Softest of mornings, hello.
And what will you do today, I wonder,
to my heart?
— Mary Oliver, from “Softest of Mornings” in “A Thousand Mornings: Poems” (Penguin Books, 2012)
Notes:
Sunday Morning
Tag: Love
Even fanatics cannot change that.
Why? Because people need songs like they need bread and water. People need poetry, beauty, love! So long as the sun rises and rivers flow, there will always be weddings and celebrations and music. Even fanatics cannot change that.
— Elif Shafak, “There Are Rivers in the Sky: A Novel” (Knopf, August 20, 2024)
Notes:
- DK Photo of Sunrise from this morning @ 6:32 a.m. Don’t miss other sunrise photos here and the amazing time lapse here and our favorite white-tailed deer here.
- Reviews of Elif Shafak’s new book here: “How Does a Single Water Droplet Connect People Across Centuries?” – NY Times
Why I Have Decided to Live (High School Student!)
Spoonfuls of moonlight. Cold air. Her knit blanket
tugging at my body to stay.
The fog resting on my shoulders, hugging me.
Summer rain through an open window.
Thunderstorms & how they change the world momentarily
unafraid, or even better, unaware of humans.
Because I left my country broken.
Because I saw the first reflection of myself in a candlelight vigil.
Because I was flickering.
Because we made promises.
Because I can keep trying & no one can stop me.
Peaches.
Stars.
Willow trees.
Acoustic music with a trembling voice.
The kinds of poems that give me shivers.
Trains to nowhere in particular.
Our sweat sweet bodies colliding on wet grass.
Her hands & the way they cradle my heart
as if holding something precious.
August night drives.
Singing along to “Riptide” & eating cherries out of buckets.
Because we promised to return.
To mend a broken thing.
How laughter colonizes the lungs.
To think of myself as something larger than myself.
Because I can love every small thing..
— Kyo Lee, “Why I Have Decided to Live.” (Washington Post Book Club, April 12 2024). Kyo Lee, a student at the Laurel Heights Secondary School in Waterloo, Ontario, won first place in the international High School Writing Contest sponsored by the nonprofit literary publisher Narrative. Entrants responded to the prompt: “My note to the world.”
Listen to Kyo read her poem here.
…before Monday arrives like a fist
this life gives us only so many hours
to share & how we share, i worry,
is wasteful-Sunday night & the tv on,
so we don’t look at each other.
on screen some reality tv stars
threaten to choke each other out.
my love, we are bad television,
happy as we are to hold hands
& eat greasy pizza together
during these small breaths
before Monday arrives like a fist.
— Josè Olivarez, “Sunday Love” in “Promises of Gold” (Henry Holt & Company, February 14, 2023) (via Alive on All Channels)
Fifty years of sun and water. That is the price.
“In the dream, a man had cut down our fifty-year-old pistachio tree, Leila’s and my tree. In the dream, we had a pistachio tree. Fifty years old. That alone.
And so we were deciding what to do with this man, what his just punishment should be. I said something stupid about him owing us a year’s pistachio harvest, the cost of the tree. And then Leila said, in English:
“I do not care about the pistachios, Roya jaan. I do not care about the tree. He owes us the fifty years of sun, fifty years of water inside that tree. Fifty years of sun and water. That is the price.”
She said it in English. I woke screaming. English, fifty years of sun. I wept for a week. Separation from what you love best, that is hell. To be twice separated, first by a nation and then by its language: that is pain deeper than pain. Deeper than hell. That is abyss.”
— Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!: A Novel (Knopf, January 23, 2024)
Notes:
- This man can write! Highly recommended.
- Amazon January, 2024 Book of the Month
- Book Review by Junot Diaz, NY Times, January 19, 2024: “A Death-Haunted First Novel Incandescent With Life. In “Martyr!,” the poet Kaveh Akbar turns a grieving young man’s search for meaning into a piercing family saga.
- Portrait Credit