from Ploughshares
Surfacing
Two women are walking
on the ocean floor I’m the one
in front, holding an oxygen mask
then passing it back to my mother
We take turns She breathes
I breathe She breathes I breathe
We can’t talk we just keep walking
and breathing and sometime towards
morning I notice she’s gone A bit
of seaweed stirs in the shadows
I keep walking For the first time
in my life I have all the oxygen
to myself I can feel the color
coming back to my cheeks
A note in my baby book says
I was slow to take my first breath
until the doctor gave me a whiff
of oxygen Maybe the air was never
my element, maybe I’d gotten used to
the slosh and muffled sounds
in my mother’s body and wanted
to stay right where I was safe
little fish Now I’m beginning
to imagine I could surface and live
up there before it’s too late Let
the world have its way with me
from Sharp Stars
Big Band Theory
It all began with music,
with that much desire to be
in motion, waves of longing
with Nothing to pass through,
the pulsing you feel before
you hear it. The darkness couldn’t
keep still, it began to sway,
then there were little flashes
of light, glints of brass
over the rumbling percussion,
the reeds began to weep and sing,
and suddenly the horns
tore bigger holes in the darkness—
we could finally see
where the music was coming from:
ordinary men in bowties and black
jackets. But by then we had already
danced most of the night away.
♦ ♦ ♦
Why We Die
Someone spilled salt
or stepped on a crack,
someone left a window open
or looked back, a mistake
that small was all it took
to let death into the world—
which means we never had
a chance at immortality
like the one Calypso offered
Odysseus and he turned down
for no good reasons–I want
a good reason life is dangled
in front of us for only
so many years and then
snuffed out, I know I could
appreciate beauty even if
it went on forever—lovely
word, the way it lingers
on the tongue—I might even
give up sex and go back
to being a single cell, to
multiplying by dividing,
if I could still feel the touch
of sun or wind or water against
a membrane, if I could sense
the difference between night
and day, if the little Mars
rover I lived in picked up
any signs of life, I don’t even
believe in getting out of the way
of others clamoring in line
to try this ride, I just want
to stay right here watching
cows drink from a pond
on a moonlit night.
Because.
♦ ♦ ♦
Glen Gould Humming
If you don’t want the sound
that could be coming
from any kid in headphones
accompanying your precious
Bach, call me and I’ll come
to your house and collect
every record you own
that reminds you this divine
music was written and played
by mere mortals with sweaty
palms and opposable thumbs—
and you can forget about the man
you believe intrudes
on otherwise perfect preludes
and fugues.
♦ ♦ ♦
Welling
Sorrow rises as if you
were the well, filling,
chills the stones, seeps
into the cracks between
them: how many people
would have to drink
from the little silver dipper
to carry your sorrow away?
Links
from The Writer’s Almanac:
Sweater Weather: A Love Song to Language
from The Poetry Foundation:
from The Academy of American Poets
from the web
Interviews
with J. Robert Lennon at Cornell University
with Jeremy Reed at Valparaiso University
with Sheila Bender on KPTZ radio
with the MFA program at Fresno State
with Kathleen Flenniken at Seattle’s Town Hall
Poetics
John Berryman: “Hearing Voices: John Berryman’s Translation of Private Vision into Public Songs” from Recovering Berryman: Essays on a Poet (selected conference papers), U. of Michigan Press, 1994
Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” from American Writers Classics, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003