the ugly earring

I see thee better in the dark,
I do not need a light.
The love of thee a prism be
Excelling violet.

poem: emily dickinson
Part Five: The Single Hound, LXXIX

Be like a bear in the forest of yourself.
Even sleeping you are powerful in your breath.
Every hair has life
and standing, as you do, swaying
from one foot to the other
all the forest stands with you.
Each minute sound, one after another,
is distinct in your ear. Here
in the blur of mixed sensations, you can
feel the crisp outline of being, particulate.
Great as you are, huge as you are and
growling like the deepest drum,
the continual vibration that makes music
what it is,
not some light stone skipped on the surface of things,
you travel below
sounding the depths where only the dauntless go.
Be like the bear and
do not forget
how you rounded your
massive shape over the just ripened
berry which burst
in your mouth that moment
how you rolled in
the wet grass, cool and silvery, mingling
with your sensate skin,
how you shut
your eyes and swam far and farther
still, starlight
shaping itself to your body,
starship rocking the grand, slow waves
under the white trees, in the
snowy night.

found at fern and moss

image – not sure of the origin – found at the lovely arielawonders
poem: a ring of changes by denise levertov

anniversary poem

later, you would shave your head. and i would trim the hair
on the nape of your neck. this notion of time, a passing year,
another we’ve made together.
you ask me – what sex is the baby.
but i don’t answer. instead, i tell you
it is okay for you to remarry when i die.
i see it in my face more than yours.
these gray roots and the lines around my mouth.
- she will have your eyes.

i woke up last night, and the porch light was on.
i swear i heard rain. a ghost reached for you.
and then i found you -
asleep between two daughters,
wearing an old sweater
i bought you years ago.

And then it was over, this world we had grown to love
for its sweet grasses, for the many-colored horses
and fishes, for the shimmering possibilities
while dreaming.

But then there were the seeds to plant and the babies
who needed milk and comforting, and someone
picked up a guitar or ukulele from the rubble
and began to sing about the light flutter

the kick beneath the skin of the earth
we felt there, beneath us

a warm animal
a song being born between the legs of her;
a poem.

image via old lawrence
joy harjo poem: when the world ended as we knew it

from: what love comes to: new and selected poems

ruth stone

___

“You are a lovely link

in the great chain of being

Think how lucky it is to be born.”

___

You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.

painting: picasso’s seated nude woman
poem: remembering, rainer maria rilke

Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.

i hold your hand,
first born.

this is how you know
i’ve memorized
the length of your fingers. and when
you’re biting your nails again.

she held my hand, too,
bending my fingers upward
at the knuckles.
Perhaps, she thought,
i would be a dancer
instead of the sparrow
that, one day, would flee
her nest.

image: here