Prognosis

For Jenny Rockwell

When life is measured
in months, no longer years,
you find your way through the dark,
your knuckles white, gripped tight
around everyone you hold dear.

I think of that photographer
who saw the distant mountain
from where he sat in the city.
From his rooftop, he showed us
what the smog can take away.

We did not know we could see the mountain.
But, see, we only noticed the veil
on that one clear day.

Messianic

 For Jameson

This morning, I read about a dog that died
doing what dogs know to do: run
towards a noise at the door,
to strangers barging in.
He was wearing a bold blue shirt–
dressed with care, no doubt,
by the woman of the house.
But maybe I am wrong: The dog was
not protecting but welcoming,
dashing to the door, expecting
someone coming home,
a wildly open heart
before being shot.

Sometimes I wonder, when I look at the world,
do I pretend not to see
the hiding spider, the wayward ant,
and proceed without caution
because I cannot survive the wave
of the many others that cannot be saved?

'Let us love one another and let go'

Tigers
By Eliza Griswol 

What are we now but voices 

who promise each other a life 

neither one can deliver 

not for lack of wanting 

but wanting won’t make it so. 

We cling to a vine at the cliff’s edge. 

There are tigers above and below. 

Let us love one another and let go.

'Kung papalarin'

Magiging Kwento Ka Na Lang
By Althea Lauren Ricardo

Di na rin mamasamain--
Kung nararapat,
Kung papalarin.

'how is your heart?'

Four friends catch up over pasta
By Amy Kay

I’m doing better / they need to run more tests / we’re moving in together / I’m never dating again / how is your dad? / how is your heart? / how are you dealing with the state of the world? / I love your new hair color / I’m on new meds / remember how young we used to be? / let’s build a commune / we can have sheep / and goats? / yes, and dancing / I missed you / it’s been too long / this is delicious — the sauce, the salad / this night / all of it.

'Love is for the ones who love the work'

For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper

By Joseph Fasano

Now I let it fall back
in the grasses.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.

"We'll both end. We'll both begin"

If you look close enough, life as you know it ends each time you meet someone new. 

But not everyone changes the way the stars move.

***

Our Story
By William Stafford

Remind me again—together we
trace our strange journey, find
each other, come on laughing.
Some time we’ll cross where life
ends. We’ll both look back
as far as forever, that first day.
I’ll touch you—a new world then.
Stars will move a different way.
We’ll both end. We’ll both begin.

Remind me again.

"And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done"

Sometimes I wish I could relive certain moments and choose differently how to react. But it is what it is, and, at least in this timeline, nothing can be undone. 

***

Life While-You-Wait
By Wislawa Szymborska

Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run —
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I’ve done.

'And still the scales balance'

The Weighing
By Jane Hirshfield

The heart’s reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.

"It is coming your way"

I was cleaning up my phone when I found a PDF file I didn't recognize. The file name was its_all_right.pdf, and since I need some affirmation today, I opened it and found this poem I don't remember searching for, much less downloading. 

I'm imagining it's a message from Future Me to Present Me. Thank you, Future Me!

***

It's All Right

By William Stafford

Someone you trusted has treated you bad.

Someone has used you to vent their ill temper.

Did you expect anything different?

Your work--better than some others'--has languished,

neglected. Or a job you tried was too hard,

and you failed. Maybe weather or bad luck

spoiled what you did. That grudge, held against you

for years after you patched up, has flared,

and you've lost a friend for a time. Things

at home aren't so good; on the job your spirits

have sunk. But just when the worst bears down

you find a pretty bubble in your soup at noon,

and outside at work a bird says, "Hi!"

Slowly the sun creeps along the floor;

it is coming your way. It touches your shoe.

"Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew"

Failing and Flying
By Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

"I love you. I'm glad I exist."

The Orange
By Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It's new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I'm glad I exist.

Why bother?

On a whim, I decided to tinker with this blog's template once again. I ended up not changing much, preferring the old look. I still think I have nothing much to say, but I consider it a sign that I came across this quote on Facebook.

 

"Even love’s lightning flash has no thunderous end"

Endings
By Derek Walcott

Things do not explode,
they fail, they fade,

as sunlight fades from the flesh,
as the foam drains quick in the sand,

even love’s lightning flash
has no thunderous end,

it dies with the sound
of flowers fading like the flesh

from sweating pumice stone,
everything shapes this

till we are left
with the silence that surrounds Beethoven’s head.

"When I couldn't sleep I learned to write"

The Only Poem
By Leonard Cohen

This is the only poem
I can read
I am the only one
can write it
I didn’t kill myself
when things went wrong
I didn’t turn
to drugs or teaching
I tried to sleep
but when I couldn’t sleep
I learned to write
I learned to write
what might be read
on nights like this
by one like me

"You could make this place beautiful"

Good Bones
By Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.


From here.

"you loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand"

Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell
By Marty McConnell

leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses.
you make him call before
he visits. you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.

"All the rest is hypothesis and dream"

Theory of Memory
By Louise Glück

Long, long ago, before I was a tormented artist, afflicted with longing yet incapable of forming durable attachments, long before this, I was a glorious ruler uniting all of a divided country -- so I was told by the fortune-teller who examined my palm. Great things, she said, are ahead of you, or perhaps behind you; it is difficult to be sure. And yet, she added, what is the difference? Right now you are a child holding hands with a fortune-teller. All the rest is hypothesis and dream.

Let us go disturb the universe

"No one ever promised for sure that we would sing"

An Introduction to Literature
By William Stafford

Look: no one ever promised for sure
that we would sing. We have decided
to moan. In a strange dance that
we don't understand till we do it, we
have to carry on.

Just as in sleep you have to dream
the exact dream to round out your life,
so we have to live that dream into stories
and hold them close at you, close at the
edge we share, to be right.

We find it an awful thing to meet people,
serious or not, who have turned into vacant
effective people, so far lost that they
won't believe their own feelings
enough to follow them out.

The authentic is a line from one thing
along to the next; it interests us.
Strangely, it relates to what works,
but it is not quite the same. It never
swerves for revenge,

Or profit or fame: it holds
together something more than the world,
this line. And we are your wavery
efforts at following it. Are you coming?
Good: now it is time.