Tag: Poetry

5:00 P.M. Bell: We Live in the Word

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Kristina Alisauskaite

My fingers are on the keyboard.
I punch out the subject heading on the email:

“It’s high time – long overdue.”

She’s a functional partner that supports our team. I don’t know how long she’s been in the role. (Red-faced)

“Hi! Not sure why today and not yesterday, or a year ago, or two.”

She’s steady, effective. The antithesis of flamboyant.  And she’s there. Always There.

“Just wanted to say thank you for your support…”

She doesn’t interrupt. She’s a listener.  And, professional, responsive and conscientious.

“You care. It’s obvious in everything you touch…”

I proof re-read, pause, and then add:

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Lightly child, lightly.

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rob-woodcox-surreal-angel
perhaps one day
we’ll understand:
why it hurts to be here,
and there,
and then.

— Kimberly Grey, from “Conjugating“ in The Opposite of Light: Poems

Notes:

  • Sources: Poem – Hidden Landscape. Photo – Rob Woodcox from Surreal
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect 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.”

 

It’s been a long day

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photography
It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred,
leaves astir, our wings
rising, ruffled—but only saints
take flight. We cower
in cliff-crevice or edge out gingerly
on branches close to the nest. The wind
marks the passage of holy ones riding
that ocean of air. Slowly their wake
reaches us, rocks us.
But storm or still,
numb or poised in attention,
we inhale, exhale, inhale,
encompassed, encompassed.

– Denise Levertov, In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being from “Selected Poems”

Notes:

Far from the metallic fever of clocks

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birds-fly-pair-two

I hope to define my life, whatever is left,
by migrations, south and north with the birds
and far from the metallic fever of clocks,
the self staring at the clock saying, “I must do this.”
I can’t tell the time on the tongue of the river
in the cool morning air, the smell of the ferment
of greenery, the dust off the canyon’s rock walls,
the swallows swooping above the scent of raw water.

~ Jim Harrison from “The Golden Window” in In Search of Small Gods

Jim Harrison passed away on March 26, 2016

Notes: Photo – Your Eyes Blaze Out. Poem: Thank you Rob Firchau @ Hammock Papers

Saturday Morning

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sleeping-vandevorst

Like someone not wanting something.
Not anything.
Mouth sewn shut.
Eyelids sewn shut.
I forgot myself.
The wind inside.
Everything shut, and the wind inside.

~ Alejandra Pizarnik, from “Paths of the Mirror,” Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 – 1972

Notes: Poem Source – the château of my heart. Photo: By a.f. vandevorst s.s 1999 via Precious Things