What the Leaf Told Me, poem by Ronald Johnson

WHAT THE LEAF TOLD ME
by Ronald Johnson

Today I saw the word written on the poplar leaves.
 It was “dazzle.” The dazzle of the poplars.
As a leaf startles out
from an undifferentiated mass of foliage,
so the word did from a leaf—
A Mirage Of The Delicate Polyglot
inventing itself as cipher. But this, in shifts & gyrations,
grew in brightness, so bright
the massy poplars soon outshone the sun . . .
“My light—my dew—my breeze—my bloom.” Reflections
In A Wren’s Eye.

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ronald Johnson (1935-1998) was a Kansas native who lived most of his adult life in San Francisco. He spent 20 years writing a long poem titled ARK, completed in 1991. His subsequent work included rewriting Milton’s Paradise Lost by excision – using an 1892 edition and omitting most of the text to create a text of his own. His other work includes the poetry collection The Book of the Green Man (W.W. Norton and Company, 1967). (Read more atpoetryfoundation.org.)

ART: “Lane with Poplars,” drawing by Vincent Van Gogh (1882).

My Soul Is Alight, poem by Rabindranath Tagore

MY SOUL IS ALIGHT (Excerpt)
by Rabindranath Tagore 

My soul is alight with your infinitude of stars. 
Your world has broken upon me like a flood. 
The flowers of your garden blossom in my body. 
The joy of life that is everywhere burns like an incense in my heart. 
And the breath of all things plays on my life as on a pipe of reeds.

Source: Poetry magazine, 1913

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A native of Calcutta, India, who wrote in Bengali and often translated his own work into English, Rabindranath Tagore(1861-1941) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 — the first Asian to receive the honor. He wrote poetry, fiction, drama, essays, and songs; promoted reforms in education, aesthetics and religion; and in his late sixties turned to the visual arts, producing 2,500 paintings and drawings before his death.

PAINTING: “Irises” by Vincent van Gogh (1889), Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California.

On the Existence of the Soul, poem by Pattiann Rogers

ON THE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL
by Pattiann Rogers

How confident I am it is there. Don’t I bring it,   
As if it were enclosed in a fine leather case,   
To particular places solely for its own sake?   
Haven’t I set it down before the variegated canyon   
And the undeviating bald salt dome?   
Don’t I feed it on ivory calcium and ruffled   
Shell bellies, shore boulders, on the sight   
Of the petrel motionless over the sea, its splayed   
Feet hanging? Don’t I make sure it apprehends   
The invisibly fine spray more than once?
 
I have seen that it takes in every detail
I can manage concerning the garden wall and its borders.
I have listed for it the comings and goings
Of one hundred species of insects explicitly described.
I have named the chartreuse stripe
And the fimbriated antenna, the bulbed thorax   
And the multiple eye. I have sketched
The brilliant wings of the trumpet vine and invented
New vocabularies describing the interchanges between rocks   
And their crevices, between the holly lip   
And its concept of itself.
 
And if not for its sake, why would I go
Out into the night alone and stare deliberately   
Straight up into 15 billion years ago and more?
 
I have cherished it. I have named it.   
By my own solicitations   
I have proof of its presence. 
***
“On the Existence of the Soul” appears in Pattiann Rogers‘ collection Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1994 by Pattiann Rogers (Milkweed Editions, 1994).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Pattiann Rogers was born in 1941 in Joplin, Missouri. She attended the University of Missouri, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and went to the University of Houston where she earned an MA in creative writing. Her awards and honors also include two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Poetry Fellowship, Poetry’s Tietjens and Bess Hokin Prizes, the Roethke Prize from Poetry Northwest, the Strousse Award from Prairie Schooner, and four Pushcart Prizes. Rogers has taught at numerous colleges and universities as well as in high schools and kindergartens.

PAINTING: “The Starry Night” (1889) by Vincent van Gogh

Ode to Ironing, poem by Pablo Neruda

ODE TO IRONING
by Pablo Neruda

Poetry is white:
it comes from water swathed in drops,
it wrinkles and gathers,
this planet’s skin has to spread out,
the sea’s whiteness has to be ironed out,
and the hands keep moving,
the sacred surfaces get smoothed,
and things are done this way:
the hands make the world every day,
fire conjoins with steel,
linen, canvas, and cotton arrive
from the scuffles in the laundries,
and from light a dove is born:
chastity returns out of the foam.

Translated from the Spanish by Ilan Stavans.

Ode to Enchanted Light, poem by Pablo Neruda

ODE TO ENCHANTED LIGHT
by Pablo Neruda

Under the trees light
has dropped from the top of the sky,
light
like a green
latticework of branches,
shining
on every leaf,
drifting down like clean
white sand.

A cicada sends
its sawing song
high into the empty air.

The world is
a glass overflowing
with water.

PAINTING: “A Ray of Light,” watercolor by Derek Collins, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at etsy.com.

Ode to the Present, poem by Pablo Neruda

ODE TO THE PRESENT
by Pablo Neruda

This
present moment,
smooth
as a wooden slab,
this
immaculate hour,
this day
pure
as a new cup
from the past–
no spider web
exists–
with our fingers,
we caress
the present; we cut it
according to our magnitude
we guide
the unfolding of its blossoms.
It is living,
alive–
it contains
nothing
from the unrepairable past,
from the lost past,
it is our
infant,
growing at
this very moment, adorned with
sand, eating from
our hands.
Grab it.
Don’t let it slip away.
Don’t lose it in dreams
or words.
Clutch it.
Tie it,
and order it
to obey you.
Make it a road,
a bell,
a machine,
a kiss, a book,
a caress.
Take a saw to its delicious
wooden
perfume.
And make a chair;
braid its
back;
test it.
Or then, build
a staircase! Yes, a
staircase.
Climb
into
the present,
step
by step,
press your feet
onto the resinous wood
of this moment,
going up,
going up,
not very high,
just so
you repair
the leaky roof.
Don’t go all the way to heaven.
Reach
for apples,
not the clouds.
Let them
fluff through the sky,
skimming passage,
into the past. You
are
your present,
your own apple.
Pick it from
your tree.
Raise it
in your hand.
It’s gleaming,
rich with stars.
Claim it.
Take a luxurious bite
out of the present,
and whistle along the road
of your destiny.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was the pen name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftali Ricardo ReyesBasoalto. He chose his pseudonym after Czech poet Jan Neruda. In 1971, Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Neruda often wrote in green ink because it was his personal symbol of desire and hope. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez called him “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.” (Source: Wikipedia)

Illustration: “Apple Abstract” by Susana Fernandez, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Night Poem by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser

Night Poem
by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser

The moon put her white hands 
on my shoulders, looked into my face,
and without a word
sent me on into the night. 

###

Find more poems by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser in BRAIDED CREEK: A Conversation in Poetry, available at Amazon.com.

My Quill, poem by Lord Byron

MY QUILL
by George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

Oh, nature’s noblest gift, my grey goose quill,
Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from the parent bird to form a pen,
That mighty instrument of little men.

Illustration: “Quill,” 19th century engraving, available at fineartamerica.com

 

Down on My Knees, poem by Ginger Andrews

DOWN ON MY KNEES
by Ginger Andrews

cleaning out my refrigerator
and thinking about writing a religious poem
that somehow combines feeling sorry for myself
with ordinary praise, when my nephew stumbles in for coffee
to wash down what looks like a hangover
and get rid of what he calls hot dog water breath.
I wasn’t going to bake the cake

now cooling on the counter, but I found a dozen eggs tipped
sideways in their carton behind a leftover Thanksgiving Jell-O dish.
There’s something therapeutic about baking a devil’s food cake,
whipping up that buttercream frosting,
knowing your sisters will drop by and say Lord yes
they’d love just a little piece.

Everybody suffers, wants to run away,
is broke after Christmas, stayed up too late
to make it to church Sunday morning. Everybody should

drink coffee with their nephews,
eat chocolate cake with their sisters, be thankful
and happy enough under a warm and unexpected January sun.
***
“Down on My Kneew” appears in Ginger Andrews‘ collection An Honest Answer (Story Line Press, 1999), available at Amazon.com.

Rolls-Royce Dreams, poem by Ginger Andrews

ROLLS-ROYCE DREAMS
by Ginger Andrews

Using salal leaves for money,
my youngest sister and I
paid an older sister
to taxi an abandoned car
in our backyard. Our sister
knew how to shift gears,
turn smoothly with a hand signal,
and make perfect screeching stop sounds.

We drove to the beach,
to the market, to Sunday School,
past our would-be boyfriends’ houses,
to any town, anywhere.
We shopped for expensive clothes everywhere.
Our sister would open our doors
and say, Meter’s runnin’ ladies,
but take your time.

We rode all over in that ugly green Hudson
with its broken front windshield, springs poking
through its back seat, blackberry vines growing
through rusted floorboards;
with no wheels, no tires, taillights busted,
headlights missing, and gas gauge on empty.

“Rolls-Royce Dreams” appears in Ginger Andrews‘ collection An Honest Answer (Story Line Press, 1999), available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ginger Andrews, born in North Bend, Oregon, in 1956, won the 1999 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize with her volume, An Honest Answer. She has lived most of her life in Oregon, where she cleans houses for a living with her sisters. She is also a janitor and Sunday School teacher at her church. Her poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, Poetry, River Sedge, The American Voice, and in several anthologies, including Good Poems edited by Garrison Keillor. Keillor has read poems from An Honest Answer more than ten times on The Writer’s Almanac.

Photo: “1935 Oldsmobile” by Rich K, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.