Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

A Blessing

5/5/2024

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

- James Wright

Listen

4/7/2024

Night Bloom
Painting by Duy Huynh

Listen.
I want to tell you something. This morning
is bright after all the steady rain, and every iris,
peony, rose, opens its mouth, rejoicing. I want to say,
wake up, open your eyes, there's a snow-covered road
ahead, a field of blankness, a sheet of paper, an empty screen.
Even the smallest insects are singing, vibrating their entire bodies,
tiny violins of longing and desire. We were made for song.
I can't tell you what prayer is, but I can take the breath
of the meadow into my mouth, and I can release it for the leaves'
green need. I want to tell you your life is a blue coal, a slice
of orange in the mouth, cut hay in the nostrils. The cardinals'
red song dances in your blood. Look, every month the moon
blossoms into a peony, then shrinks to a sliver of garlic.
And then it blooms again.

- Barbara Crooker

Sweep the Threshold

3/31/2024

Riverbed Comforter
Painting by Duy Huynh

Sweep the threshold,
unlock the door,
put the busyness away--
what comes is far
too important.
Build a fire,
quiet the house,
all your sensing is required.
Hear the hoof beats?
The full horse breaths?
Mice may scratch in the walls,
spiders rattle the roof,
you've nothing to do
but be home.
Movements beneath your skin,
flashes of thought,
quickening heart,
allow them.
This is a welcoming.
You don't know who approaches
only that they must.
Freedom blooms
as we set
a place for everything.
What you carry in your blood
has voice--
Let her sing.

- Willow Annan Rose

Meeting Eros, for Equinox

3/17/2024

Windflower Reverie
Painting by Duy Huynh

Because after the snow and the rain
the redwing blackbird trills in the cattails
and the song of the inner life is born again.
And from out of our dark caves
we stumble and call to each other
wondering what has been transformed
in the winter months and who will now emerge.
We are like bears bounding
out of the mountain, slightly bewildered
blinking in the bright new light,
ravenous for the world.

This is eros unleashed--
the seduction of apple blossoms--
petals raining on wet fertile earth,
hummingbirds unzipping the cerulean sky,
the glint of streamflow and bare skin.
How the full moon pours Maylight
upon our upturned faces,
and the breezes carry the scent of longing
and melancholy, lilac and the spice
of all that is greening.

We have died a thousand times
and been reborn for this.
To lie back, even for a moment,
into the arms of the world--
to meet eros in every turn--
to be courted by you who stirs
the inner waters and tears apart
the old husks. Yes, you
who makes us want to eat fire
and lay down in every meadow.

We have been waiting for your arrival
and now you are here,
no longer a Stranger, but a Storm--
you, who strikes the bell of awakening,
so the whole body rings out
with Delight.

- Laura Weaver

Camas Lilies

9/10/2023

Photo by Aaron Cloward

Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas opening
into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground their bulbs
for flour, how the settlers’ hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?
And you—what of your rushed
and useful life? Imagine setting it all down--
papers, plans, appointments, everything--
leaving only a note: “Gone
to the fields to be lovely. Be back
when I’m through with blooming.”
Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake. Of course
your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.

- Lynn Ungar

What's Left

5/28/2023

- for Peter Hennessy

I used to wait for the flowers,
my pleasure reposed on them.
Now I like plants before they get to the blossom.
Leafy ones--foxgloves, comfrey, delphiniums--
fleshy tiers of strong leaves pushing up
into air grown daily lighter and more sheened
with bright dust like the eyeshadow
that tall young woman in the bookshop wears,
its shimmer and crumble on her white lids.

The washing sways on the line, the sparrows pull
at the heaps of drying weeds that I've left around.
Perhaps this is middle age. Untidy, unfinished,
knowing there'll never be time now to finish,
liking the plants--their strong lives--
not caring about the flowers, sitting in the weeds
to write things down, look at things,
watching the sway of shirts on the line,
the cloth filtering light.

I know more or less
how to live through my life now.
But I want to know how to live what's left
with my eyes open and my hands open;
I want to stand at the door in the rain
listening, sniffing, gaping.
Fearful and joyous,
like an idiot before God.

- Kerry Hardie

Lean In

7/31/2022

Your Great Goodness from Works on Copper
by Sara Honeycutt

Lean in loved one
To the center of the circle
To the metronome
That beats all hearts together

Allow your breath to ease
As you watch
Each inhale
Sweet with life
Bowing to this moment
Each exhale
Loosening the grip of form

Begin the listening
From deep within
Clarity, slowly emerging
As pause makes room
For the light of wisdom
To rise from fog's damp obscurity

Recall through your bones
The collective knowing
That's been a part of us
For a million years

You are the vessel through which
The yet undisclosed is spoken
The soil upon which
Love blossoms
And life remembers herself again and again

- Lynn Robinson

Today

3/27/2022

Frozen Soap Bubbles
Photo by Angela Kelly

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

- Billy Collins

Instructions on Not Giving Up

5/2/2021

Photo by Rezaul Islam. Used with permission.

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor's
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it's the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world's baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I'll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I'll take it all.

- Ada Limon

A Color of the Sky, for Spring Equinox

3/21/2021

Photo by Kasper Rasmussen. Used with permission.

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.
She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I’m glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It’s been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.

- Tony Hoagland

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