Ordinary Life

And so, I end this month-long tip of the hat to Poetry Month with another poem-prophetic. I am reminded too, of so many porches filled now with emptiness; barren swings and rocking chairs where stories used to sit. I see loved ones lingering in the twilight, soon to take sweet rest. Of all the seats in the house, yours with mine is best. Thinking back over the porches we've shared,sitting in hammocks or worn-out lawn chairs- beautiful landscapes or time passing through, the view is improved for watching with you.   They Sit Together on the Porch Wendell Berry They sit together on the porch, the dark Almost fallen, the house behind them dark. Their supper done with, they have washed and dried The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses, Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak, And when they speak at last it is to say What each one knows the other knows. They have One mind between ...

One of my favorites.  LITANY BILLY COLLINS You are the bread and the knife, The crystal goblet and the wine... -Jacques Crickillon You are the bread and the knife, the crystal goblet and the wine. You are the dew on the morning grass and the burning wheel of the sun. You are the white apron of the baker, and the marsh birds suddenly in flight. However, you are not the wind in the orchard, the plums on the counter, or the house of cards. And you are certainly not the pine-scented air. There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air. It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge, maybe even the pigeon on the general's head, but you are not even close to being the field of cornflowers at dusk. And a quick look in the mirror will show that you are neither the boots in the corner nor the boat asleep in its boathouse. It might interest you to know, speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world, that I am the sound of rain on the roof. I also happen to be the shooting star...

I have often been accused of talking too much to strangers.  Or as someone recently put it,   * "Everytime I turn around, you're talking to some new weird featherplucker."  While this poem seems to be going opposite my direction, by speaking to few if any along its mosey way, it could easily find itself going my way, up on the freeway of imediate and immersive conversation, if as seatmate it dared to catch my eye or if as waitress, it braved a friendly smile. Strangers no more, atttentive I would listen as it unpacked. Follow the linked title to the poem and an interview with Billy Collins Traveling Alone   Billy Collins At the hotel coffee shop that morning, the waitress was wearing a pink uniform with “Florence” written in script over her heart.  And the man who checked my bag had a nameplate that said “Ben.” Behind him was a long row of royal palms.  On the plane, two women poured drinks from a cart they rolled down the aisle—“Debbie” and “Lynn” accordi...

Found this in an old New Yorker discard years back. It's clipped and pasted in an old journal...somewhere.  Horse Piano Anna MacDonald The idea is to get a horse, a Central Park workhorse. A horse who lives in a city, over in the hell part of Hell’s Kitchen, in a big metal tent. You have to get one who is dying. Maybe you get his last day on the job, his owner, his     tourists. You get his walk back home at the end of the day, some flies, some drool. You get his deathbed, maybe. And then, post mortem, still warm, you get the vet or else     the butcher to take his three best legs. And then you get the taxidermist     to stuff them heavy, with some alloy, steel, something. Next day you go over to Christie’s interiors sale and buy a     baby-grand piano, shabby condition but tony provenance, let’s say it graced the     entry hall of some or other Vanderbilt’s Gold Coast classic ...

  I recently snagged a copy of  O, What A Luxury to add to my Keillor shelf. Though I have read most Keillor titles,  I tend to wait to adopt new family members until Fate sends them my way via thrift store or Friends of the Library sales. Both of the pictured volumes were gleaned from the limbs of ye old Dollar Tree. They're probably missing half their rhymes,  but I would never discriminate against a book with special needs. They're good enough just the way they are. (Just this week I rescued two crayon-ed picture books -one an Eric Carle!- from library discard...almost every word can still be made out, have they no heart?) Enough of my yammering,  let's talk about the things that go down after dark. FORBIDDEN Garrison Keillor Forbidden tastes, secret delights Guilty pleasures late at night So many things a person wants Are not found in restaurants When I suffer from heartbreak I like some Chocolate Bacon Cake You won’t find it on the grocery shelf You’ve go...

Today's poem, gleaned from my Poetry Foundation email archive, reminds us that worry gets you nowhere. Suppose Phoebe Cary   Suppose, my little lady,       Your doll should break her head, Could you make it whole by crying       Till your eyes and nose are red? And would n’t it be pleasanter       To treat it as a joke; And say you ’re glad “’T was Dolly’s       And not your head that broke?” Suppose you ’re dressed for walking,       And the rain comes pouring down, Will it clear off any sooner       Because you scold and frown? And would n’t it be nicer       For you to smile than pout, And so make sunshine in the house       When there is none without? Suppose your task, my little man,       Is very hard to get, ...

I love this one so much. Found it on Poetry Fountation 's app. It made me laugh and it made me think of certain beloved and aging uncles with whom i have enjoyed many a candid conversation.  How to Be Perfect Ron Padgett Get some sleep. Don't give advice. Take care of your teeth and gums. Don't be afraid of anything beyond your control. Don't be afraid, for instance, that the building will collapse as you sleep, or that someone you love will suddenly drop dead. Eat an orange every morning. Be friendly. It will help make you happy. Raise your pulse rate to 120 beats per minute for 20 straight minutes four or five times a week doing anything you enjoy. Hope for everything. Expect nothing. Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room before you save the world. Then save the world. Know that the desire to be perfect is probably the veiled expression of another desire—to be loved, perhaps, or not to die. Make eye contact with a tree. Be skeptical about al...

From my favorites list on Poetry Foundation 's Mobile App: Uncouplings Craig Arnold There is no I in teamwork but there is a two maker there is no I in together but there is a got three a get to her the I in relationship is the heart I slip on a lithe prison in all communication we count on a mimic ( I am not uncomic ) our listening skills are silent killings there is no we in marriage but a grim area there is an I in family also my fail.

Another poem previously shared with my youngest brother   and now shared with you-  via Poetry Foundation's poetry app . In Love, His Grammar Grew Stephen Dunn In love, his grammar grew rich with intensifiers, and adverbs fell madly from the sky like pheasants for the peasantry, and he, as sated as they were, lolled under shade trees until roused by moonlight and the beautiful fraternal twins and and but . Oh that was when he knew he couldn’t resist a conjunction of any kind. One said accumulate , the other was a doubter who loved the wind and the mind that cleans up after it.                                            For love he wanted to break all the rules, light a candle behind a sentence named Sheila, always running on and wishing to be stopped by the hard button of a period. Sometimes, in desperation, he’d look toward a mannequin or a window dresser with a penc...

Poetry Foundation 's mobile app allows you to save and share poems that tickle your fancy. I recently switched to a new phone and, to rebuild my favorites archive, had to comb my archived mail for poems sent to various siblings, parents or friends from the previous device.(Poetry Foundation discontinued use of User Profiles.  The app uses local storage per device) This is a poem I shared with my youngest brother , with a nod to our mutual enjoyment of playing Acrophobia .  (Alas, Acrophobia is no more. To enjoy similar experience, consider playing AcroChallenge or AcroFever ) Anagrammer Peter Pereira If you believe in the magic of language, then Elvis really Lives and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin. If you believe the letters themselves contain a power within them, then you understand what makes outside tedious, how desperation becomes a rope ends it. The circular logic that allows senator to become treason, and treason to become atoners. That eleven plu...

An optimistic poem from an old quote journal, the jist of which reminds me of a particular twist ending in a novel I once read. The author had a particular character dangling over the abyss of death- it was the expected outcome. When she yanked the doomed character back onto life's shore, she used it as an opportunity  to illustrate the goodness of God; that sometimes the forecast for stormy weather is man's best guess without a measurable differential for God's grace in place. As the Bible has aptly put it: who knows? Sometimes     Sheenagh Pugh  Sometimes things don't go, after all, from bad to worse.  Some years, muscadel faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail, sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well. A people sometimes will step back from war; elect an honest man, decide they care enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor. Some men become what they were born for. Sometimes our best efforts do not go amiss, sometimes we do as we me...

A poem shared from my Poetry App list of favorites. If you don't have the app on your smart devices yet, what are you waiting for? Grab it from the link: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/mobile/   The Breather Billy Collins   Just as in the horror movies when someone discovers that the phone calls are coming from inside the house so too, I realized    that our tender overlapping has been taking place only inside me. All that sweetness, the love and desire— it’s just been me dialing myself then following the ringing to another room to find no one on the line, well, sometimes a little breathing but more often than not, nothing. To think that all this time— which would include the boat rides, the airport embraces, and all the drinks— it’s been only me and the two telephones, the one on the wall in the kitchen and the extension in the darkened guest room upstairs.  The Breather from Espial Effects on Vimeo .

A quote journal entry. I remember my dad teaching my brother and I how to float in a hotel pool once upon a family vacation long ago. He told us of swimming long distances as a Boy Scout and that, should we ever need to swim for miles and miles, the secret was in knowing how to float and rest along the way. He went on to teach us that this same method can be applied in life's cold sea. We learned that survival comes not by thrashing aimlessly about but with faith that we are held and carried along. First Lesson Philip Booth   Lie back, daughter, let your head be tipped back in the cup of my hand. Gently, and I will hold you. Spread your arms wide, lie out on the stream and look high at the gulls. A dead- man's-float is face down. You will dive and swim soon enough where this tidewater ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe me, when you tire on the long thrash to your island, lie up, and survive. As you float now, where I held you and let go, remember when fear...

A quote journal poem for Sunday.  As I re-read over my old journals, it is good to read the things I wanted to remind me. Moderation Is Not A Negation of Intensity, But Helps Avoid Monotony   John Tagliabue Will you stop for a while, stop trying to pull yourself      together for some clear "meaning" - some momentary summary?      no one can have poetry or dances, prayers or climaxes all day;      the ordinary blankness of little dramatic consciousness is good for the      health sometimes, only Dostoevsky can be Dostoevskian at such long      long tumultuous stretches; look what that intensity did to poor great Van Gogh!;      linger, lunge, scrounge and be stupid, that doesn't take much centering      of one's forces; as wise Whitman said "lounge and invite the soul."  Get      enough sleep; and not only because (as Cocteau said) "poetry is the   ...

Today, Fisher will perform at the Asian Festival in Savannah. Here is a poem from my Poetry Foundation favorties for the day: Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes   Thomas Gray   ’Twas on a lofty vase’s side, Where China’s gayest art had dyed    The azure flowers that blow; Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima, reclined,    Gazed on the lake below. Her conscious tail her joy declared; The fair round face, the snowy beard,    The velvet of her paws, Her coat, that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,    She saw; and purred applause. Still had she gazed; but ’midst the tide Two angel forms were seen to glide,    The genii of the stream; Their scaly armour’s Tyrian hue Through richest purple to the view    Betrayed a golden gleam. The hapless nymph with wonder saw; A whisker first and then a claw,    ...

From the quote journal archives, a poem that reflects my daily life -minus the need for a facial shave. A Place For Everything Louis Jenkins   It's so easy to lose track of things. A screwdriver, for instance. "Where did I put that? I had it in my hand just a minute ago." You wander vaguely from room to room, having forgotten, by now, what you were looking for, staring into the refrigerator, the bathroom mirror… "I really could use a shave…" Some objects seem to disappear immediately while others never want to leave. Here is a small black plastic gizmo with a serious demeanor that turns up regularly, like a politician at public functions. It seems to be an "integral part," a kind of switch with screw holes so that it can be attached to something larger. Nobody knows what. This thing's use has been forgotten but it looks so important that no one is willing to throw it in the trash. It survives by bluff, like certain insects that esc...

Today's poem is jotted in an old quote journal because it seemed to be about me: THE SAILOR Geof Hewitt In my movie the boat goes under And he alone survives the night in the cold ocean, Swimming he hopes in a shoreward direction. Daylight and he's still afloat, pawing the water And doesn't yet know he's only fifty feet from shore. He goes under for what will be the last time But only a few feet down scrapes bottom. He's suddenly a changed man and half hops, half swims The remaining distance, hauls himself waterlogged Partway up the beach before collapsing into sleep. As he dreams the tide comes in And rolls him back to sea.

Another quote journal quote for Poetry Month.  Do you have a secret life? Tell me- what do you keep there ? Enjoy this slightly scandalous selection by Stephen Dunn. A Secret Life Stephen Dunn  Why you need to have one is not much more mysterious than why you don't say what you think at the birth of an ugly baby. Or, you've just made love and feel you'd rather have been in a dark booth where your partner was nodding, whispering yes, yes, you're brilliant. The secret life begins early, is kept alive by all that's unpopular in you, all that you know a Baptist, say, or some other accountant would object to. It becomes what you'd most protect if the government said you can protect one thing, all else is ours. When you write late at night it's like a small fire in a clearing, it's what radiates and what can hurt if you get too close to it. It's why your silence is a kind of truth. Even when you speak to your best friend, the one who'll never betray yo...

Uncle Charles will be buried today. The poem I share today comes from the Poetry Foundation's app. I mourn deeply our loss of Uncle Charles's wisdom; the silence where stories used to be. An Intellectual’s Funeral    Jonathan David   On such a day we put him in a box  And carried him to that last house, the grave; All round the people walked upon the streets Without once thinking that he had gone. Their hard heels clacked upon the pavement stones. A voiceless change had muted all his thoughts To a deep significance we could not know; And yet we knew that he knew all at last. We heard with grave wonder the falling clods, And with grave wonder met the loud day. The night would come and day, but we had died. With new green sod the melancholy gate Was closed and locked, and we went pitiful. Our clacking heels upon the pavement stones Did knock and knock for Death to let us in. Share this text ...? / By Jonathan David / On such a day we put him in a box / And carri...

Funeral home visitation is today in Waycross. Family will gather and try to comfort one another throughout the necessary arrangements. Once the formality subsides and we've all tracked back down our separate paths, comfort may be sought in the souvenirs Charles left behind. THE MAN EXPLAINS HIS SOUVENIRS Charles Rafferty    Twenty years ago, the skeleton   of a wild pig gleamed among violets  while the leaf rot around it  grew hot with spring. I slipped  the molar out of its grin like an oiled key  and took it home, leaving the boar to reassemble, if it ever did,   at a gap-toothed resurrection. I hold it up t to show my daughters. They are less  impressed each year. I have antlers   and trilobites and chips of pretty bedrock  from all the places where the sun came up  to burn me awake with beauty—even  a turtle shell we used as an ashtray  in that first apartment, on the bank   of a creek that flooded every Marc...

As we prepare to attend my uncle's viewing tomorrow, I am reminded of another Julia Kasdorf poem. I have an actual tentative plan to go into grief counseling someday... whenever I  grow up... until then, this "weathering loss" serves as learning to sit quietly with those who weep. Of all the things I've learned, I've been most surprised to realize that sometimes the weeping one is me. What I Learned From My Mother       Julia Kasdorf   I learned from my mother how to love the living, to have plenty of vases on hand in case you have to rush to the hospital with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole grieving household, to cube home-canned pears and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point. I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know the deceased, to press the moist hands of the living, to...

Today, my Great Uncle Charles died. I really wish he could have stayed on...wish they all could. He was a really good guy. And now, we all draw near that old screened porch -which will never be the same again- to say fare-the-well...for now... until we meet again . We share our grief, our loss. We recite the stories and share memories rehearsed a thousand times before. This time they are tributes. I am listening to the stories as if I've never heard them before. I am trying to remember them well. For those who know all the best stories keep up and leaving the room.  DYING WITH AMISH UNCLES Julia Kasdorf  The ground was frozen so hard his sons used a jackhammer to pry open a grave in the rocky field where Grossdaadi's wife and daughter  lay under the streaked stones that tell only last names:  Yoder, Zook, Yoder Amish uncles, Grossdaadi's sons,  shoveled earth on the box;  stones clattered on wood then quieted while we sang hymns to the wind.  Bending o...