemetery

Lenoir, North Carolina

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Death's the classic look. It goes

down stoneworks carved with Latin Prose

and Poetry. And scholar's Greek

that no one now can really speak,

though it's all guessed at. The long view

contains bits of Etruscan, too,

(as guessed at as the Greek is, but

no one yet has figured out

more than a first few words, and those

the names for fish, bird, water, rose

painted beside the painting of

what a dead man kept to love

inside his tomb). In back of that

the view runs desert-rimmed and flat

past writings that were things, not words:

roses, water, fish, and birds.

The thing before the letters came,

The name before there was a name.

And back of things themselves? Who knows?

Jungle spells it as it grows

where the damp among the shoots

waterlogs the classic roots,

and the skulls and bones of things

last half as long as a bird sings,

as a fish swims, as a rose fills,

opens, lets out its breath, and spills

into the sockets where things crawl,

and death looks like no look at all.

= John Ciardi =

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Happy Wednesday

The particular question

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O p e n   S e a s o n

Old LOF Plant

Rossford, Ohio

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The day writhes with what? The lecturer

On This Beautiful World Of Ours composes himself

And hems the planet rose and haws it ripe,

And red, and right. The particular question -- here

The particular answer to the particular question

Is not in point -- the question is in point.

If the day writhes, it is not with revelations.

One goes on asking questions. That, then, is one

Of the categories. So said, this placid space

Is changed. It is not so blue as we thought. To be blue,

There must be no questions. It is an intellect

Of windings round and dodges to and fro,

Writhings in wrong obliques and distances,

Not an intellect in which we are fleet: present

Everywhere in space at once, cloud-pole

Of communication. It would be enough

If we were ever, just once, at the middle, fixed

In This Beautiful World Of Ours and not as now,

Helplessly at the edge, enough to be

Complete, because at the middle, if only in sense,

And in that enormous sense, merely enjoy.

= Wallace Stevens =

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Happy Tuesday

The years uncount themselves

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G l o w i n g   G l o w i n g   G o n e

Folly Beach

Charleston, South Carolina

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When deeds splay before us

precious as gold & unused chances

stripped from the whine-bone,

we know the moment kindheartedness

walks in. Each praise be

echoes us back as the years uncount

themselves, eating salt. Though blood

first shaped us on the climbing wheel,

the human mind lit by the savanna's

ice star & thistle rose,

your knowing gaze enters a room

& opens the day,

saying we were made for fun.

Even the bedazzled brute knows

when sunlight falls through leaves

across honed knives on the table.

If we can see it push shadows

aside, growing closer, are we less

broken? A barometer, temperature

gauge, a ruler in minus fractions

& pedigrees, a thingamajig,

a probe with an all-seeing eye,

what do we need to measure

kindness, every unheld breath,

every unkind leapyear?

Sometimes a sober voice is enough

to calm the waters & drive away

the false witnesses, saying, Look,

here are the broken treaties Beauty

brought to us earthbound sentinels.

= Yusef Komunyakaa =

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Happy Monday

A lone delight

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S n a p   G r a c k l e   P o p

Old City Alleyway

Knoxville, Tennessee

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A Wind that rose

Though not a Leaf

In any Forest stirred

But with itself did cold engage

Beyond the Realm of Bird --

A Wind that woke a lone Delight

Like Separation's Swell

Restored in Arctic Confidence

To the Invisible --

= Emily Dickinson =

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Happy Saturday

I see more seeing less

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Y o u   R e d   M e   R i g h t

Circular Congregational Church

Charleston, South Carolina

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When others run to windows or out of doors
To catch the sunset whole, he is content
With any segment anywhere he sits.

From segment, fragment, he can reconstruct
The whole, prefers to reconstruct the whole,
As if to say, I see more seeing less.

A window to the east will serve as well
As window to the west, for eastern sky
Echoes the western sky. And even less --

A patch of light that picture-glass happens
To catch from window-glass, fragment of fragment,
Flawed, distorted, dulled, nevertheless

Gives something unglassed nature cannot give:
The old obliquity of art, and proves
Part may be more than whole, least may be best.

= Robert Francis =

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Happy Friday