Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

The Most Important Thing in the World

7:09 AM

The Most Important Thing in the World

“The most important thing in the world”, they say, “is to find your center
where the oughts and the want-tos align
“Like a bridge”, they say, “Or like orion on a clear night.”
But then I read 4 poems of Stafford and think, “This
is the most important thing in the world.”

I consume a book on how to teach, no, how to inspire,
cajole, and convince one single student to learn. “Think”, I say,
“Of the trees, of the sap syphoning life to the leaves.
You are a tree” I say, and one single student believes me.
I think, “This is the most important thing in the world.”

My wife and my friends counsel me. I hear their wisdom
like a child sitting outside a baseball stadium.
He hears the crack of the bat,
the ecstasy of the crowd, and wonders what all the excitement is.
“Your children need you” these voices roar from a distance
and I think
this is
the most important thing in the world.

At church immigrants come and tell their story,
tell of a life more difficult than mine, but still full
of fear and labor and hope. Their skin is different
than mine and their words sound different than mine
and they pin their hair up in strange ways.
But they want what I want and
I think,
this is the most important thing
in the world.

I read the newspaper and the pundits say, “Democracy is failing!”, say, “Complete global annihilation!”, say, “Call your senator” and I think, this is not the most important thing in the world.

My students are asking me when their homework is due.
They are not asking me again what is real,
not asking how they can know what to know, not asking
who will tell them truth. They are smolts in a stream
and I desperately want to save them from the ocean.
They thirst for salt, though,
and I think this could be the most important thing in the world.

On the way home I stop and eavesdrop. A dandelion
is saying goodbye to her seeds,
commending them to the sun and the open air,
telling them
not to be afraid of the fall.

I think this is the most important thing in the world.

The God of Nature Poetry

12:03 AM

In graduate school I wrote a paper comparing the way several distinct cultural collections of poems approached the concept of the 'other' or the supernatural that is found in nature. This post is not a summary of that paper, but an affirmation that a poet's sense that there is something 'else' in nature is almost always right, but that the poet runs the risk of missing the whole point if he or she focuses only on the feelings that nature elicits. I'll quote a few of the poems that I cited in my paper:
Paiute Ghost Dance Song
              Snowy earth
comes
              swirling
    ahead
         of the whirlwind
              ahead
                             of the whirlwind
              snowy earth
                                       swirling
(this is a traditional song of the Paiute tribe that has been recorded as a poem)


Headwaters
Noon in the mountain plain:
There is a scant telling of the marsh –
A log, hollow and weather-stained,
An insect at the mouth, and moss –
Yet waters rise against the roots,
Stand brimming to the stalks. What moves?
What moves on this archaic force
Was wild and welling at the source.
(by N. Scott Momaday)

I could go on and on, but the point here is pretty clear - nature often catches us up and gives a sense that there is something other than ourselves. From these examples, it is a quick jump over to William Wordsworth, who codified the otherness of nature in his epic, "The Prelude" where he recounts times of physical illness and euphoria in response to his experiences in nature. All of these poets look at nature and sense something greater than and different from themselves. Where this gets interesting for me is that a common view of this experience is to say that religion has invariably sprung from a culture's association with nature. People and cultures, critics say, attempt to explain  the vastness of nature by creating myths telling how the nature around them came to be and how to live in harmony with it. The theory is that the cradle of all religions is a desire to connect with and find explanations for an overwhelming experience (often a terrifying one) in nature.

Night and Day

1:27 PM

Another poem of mine. I still have edits I want to make. In fact, I removed the second half of the original poem because they were clashing a little bit too much.


At night, the lights from the barrios are the Milkyway.
At dawn, slum and slime wash
over the hills of houses.

The sun sucks life from the morning-glory.
That shriveled flower of the hill where nothing grows,
except faerie-girls named Flor,
All day they sleep off regrets,
Preparing their hidden blooms for night's enchantment

When those hovels are fields of fireflies,
the world is enchanted forest,
haunted by revolution, parity, and miscast god-
mother spells

Pistils and stamen quiver,
petals contort.
The wink and dance and fleeting payoff –
the hum of Flors' wings.
Every pin-pricked light gleams
burnished solidarity.
The fairies and ogres blow themselves out
at the stroke of dawn
when incandescent glass slips into second place.

Sunset on the Beach

9:46 AM


Here's a poem I wrote last fall.


Sometimes my daughter and I waltz on the beach.
I bow, she curtsies, and music rises from across the world.
How gracefully evening serenades the sea.
Does the foam know
those wind-whipped harmonies
are a dirge?

What if the star that winks our cadence
has already burst,
scattering dregs of afterglow
over our wishing?
Would the shattered spindle curse her
Even as she reaches almost far enough to touch
evening's first pinprick.

The sun is just over 8 light-minutes from my head. That half-circle
nesting on the horizon makes up 99.8 percent
of the mass in the solar system. And then there's Jupiter.
We are only an asterisk.
Why can't I just dance and wish for unicorns?

Until now, I've mostly hidden my faults.
And while she still orbits me,
Other lights, brighter,
more massive, threaten to collide.

Her clapping hands will always fit between my fingers, won't they?
I capture this moment. My fists are strong to clasp it to my heart.
The next wave laps my ankle and my daughter's hand
slips from mine as she dances up the beach without me.
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