Category: Poetry

Not Yet

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Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened with milk.

Out of the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch-
one maple leaf lifted back.

I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:

Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken.
Not-yet-shattered, not-yet-sectioned,
not-yet-strewn.

Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love,
not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured, not-yet-
Not-yet-not.

I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure,
I ask him only to stay.

— Jane Hirshfield, “Not Yet” in “Come, Thief: Poems“. (HarperCollins, April 5, 2011)

Notes: Photo of Red Northern Cardinal on January 1, 2025 by DK at noon in backyard. Poem via having a poem with you.

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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The particulars of place lodged in me… how I learned the way the sun laid its palm over the side window in the morning, heavy light, how I’ll never be held in that hand again.

— Minnie Bruce Pratt, from “Temporary Job” in “Inside the Money Machine” (Carolina Wren Press, 2011)

Notes:

  • See more photos from this morning’s walk here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

bow, and then feed

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This morning the world’s white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned,
chastened enough…

I fill the feeders to the top and cart them
to the tree, hurrying back inside
to leave the morning to these ridiculous
birds, who, reminded, find the rough shelters,
bow, and then feed.

— Scott Cairns, from “Early Frost” in “The Translation of Babel” (The University of Georgia Press, 1990)

Notes:

Miracle. All of it.

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although all things
are present, a

fact a day a
bird that warps the
arithmetic of per-
fection with its

arc, passing again &
again in the evening
air, in the pre-
vailing wind, making no

mistake—yr in-
difference is yr
principal beauty
the mind says all the

time—I hear it—I
hear it every-
where. The earth
said remember

me. I am the
earth it said. Re-
member me.

— Jorie Graham, from “Poem” in Swarm (Ecco Press, 2000). (via Thoughts)

Notes:

  • DK Photo: Gull @ Twilight. October 25, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT
  • Post Title Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.”

October in Connecticut

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How suddenly
the woods
have turned
again. I feel
like Daphne, standing
with my arms
outstretched
to the season,
overtaken by color,
crowned
with the hammered gold
of leaves.

— Linda Pastan, “The Months” in October 1999 Issue of Poetry Magazine

DK Photo from Cove Island Park, 6:55 a.m., October 25, 2024. More pictures of October in Connecticut here and here.