September 2009 poems

September Meditation

By Burton D. Carley

I do not know if the seasons remember their history or if the days and nights by which we count time remember their own passing.

I do not know if the oak tree remembers its planting or if the pine remembers its slow climb toward sun and stars.

I do not know if the squirrel remembers last fall's gathering or if the bluejay remembers the meaning of snow.

I do not know if the air remembers September or if the night remembers the moon.

I do not know if the earth remembers the flowers from last spring or if the evergreen remembers that it shall stay so.

Perhaps that is the reason for our births -- to be the memory for creation.

Perhaps salvation is something very different than anyone ever expected.

Perhaps this will be the only question we will have to answer:

"What can you tell me about September?"

My Life Before I Knew It

By Lawrence Raab

I liked rainy days

when you didn't have to go outside and play.

At night I'd tell my sister

there were snakes under her bed.

When I mowed the lawn I imagined being famous.

Cautious and stubborn, unwilling to fail,

I knew for certain what I didn't want to know.

I hated to dance. I hated baseball,

and collected airplane cards instead.

I learned to laugh at jokes I didn't get.

The death of Christ moved me,

but only at the end of Ben Hur.

I thought Henry Mancini was a great composer.

My secret desire was to own a collie

who would walk with me in the woods

when the leaves were falling

and I was thinking about writing the stories

that would make me famous.

Sullen, overweight, melancholy,

writers didn't have to be good at sports.

They stayed inside for long periods of time.

They often wore glasses. But strangers

were moved by what they accomplished

and wrote them letters. One day

one of those strangers would introduce

herself to me, and then

the life I'd never been able to foresee

would begin, and everything

before I became myself would appear

necessary to the rest of the story.

Personal

by Tony Hoagland

Don’t take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal—

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain—
And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,
with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,
with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness
Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said
at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t
believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture
served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all
and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure
while the air fills up with I’m-Sorries

like wheeling birds
and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me
for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon
disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard;
barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else
to take it personal too.

The Prayer Tree

by Michael Leunig

God give us rain when we expect sun.
Give us music when we expect trouble.
Give us tears when we expect breakfast.
Give us dreams when we expect a storm.
Give us a stray dog when we expect congratulations.
God play with us, turn us sideways and around.

The Ball

by Wislawa Szymborska

As long as nothing can be known for sure
(no signals have been picked up yet),
as long as Earth is still unlike
the nearer and more distant planets,

as long as there's neither hide nor hair
of other grasses graced by other winds,
of other treetops bearing other crowns,
other animals as well-grounded as our own,

as long as only the local echo
has been known to speak in syllables,

as long as we still haven't heard word
of better or worse mozarts,
platos, edisons somewhere,

as long as our inhuman crimes
are still committed only between humans,

as long as our kindness
is still incomparable,
peerless even in its imperfection,

as long as our heads packed with illusions
still pass for the only heads so packed,

as long as the roofs of our mouths alone
still raise voices to high heavens--

let's act like very special guests of honor
at the district-firemen's ball
dance to the beat of the local oompah band,
and pretend that it's the ball
to end all balls.

I can't speak for others--
for me this is
misery and happiness enough:

just this sleepy backwater
where even the stars have time to burn
while winking at us
unintentionally.

Postscript
By Seamus Heaney

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Rivertalk

by Jeanne Lohmann

Rivertalk

is whatever comes along,
practice always here while we

keep on shore, all the time
saying we want to get wet.

But the river has ways
of sound and light, ripples

and waves that tell us:
don't be so serious, rumble in

where nothing is finished or broken
and nothing asks to be fixed.

Summer and Fall Poems

Poems from Summer/Fall 2008:

In the Storm

by Mary Oliver

Some black ducks

were shrugged up

on the shore.

It was snowing

hard, from the east,

and the sea

was in disorder.

Then some sanderlings,

five inches long

with beaks like wire,

flew in,

snowflakes on their backs,

and settled

in a row

behind the ducks --

whose backs were also

covered with snow --

so close

they were all but touching,

they were all but under

the roof of the duck's tails,

so the wind, pretty much,

blew over them.

They stayed that way, motionless,

for maybe an hour,

then the sanderlings,

each a handful of feathers,

shifted, and were blown away

out over the water

which was still raging.

But, somehow,

they came back

and again the ducks,

like a feathered hedge,

let them

crouch there, and live.

If someone you didn't know

told you this,

as I am telling you this,

would you believe it?

Belief isn't always easy.

But this much I have learned --

if not enough else --

to live with my eyes open.

I know what everyone wants

is a miracle.

This wasn't a miracle.

Unless, of course, kindness --

as now and again

some rare person has suggested --

is a miracle.

As surely it is.

Things to Think

by Robert Bly

Think in ways you've never thought before.

If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message

Larger than anything you've ever heard,

Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,

Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose

Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers

A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door,

Think that he's about

To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,

Or that it's not necessary to work all the time,

Or that it's been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

Miracle Fair

by Wislawa Szymborska

The commonplace miracle:

that so many common miracles take place.

The usual miracles:

invisible dogs barking

in the dead of night.

One of many miracles:

a small and airy cloud

is able to upstage the massive moon.

Several miracles in one:

an alder is reflected in the water

and is reversed from left to right

and grows from crown to root

and never hits bottom

though the water isn't deep.

A run-of-the-mill miracle:

winds mild to moderate

turning gusty in storms.

A miracle in the first place:

cows will be cows.

Next but not least:

just this cherry orchard

from just this cherry pit.

A miracle minus top hat and tails:

fluttering white doves.

A miracle (what else can you call it):

the sun rose today at three fourteen a.m.

and will set tonight at one past eight.

A miracle that's lost on us:

the hand actually has fewer than six fingers

but still it's got more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:

the inescapable earth.

An extra miracle, extra and ordinary:

the unthinkable

can be thought.

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean--

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down,

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Prayer

Father, Mother God,

Thank you for your presence

during the hard and mean days.

For then we have you to lean upon.

Thank you for your presence

during the bright and sunny days,

for then we can share that which we have

with those who have less.

And thank you for your presence

during the Holy Days, for then we are able

to celebrate you and our families

and our friends.

For those who have no voice,

we ask you to speak.

For those who feel unworthy,

we ask you to pour your love out

in waterfalls of tenderness.

For those who live in pain,

we ask you to bathe them

in the river of your healing.

For those who are lonely, we ask

you to keep them company.

For those who are depressed,

we ask you to shower upon them

the light of hope.

Dear Creator, You, the borderless

sea of substance, we ask you to give all the

world that which we need most -- Peace.

-- Maya Angelou

Lousy at Math

by Hafiz

Once a group of thieves stole a rare diamond

Larger than a goose egg.

Its value could have easily bought

One thousand horses

And two thousand acres

Of the most fertile land in Shiraz .

The thieves got drunk that night

To celebrate their great haul,

But during the course of the evening

The effects of the liquor

And their mistrust of each other grew to such

An extent

They decided to divide the stone into pieces.

Of course then the Priceless became lost.

Most everyone is lousy at math

And does that to God -

Dissects the Indivisible One,

By thinking, saying,

"This is my Beloved, he looks like this

And acts like that,

How could that moron over there

Really

Be

God."

* * *

All Will Come Again

By Ranier Maria Rilke

All will come again into its strength:

the fields undivided, the waters undammed,

the trees towering and the walls built low.

And in the valleys, people as strong and varied as the land.

And no churches where God

is imprisoned and lamented

like a trapped and wounded animal,

The houses welcoming all who knock

and a sense of boundless offering

in all relations, and in you and me.

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,

no belittling of death,

but only what belongs to us

and serving earth, lest we remain unused.

* * *

The world is not a courtroom

By Saadi

The world is not a courtroom,

there is no judge, no jury, no plaintiff

This is a caravan,

filled with eccentric beings

telling wondrous stories about God

* * *

“The Eclipse”

by Richard Eberhart

I stood out in the open cold
To see the essence of the eclipse
Which was its perfect darkness.

I stood in the cold on the porch
And could not think of anything so perfect
As man's hope of light in the face of darkness.

* * *

Lori and I joined 25 other people on June 26 on a fabulous High Sierra hike to Cascade Falls near Mount Tallac. And at the foot of the falls, David and Joanne got married! And they asked me to read this poem, which I share with you:

Summons

By Robert Francis

Keep me from going to sleep too soon

Or if I go to sleep too soon

Come wake me up. Come any hour

Of night. Come whistling up the road.

Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.

Make me get out of bed and come

And let you in and light a light.

Tell me the northern lights are on

And make me look. Or tell me clouds

Are doing something to the moon

They never did before, and show me.

See that I see. Talk to me till

I'm half as wide awake as you

And start to dress wondering why

I ever went to bed at all.

Tell me the walking is superb.

Not only tell me but persuade me.

You know I'm not too hard persuaded.