Carrie Newcomer: "Every Little Bit of It" [sung poem]

Just beyond my sight,
Something that I cannot see,
I've been circling around a thought,
That’s been circling around me.
Like the vapor of a song,
That is just out of earshot,
And I thought I knew the question,
But I guess not.

Chorus:
There it is just below the surface of things,
In a flash of blue, and the turning of wings.
Drain the glass, drink it down, every moment of this,
Every little bit of it!

I swam against the tide,
I tripped on my own pride,
So I'll try again today,
To get out of my own way.
The face was always in the stone,
Said Michelangelo,
You just have to chip and clear,
To see what is already there.

There it is just below the surface of things,
In a flash of blue, and the turning of wings.
Drain the glass, drink it down, every moment of this,
Every little bit of it!

There it is in the apple of every new notion,
There it is in the scar healed over what was broken,
In the branches, in the whispering, in the silence and the sighs,
And the curious promise of limited time!

It's true although it’s hard,
A shadow glides over the ridge.
And one fast beating heart,
Tries with all its might to live.
We sense but can’t describe,
From the corner of our eye
Something nameless and abiding,
And so we keep transcribing.

There it is just below the surface of things,
In a flash of blue, and the turning of wings.
Drain the glass, drink it down, every moment of this,
Every little bit of it, every little bit!



"Every Little Bit of It" [sung poem], words and music by Carrie Newcomer. © 2014.

Art credit: Music composed and performed by Carrie Newcomer, together with her musical collaborators. From her album A Permeable Life, produced and engineered by Paul Mahern. © Available Light Records, 2014. Video uploaded on January 26, 2014.
Note: If you can't see the viewer above, click here to watch. 

 

Janet Jerve: "Evening Vespers"

I cross the doorway to his room,
tell him it’s time for bed.
My son, only three,
is losing his buddha belly
and he is not listening to me.

He sees beyond my face,
finds comfort in his universe.
From his covers he chants:
I love myself, I like myself,
I love myself, I like myself.

I surrender to the teacher
with turtle blanket and mantra.



"Evening Vespers" by Janet Jerve. Text as published in Excavation (North Star Press, 2013). Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: "Toddler playing on bed," photograph by Lauren Mitchell.

Susan Meyers: "Mother, Washing Dishes"

                              She rarely made us do it—
we’d clear the table instead—so my sister and I teased
that some day we’d train our children right
and not end up like her, after every meal stuck
with red knuckles, a bleached rag to wipe and wring.
The one chore she spared us: gummy plates
in water greasy and swirling with sloughed peas,
globs of egg and gravy.

                               Or did she guard her place
at the window? Not wanting to give up the gloss
of the magnolia, the school traffic humming.
Sunset, finches at the feeder. First sightings
of the mail truck at the curb, just after noon,
delivering a note, a card, the least bit of news.

"Mother, Washing Dishes" by Susan Meyers. Text as published in Tar River Poetry (Fall, 2008).

Art credit: "Farmhouse Sink," photograph taken on September 20, 2008, by Corey Leopold (originally black and white).

 

W. S. Merwin: "Just Now"

In the morning as the storm begins to blow away
the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me
that there has been something simpler than I could ever believe
simpler than I could have begun to find words for
not patient not even waiting no more hidden
than the air itself that became part of me for a while
with every breath and remained with me unnoticed
something that was here unnamed unknown in the days
and the nights not separate from them
not separate from them as they came and were gone
it must have been here neither early nor late then
by what name can I address it now holding out my thanks

"Just Now" by W. S. Merwin. Text as published in The Pupil: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001).

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.

Glen Sorestad: "Making a Salad"

      I find in this small task
      the peace of what I have
      and what I’ll someday lose.
      —Tim Bowling, “Washing Dishes”


What a pleasant state of contentment

to stand in the kitchen at the counter top,
the lettuce, bell peppers, tomatoes, zucchini
all laid out on the altar before me, awaiting
transformation—the rinsing and peeling,
slicing or dicing, required of each
separate veggie that will metamorphose
the random green host into the oneness
that is salad, the way a vegetable
both loses its own self yet becomes
a distinctive part of the whole,
as each child brings its uniqueness
to a classroom. Such pleasure
I find in this small task.

I didn’t always feel this way.
Once, the making of a meal
or any dish was purely functional.
It wasn’t until I was a father I understood
that food and who prepares it and how
is special and holy in the eyes of a child.
I grew in the kitchen, donned chef’s apron,
not from sense of duty, but because
doing it and doing it well revealed
the peace of what I have.

Our children are now parents themselves.
They don their own family rites like aprons,
their own ways to show how important
little rituals are in the life of a healthy family.
From the sidelines, as I watch my own sons
assume their fatherly kitchen roles, I  smile
and am grateful for all I’ve had
and what I’ll someday lose.

  

"Making a Salad" by Glen Sorestad, from What We Miss: Poems. © Thistledown Press, 2010.

Art credit: Detail from "Aprons Hanging on Hooks with Vintage Feel," photograph by Sandra Cunningham, uploaded on January 24, 2103.

Joy Harjo: "Remember"

Remember the sky you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

 

"Remember" by Joy Harjo, from How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems: 1975-2001. © W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Art credit: "Fancy Shawl Dancer," acrylic painting by Donald Brewer.

Jane Kenyon: "Apple Dropping Into Deep Early Snow"

A jay settled on a branch, making it sway.
The one shrivelled fruit that remained
gave way to the deepening drift below.
I happened to see it the moment it fell.

Dusk is eager and comes early. A car
creeps over the hill. Still in the dark I try
to tell if I am numbered with the damned,
who cry, outraged, Lord, when did we see you?

"Apple Dropping Into Deep Early Snow" by Jane Kenyon, from American Poetry Review (online edition, March/April 1985).

Art credit: "Apple in the Snow," photograph by Roger Lynn.

Leah Browning: "Any Day Now"

The test results are due back
any day now.

Life is like a mouse,
sniffing around me,

and I am a doll,
on the floor on my side,

lying where someone
has flung me.

At some point
the telephone will ring

and the wooden hinge
of my arm

will bend in its direction,
but I will let it go on ringing

for a moment
with that face at my neck

because I want to remember
at least once more

the scent of the lemon tree
in the back yard

and the view of the shoreline
on a windy day

and everything else
I’ve ever seen

in this world, which is so frightening
and wondrous

"Any Day Now" by Leah Browning, from In the Chair Museum. © Dancing Girl Press, 2013. Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: "Vintage Ideal Doll," photograph by StylishPiggy.

Martin Willitts, Jr.: "When everything that ticked —has stopped"

—Emily Dickinson, # 510

It is not anything that stopped; but me.
It was not Death’s hearse of autumn leaves
slowing down to find my Last Testament.

If I made the smallest dent, I hope it was with Love.
Nothing in this reflective silence is long enough.
Nothing stops ticking in order to speak of me.

I came into the world with nothing except in Love;
and I leave behind nothing of value except Love.
Love—Love never stops. It keeps on going.

"When everything that ticked—has stopped" by Martin Willitts, Jr., from The Heart Knows Simply What It Means: Poems Based on Emily Dickinson, Her Life and Poetry. © Aldrich Press, 2012.

Art credit: "Ocean Waves and Beach," still from a video by AnaMarques.

Mahmoud Darwish: "Think of Others"

As you prepare your breakfast, think of others
       (do not forget the pigeon's food).
As you conduct your wars, think of others
       (do not forget those who seek peace).
As you pay your water bill, think of others
      (those who are nursed by clouds).
As you return home, to your home, think of others
       (do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others
       (those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others
       (those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself
       (say: “If only I were a candle in the dark").



The original Arabic:


فكِّر بغيركَ

وأنتَ تُعِدُّ فطورك، فكِّر بغيركَ
لا تَنْسَ قوتَ الحمام
وأنتَ تخوضُ حروبكَ، فكِّر بغيركَ
لا تنس مَنْ يطلبون السلام
وأنتَ تسدد فاتورةَ الماء، فكِّر بغيركَ
مَنْ يرضَعُون الغمامٍ
وأنتَ تعودُ إلى البيت، بيتكَ، فكِّر بغيركَ
لا تنس شعب الخيامْ
وأنت تنام وتُحصي الكواكبَ، فكِّر بغيركَ
ثمّةَ مَنْ لم يجد حيّزاً للمنام
وأنت تحرّر نفسك بالاستعارات، فكِّر بغيركَ
مَنْ فقدوا حقَّهم في الكلام
وأنت تفكر بالآخرين البعيدين، فكِّر بنفسك
قُلْ: ليتني شمعةُ في الظلام


 

"Think of Others" by Mahmoud Darwish, from Almond Blossoms and Beyond. Translated from the original Arabic by Mohammed Shaheen. © Interlink Books, 2010.  

Art credit: Video created by Tamim Fares and uploaded April 4, 2011. Music by Secret Garden. Note that this video uses a slightly different English translation of the poem. (Click here if you can't see the viewer above.)

Randall Jarrell: "Well Water"

What a girl called “the dailiness of life”
(Adding an errand to your errand. Saying,
“Since you're up . . .” Making you a means to
A means to a means to) is well water
Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.
The pump you pump the water from is rusty
And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel
A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny
Inexorable hours. And yet sometimes
The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty
Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear
Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands
And gulp from them the dailiness of life.

"Well Water" by Randall Jarrell, from The Complete Poems. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981.

Art credit: "Man standing under waterfall, arms outstretched," photograph by Sami Sarkis/Getty Images.

Wislawa Szymborska: "Under One Small Star"

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from
     the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep
     today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful
     of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the
     same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional
     thread from your train.
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and
     each man.
I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.



"Under One Small Star" by Wislawa Szymborska, from Poems New and Collected. Translated from the original Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. © Mariner Books, 2000.

Art credit: "Rigel (a single star) through the 60" [telescope]," image by unknown photographer at the Sahuaro Girl Scout Leaders' Astronomy Camp, April 4-6, 2003.

 

Dorianne Laux: "Break"

We put the puzzle together piece
by piece, loving how one curved
notch fits so sweetly with another.
A yellow smudge becomes
the brush of a broom, and two blue arms
fill in the last of the sky.
We patch together porch swings and autumn
trees, matching gold to gold. We hold
the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair
of brown shoes. We do this as the child
circles her room, impatient
with her blossoming, tired
of the neat house, the made bed,
the good food. We let her brood
as we shuffle through the pieces,
setting each one into place with a satisfied
tap, our backs turned for a few hours
to a world that is crumbling, a sky
that is falling, the pieces
we are required to return to.

"Break" by Dorianne Laux, from Awake. © Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary Series, 2013.

Art credit: "The Last Piece," photograph by Al Magnus.

David Ignatow: "Above Everything"

I wished for death often
but now that I am at its door
I have changed my mind about the world.
It should go on; it is beautiful,
even as a dream, filled with water and seed,
plants and animals, others like myself,
ships and buildings and messages
filling the air—a beauty,
if ever I have seen one.
In the next world, should I remember
this one, I will praise it
above everything.

"Above Everything" by David Ignatow, from Whisper to the Earth: New Poems. © Little, Brown & Company, 1981.

Art credit: "Yee Peng Festival, Chiang Mai," photograph by Karl Davies.

Gary Lawless: "when the animals"

When the animals come to us

     asking for our help,

     will we know what they are saying?

When the plants speak to us

     in their delicate, beautiful language,

     will we be able to answer them?

When the planet herself

     sings to us in our dreams,

     will we be able to wake ourselves, and act?

 
"when the animals" by Gary Lawless, from First Sight of Land. © Blackberry Books, 1990. Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: Untitled photograph by Marcus & Kate Westberg posted on A Voice for Elephants, April 25, 2013. From the text: "[At the Living with Elephants Foundation in Botswana] we witnessed firsthand the strong bond between the elephant trio and their human guardians as Doug [Groves] and Jabu stood hand-in-trunk against the setting sun."

Wang Wei: "Walking in Mountains in the Rain"

In this quick cloudburst
air thickens, the sky comes down

dark mountains
flashes of lightning

out at sea new clouds
have just started to form
and this small brook I straddle
is a river in flood somewhere

rags and blankets of mist
hang on these slopes and cliffs

then the clouds open and vanish
rain patters off
and moonlight silvers
that whole reach of river
foothills to ocean

and even from this black mountain
I can hear boatmen singing.

"Walking in Mountains in the Rain" by Wang Wei, from Five T'ang Poets. Translated from the original Chinese by David Young. © Oberlin College, 1990.

Many thanks to Albert Bellg for suggesting this poem, whose translator, he writes, was one of his English professors at Oberlin.

Art credit: "Silhouette against Yangshuo Moon in China," photograph by johey24. Caption: "A cormorant fisherman rows his little bamboo boat against the backdrop of a giant moon on the Li River, Yangshuo, China."

Sheenagh Pugh: "What If This Road"

What if this road, that has held no surprises
these many years, decided not to go
home after all; what if it could turn
left or right with no more ado
than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin
were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,
that is shaken and rolled out, and takes
a new shape from the contours beneath?
And if it chose to lay itself down
in a new way; around a blind corner,
across hills you must climb without knowing
what's on the other side; who would not hanker
to be going, at all risks? Who wants to know
a story's end, or where a road will go?

"What If This Road" by Sheenagh Pugh, from What If This Road and Other Poems. © Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2003.

Art credit: "Montana Farm Road," photograph by Mike Robinson.

Stephen Dobyns: "Waking"

Waking, I look at you sleeping beside me.

It is early and the baby in her crib

has begun her conversation with the gods

that direct her, cooing and making small hoots.

Watching you, I see how your face bears the signs

of our time together—for each objective

description, there is the romantic; for each

scientific fact, there's the subjective truth—

this line was caused by days at a microscope,

this from when you thought I no longer loved you.

Last night a friend called to say that he intends

to move out; so simple, he and his wife splitting

like a cell into two separate creatures.

What would happen if we divided ourselves?

As two colors blend on a white pad, so we

have become a third color; or better,

as a wire bites into the tree it surrounds,

so we have grown together. Can you believe

how frightening I find this, to know I have

no life except with you? It's almost enough

to make me destroy it just to protest it.

Always we seemed perched on the brink of chaos.

But today there's just sunlight and the baby's

chatter, her wonder at the way light dances

on the wall. How lucky to be ignorant,

to greet joy without a trace of suspicion,

to take that first step without worrying what

comes trailing after, as night trails after day,

or winter summer, or confusion where all

seemed clear and each moment was its own reward.

"Waking" by Stephen Dobyns, from Velocities: New and Selected Poems, 1996-1992. © Penguin, 1994.

Art credit: "Barbed Wire Tree," photograph by Hazza42.

Kabir: Untitled ["The Guest is inside you"]

The Guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.

The blue sky opens out further and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.

I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside ''love" there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.
How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!

Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.
With the word "reason" you already feel miles away.

How lucky Kabir is, that surrounded by all this joy
he sings inside his own little boat.
His poems amount to one soul meeting another.
These songs are about forgetting dying and loss.
They rise above both coming in and going out.

 

Untitled ["The Guest is inside you"] by Kabir, from Kabir: Ecstatic Poems. "Versions" (not translations from the original Hindi) by Robert Bly. © Beacon Press, 1993.

Art credit: Still photograph from the film Life of Pi, cinematography by Claudio Miranda.

William Stafford: "Today"

The ordinary miracles begin. Somewhere
a signal arrives: "Now," and the rays
come down. A tomorrow has come. Open
your hands, lift them: morning rings
all the doorbells; porches are cells for prayer.
Religion has touched your throat. Not the same now,
you could close your eyes and go on full of light.

And it is already begun, the chord
that will shiver glass, the song full of time
bending above us. Outside, a sign:
a bird intervenes; the wings tell the air,
"Be warm." No one is out there, but a giant
has passed through town, widening streets, touching
the ground, shouldering away the stars.



"Today" by William Stafford, from My Name Is William Tell: Poems. © Confluence Press, 1992.

Art credit: "Frost on Window," photograph by Larisa Koshkina.

Richard Jones: "The Spoon"

Some days I think I need nothing
more in life than a spoon.
With a spoon I can eat oatmeal,
or take the medicine doctors prescribe.
I can swat a fly sleeping on the sill
or pound the table to get attention.
I can point accusingly at God
or stab the empty air repeatedly.
Looking into the spoon's mirror,
I can study my small face in its shiny bowl,
or cover one eye to make half the world
disappear. With a spoon
I can dig a tunnel to freedom,
spoonful by spoonful of dirt,
or waste life catching moonlight
and flinging it into the blackest night.

"The Spoon" by Richard Jones, from Apropos of Nothing. © Copper Canyon Press, 2006.  

Art credit: "Bebete el cielo¡ Drink the sky," photograph taken on June 23, 2013 by © la_magia.

Genie Zeiger: "The Hike"

November is the hardest month,
and it’s Sunday, the hardest day when
one lives alone, but I am with you.
We enter the wall of woods quietly, the way
we might have entered the room of our
sleeping baby, if we’d had one.
You turn toward me, one finger
pressed over closed lips. Silence is
impossible as dry leaves crackle
beneath our boots, but I synchronize
my steps with yours to keep
the racket down. We reach a ledge
and sit on stones and watch the sun
lower its bright body over the pond.
The beaver, big toothed and
oddly white, climbs onto a tree
limb and begins to chew.
I wish I knew how to love you.
I wish I knew how to do it better.
We pass the binoculars between us
slowly, so the animal won’t scare,
but it does, and I am cold.
Let’s go, I whisper.
You nod, and I follow you up
the thick hillside, dodging branches,
keeping my eye on that
baggy green knapsack of yours.
I am following, and wanting,
as we come into a clearing,
and there, mirrored in a new
pond, is the early moon,
so full and round
I want to eat it, to share it with you.

"The Hike" by Genie Zeiger. Published in The Sun (November 2008). © Genie Zeiger.

Art credit: "Full moon reflections of life," photograph by jammingene.

Alice D'Alessio: "Left Behind"

                         Isn't there always something forgotten, something
                         lost, something gone? Praise this too,
                         for the blessings it brings. You will seek out
                         some recourse—reused paper, borrowed brush,
                         makeshift paint; some other—and make it work.
                         You will engage a new friend, beg or barter,
                         find a different, maybe better, way.
                         You will go where you didn't know you could.


 

"Left Behind" by Alice D'Alessio. © Alice D'Alessio.  Presented here by poet submission.

The poet sent this backstory note: "At a recent poet and artist retreat in Maine, I was amused at how many people (including me) had forgotten certain items and how this served to bond us." 

Art credit: "My Eye, 2012," 30" x 38" sculpture using unrecyclable plastic bottle caps, by Mary Ellen Croteau.

 

Nancy Wood: Untitled ["Earth teach me stillness"]

Earth teach me stillness
    as the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me suffering
    as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility
    as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring
    as the mother who secures her young.
Earth teach me courage
    as the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me limitation
    as the ant which crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom
    as the eagle which soars in the sky.
Earth teach me resignation
    as the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me regeneration
    as the seed which rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself
    as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness
    as dry fields weep with rain.

                          

Untitled ["Earth teach me stillness"] by Nancy Wood, from Earth Prayers from Around the World: 365 Prayers, Poems and Invocations for Honoring the Earth, edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon. © HarperOne, 2009.

Art credit: Detail from "Maples Leaves in Air," image by unknown photographer.

Mary Oliver: "The Other Kingdoms"

Consider the other kingdoms. The
trees, for example, with their mellow-sounding
titles: oak, aspen, willow.
Or the snow, for which the peoples of the north
have dozens of words to describe its
different arrivals. Or the creatures, with their
thick fur, their shy and wordless gaze. Their
infallible sense of what their lives
are meant to be. Thus the world
grows rich, grows wild, and you too,
grow rich, grow sweetly wild, as you too
were born to be.



"The Other Kingdoms" by Mary Oliver, from The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press, 2008.

Art credit: "Bison do not see very well even though they have large eyes," photograph by Michael Graber © 2009 (originally color).

Linda Pastan: "Possibilities"

Today I drove past a house
we almost bought and heard
through the open window music

made by some other family.
We don't make music ourselves, in fact
we define our differences

by what we listen to.
And what we mean by family
has changed since then

as we grew larger then smaller again
in ways we knew would happen
and yet didn't expect.

Each choice is a winnowing,
and sometimes at night I hear
all the possibilities creak open

and shut like screendoors
in the wind,
making an almost musical

accompaniment
to what I know
of love and history.



"Possibilities" by Linda Pastan, from Heroes in Disguise. © W. W. Norton & Company, 1991.

Art credit: "Screen Door, 2013," photograph by Cig Harvey.