Some Jack Gilbert

I've been knee deep in the poetry of Jack Gilbert this week.  I went through my poetry books (no small task as I have over 300 books of poetry) and found two of Mr. Gilbert's.  I haven't been able to put them down since stumbling upon them...metaphorically and literally.  Below are two of my favorite poems out of hundreds of favorites. 

(August has sashayed into Louisiana hot, humid and steamy.  She always was a sultry, sizzling bitch and continues to live up to her bad reputation.  But the dragonflies and hummingbirds are plenteous and the tomatoes still giving freely of their fruit.  I pluck them from the plant and eat them like apples, juice dripping down my chin. My shirts are stained. I can think of no finer luxury in this life.)  xo

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Older Women
By Jack Gilbert

Each farmer on the island conceals
his hive far up on the mountain,
knowing it will otherwise be plundered.
When they die, or can no longer make
the hard climb, the lost combs year
after year grow heavier with honey.
And the sweetness has more and more
acutely the taste of that wilderness.

from:  "Jack Gilbert:  Collected Poems", page 173

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The Danger of Wisdom
By Jack Gilbert

We learn to live without passion.
To be reasonable. We go hungry
amid the giant granaries
this world is. We store up plenty
for when we are old and mild.
It is our strength that deprives us.
Like Keats listening to the doctor
who said the best thing for
tuberculosis was to eat only one
slice of bread and a fragment
of fish each day. Keats starved
himself to death because he yearned
so desperately to feast on Fanny Brawne.
Emerson and his wife decided to make
love sparingly in order to accumulate
his passion. We are taught to be
moderate. To live intelligently.

from:  "Jack Gilbert:  Collected Poems", page 330

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Waking This Morning by Muriel Rukeyser

Waking This Morning
By Muriel Rukeyser

Waking this morning,
a violent woman in the violent day
Laughing.
Past the line of memory
along the long body of your life
in which move childhood, youth, your lifetime of touch,
eyes, lips, chest, belly, sex, legs, to the waves of the sheet.
I look past the little plant
on the city windowsill
to the tall towers bookshaped, crushed together in greed,
the river flashing flowing corroded,
the intricate harbor and the sea, the wars, the moon, the
planets, all who people space
in the sun visible invisible.
African violets in the light
breathing, in a breathing universe.      I want strong peace,
and delight,
the wild good.
I want to make my touch poems:
to find my morning, to find you entire
alive moving among the anti-touch people.

I say across the waves of the air to you:
today once more
I will try to be non-violent
one more day
this morning, waking the world away
in the violent day.

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Thank you, dearest Erin, for mentioning this poem to me.  I hunted it down because I don't think I've ever read it before and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I owe you one.  :-)

It's a much-needed rainy Saturday here in the humid swamps of luscious Louisiana.  (The dragonflies are dancing between raindrops, swirling and dive-bombing like glittering, winged jewels---one of the top perks of living near a swamp is their prolific presence.)  It's been pretty dry this summer, but not today.  There are few things more luxurious than waking to dark skies & rain on a day you don't have to get out of bed, but can lie there listening to the rain pattering on the roof and the sound of distant thunder.   

I have to get back to my reading.  Later!

xo,
Marion

"How many a (wo)man has dated a new era in his/her life from the reading of a book."  ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

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"A house without books is like a room without windows."  ~Heinrich Mann

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A Few Words For the Visitor in the Parlor by Olena Kalytiak Davis

An old, lace-winged friend of mine...

A Few Words For The Visitor In The Parlor
by Olena Kalytiak Davis

Every time you wish the sky was something happening to your heart, you lose twice.

Mother kept sending me back to the kiosk. Where they wrapped the paper in fish. Pivovarov and the other artists, they were worried. The blood was Ukrainian and it was all over the place. Go and wash your face. No, no one said anything about auto-workers. I am simply saying to you what my mother said. I am simply saying what Pivovarov painted: Go and wash your face. People are coming soon. It is not good for them to see you looking like this.

I slept the afternoon, but you know what Breton says: I was not in the mood for visitors. Picture yourself inside that word. And yes, my house is a word, but my words, aren’t they words also? Today, the sky just wouldn’t happen. Today, I was blind sided. Neither pain, nor its powdered absence. Like most days, I became the kitchen sill. I’m simply saying what I always say: what is lace-winged cannot be strong.

My wedding dress hangs at the end of things. It’s the kind of thing you think while sitting on someone else’s couch. There is something elegant implied by length. Or: So this is a living room, what was I thinking. Grass stains where the peach-colored silk drank in the ground. But when I get home the urge to clean immediately leaves me. Alone, I can only think of visiting those plain and exotic places. Oh, my cloud covered heart.

She was a branch covered in hoarfrost. I must forgive myself. Something clings to the whore’s hem. Dear visitor: you divide your age in two then square it by a dying mother. I am always gathering her up in my arms. Believe me, you never forget someone that thin. You start remembering the way that summer lay differently on top of that year. The hood burns you. I tried driving as gently as I could, but you know, the road had last winter inside it, the winter before. That drive was painful, just look at her face. You remember because someone starts talking about time. Someone says time, time is like water. Someone says: There was once a living room made entirely of death.

Today, the sky was white. And the ground was white, too. Yet, I could tell them apart. They were that easy to distinguish.

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*Bold sentences are two of my favorites ever... - Marion, brawling w/pain & losing

 

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 From her amazingly perfect book:  "And Her Soul Out of Nothing" by Olena Kalytiak Davis

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The Patience of Ordinary Things by Pat Schneider

Rose after rain.

The Patience of Ordinary Things
by Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
how the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
how the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
or toes. How soles of feet know
where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
of ordinary things, how clothes
wait respectfully in closets
and soap dries quietly in the dish,
and towels drink the wet
from the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

from 'Another River: New and Selected Poems'

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The secret of life:  there are no ordinary things.  xo

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"Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be."  ~Grandma Moses

Dinner Plate Hibiscus

The first bloom. . . there is hope!!  I planted four colors: white, dark pink, light pink and red.  No matter how many flowers I plant, it always amazes me when they actually come up and grow.  :-)

 

 

Another miracle flower, my first Hibiscus.  It's magnificent in the morning sunlight.

 

 

Like magic...one day it's not there, and the next, this glorious flower.

 

 

Sun-dappled and juicy, it fills me with wonder.

 

 

 

As long as there is life, there is wonder:  flowers, birds, dragonflies, cicadas, cats, trees, clouds, sky, stars, moon, words, books, poetry, family, friends, love. . .

 

xo,

Marion

 

 

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud

was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."  ~Anais Nin

 

 

Grief by Stephen Dobyns

 

GRIEF
by Stephen Dobyns

Trying to remember you
is like carrying water
in my hands a long distance
across sand. Somewhere people are waiting.
They have drunk nothing for days.

Your name was the food I lived on;
now my mouth is full of dirt and ash.
To say your name was to be surrounded
by feathers and silk; now, reaching out,
I touch glass and barbed wire.
Your name was the thread connecting my life;
now I am fragments on a tailor's floor.

I was dancing when I
learned of your death; may
my feet be severed from my body.

"Grief" by Stephen Dobyns, from Velocities

 

 

If You Forgot Me by Pablo Neruda

My ferns, blocking the heat and shading the carport.

IF YOU FORGOT ME
By Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.       
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Daylily in my front yard.

 

My favorite Rose.

 

Happy Summer Solstice in Pictures

a quote I liked and copied into my notebook

storm coming - for Annie Marie

my favorite new watercolor paints from dollar tree

a little redhead checking out my miniature typewriter table

my hood, more or less

angel-wing begonia's blushing flowers

one of my many to-be-re-read piles

Molly (Blythe) with her new John Lennon tee-shirt

a rose is a rose is a rose...

Love Poem to No-One In Particular by Mark O'Brien

photo from Pinterest

Love Poem to No-One in Particular
By Mark O'Brien

let me touch you with my words
for my hands lie limp as empty gloves
let my words stroke your hair
slide down your back
and tickle your belly
for my hands, light and free flying as bricks
ignore my wishes and stubbornly refuse to carry out my quietest desires
let my words enter your mind
bearing torches
admit them willingly into your being
so they may caress you gently
within

 

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This movie is about the poet, Mark O'Brien, who lived most of his life in an iron lung after contracting polio at the age of 6.  It's based on an article he wrote for "The Sun" magazine  about sex and the disabled and about his experiences with a sex surrogate.

 

The article is here if you'd care to read it:

 

http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/174/on_seeing_a_sex_surrogate

 

 

I laughed and cried through most of the movie.  It's the most touching, beautiful movie I've seen in a very long time.  It'll change your life...for the better. 

 

xo,

Marion

 

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"For women the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time." ~Isabel Allende

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

"A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is smoking a cigarette with a satisfied smile on its face and the egg is frowning and looking put out. The egg mutters to no one in particular, "I guess we answered that question." ~Author Unknown

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

Elegy for the Personal Letter by Allison Joseph

 

 

Elegy for the Personal Letter
by Allison Joseph
 

I miss the rumpled corners of correspondence,
the ink blots and crossouts that show
someone lives on the other end, a person
whose hands make errors, leave traces.
I miss fine stationary, its raised elegant
lettering prominent on creamy shades of ivory
or pearl grey. I even miss hasty notes
dashed off on notebook paper, edges
ragged as their scribbled messages—
can't much write now—thinking of you.
When letters come now, they are formatted
by some distant computer, addressed
to Occupant or To the family living at—
meager greetings at best,
salutations made by committee.
Among the glossy catalogs
and one time only offers
the bills and invoices,
letters arrive so rarely now that I drop
all other mail to the floor when
an envelope arrives and the handwriting
is actual handwriting, the return address
somewhere I can locate on any map.
So seldom is it that letters come
That I stop everything else
to identify the scrawl that has come this far—
the twist and the whirl of the letters,
the loops of the numerals. I open
those envelopes first, forgetting
the claim of any other mail,
hoping for news I could not read
in any other way but this.

from My Father's Kites.

 

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Oh, how I love letters!  I try to write them often, but I've slacked off.  Nobody seems to write by hand anymore.  I mourn future generations who will have no letters to read from their lovers or loved ones.  I remember as a child writing to my cousin and we'd write SWAK (sealed with a kiss) on the back of the envelope and then kiss it wearing some of our mothers' red lipstick.  I wish I still had those letters, but sadly, they're gone.  Who could have imagined that people would stop writing letters?  I have a notebook full of missives & cards from friends.  They're treasures.  My favorite is a postcard from Renee with the sweetest note on back...I still find it hard to believe she's gone.  But I have her letter with a photo of her to look at and remember her precious, giving soul.

 

Write someone a letter today. 

 

xo,

Marion

 

P.S.  Been busy gardening, reading and photographing flowers.  I have huge tomatoe plants in pots and some cucumbers, too.  I laugh with delight every time a seed sprouts and makes a plant.  It's a miracle I'll never get tired of watching every Spring.  I have several families of Bluebirds in our yard.  One is sitting on 5 little blue eggs.  Another miracle of Spring.