Sunday, January 22, 2006
Poems on a Sunday Morning
Time for a break from unpleasant subjects
*
In Fargo, North Dakota, a man
Warned me that the river might rise
To flood stage again,
On the bridge, a girl hurries past me alone,
Unhappy face.
Will she pause in the wet grass somewhere ?
Behind my eyes she stands tiptoe, yearning
for confused sparrows
To fetch a bit of string and dried wheatbeard
To line her outstretched hand.
I open my eyes and gaze down
At the dark water.
---James Wright
I WAS DOWN THE FIELD
I was down the field
finding foxgloves
When I returned
the front door was banging
and this was on the table
written in the dust
I BROUGHT THE BIG BOSS
TO MEET YOU
YOU CAN IMAGINE
WHAT HE THOUGHT
I chose the white jar
for the flowers
---Pamela Milward
OUR BEAUTIFUL WEST COAST THING
"We are a coast people
There is nothing but ocean beyond us."
---Jack Spicer
I sit here dreaming
long thoughts of California
at the end of a November day
below a cloudy twilight
near the Pacific
listening to Mamas and The Papas
THEY'RE GREAT
singing a song about breaking
somebody's heart and digging it !
I think I'll get up
and dance around the room.
Here I go !
---Richard Brautigan
BIRCH
Birch tree, you remind me
Of a room filled with breathing,
The sway and whisper of love.
She slips off her shoes;
Unzips her skirt; arms raised,
Unclasps an earring, and the other.
Just so the sallow trunk
Divides, and the branches
Are pale and smooth.
---Louis Simpson
STILL-LIFE
Bric-a-brac shelf
on the pale kitchen wall,
Six spaces filled
with delicate, lonely things:
vases of miniature flowers--
lavender, pale orange and yellow;
a bronzed baby-shoe;
two jars--cranberry glass
and Dutch blue china.
Together, carefully dusted
they almost breathe.
---Ralph Mecklenburger
*
I picked up the volumes years ago at an used book store in Menlo Park, California.
*****
.
Wright * Milward * Brautigan * Simpson * Mecklenburger
In Fargo, North Dakota, a man
Warned me that the river might rise
To flood stage again,
On the bridge, a girl hurries past me alone,
Unhappy face.
Will she pause in the wet grass somewhere ?
Behind my eyes she stands tiptoe, yearning
for confused sparrows
To fetch a bit of string and dried wheatbeard
To line her outstretched hand.
I open my eyes and gaze down
At the dark water.
---James Wright
I WAS DOWN THE FIELD
I was down the field
finding foxgloves
When I returned
the front door was banging
and this was on the table
written in the dust
I BROUGHT THE BIG BOSS
TO MEET YOU
YOU CAN IMAGINE
WHAT HE THOUGHT
I chose the white jar
for the flowers
---Pamela Milward
OUR BEAUTIFUL WEST COAST THING
"We are a coast people
There is nothing but ocean beyond us."
---Jack Spicer
I sit here dreaming
long thoughts of California
at the end of a November day
below a cloudy twilight
near the Pacific
listening to Mamas and The Papas
THEY'RE GREAT
singing a song about breaking
somebody's heart and digging it !
I think I'll get up
and dance around the room.
Here I go !
---Richard Brautigan
BIRCH
Birch tree, you remind me
Of a room filled with breathing,
The sway and whisper of love.
She slips off her shoes;
Unzips her skirt; arms raised,
Unclasps an earring, and the other.
Just so the sallow trunk
Divides, and the branches
Are pale and smooth.
---Louis Simpson
STILL-LIFE
Bric-a-brac shelf
on the pale kitchen wall,
Six spaces filled
with delicate, lonely things:
vases of miniature flowers--
lavender, pale orange and yellow;
a bronzed baby-shoe;
two jars--cranberry glass
and Dutch blue china.
Together, carefully dusted
they almost breathe.
---Ralph Mecklenburger
The first three are from "A First Reader of Contemporary American Poetry" edited by Patrick Gleeson ©1969 by Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co. The last two from "Since feeling is first", an anthology compiled by James Mecklenburger and Gary Simmons, Indiana University, 1971.
I picked up the volumes years ago at an used book store in Menlo Park, California.
