Poetry for a Winter Sunday

The outside is a-swirling with snow today, and the girls and I are cuddled up on the couch. While they play with their new puppet toys and watch tv, I'm thick into Linda Pastan's new collection of poems, Queen of a Rainy Country. My praise for her is nothing less than effusive, and if you read a few of these poems for yourself, you'll see why.

Here is one that is perfect for my mood this afternoon:

Parting the Waters

Nothing is lost.

The past surfaces

from the salted tide pool

of oblivion over

and over again,

and here it is now--

complete

with ironed sheets, old sins,

and pewter candlesticks.

My mother and aunt approach,

shaking the water from 

their freshly washed hair

like aging mermaids.

They have been here

all along, sewing

or reading a book, waiting

for the wand of memory

to touch them.

Invoking Janus

Looking foward, looking backward.   Like Janus, we stand at the gate of the new year, and reflect while gazing ahead.

Here are two poems that make me think about that certain kind of retrospection that makes you look ahead with hope, too.  

The first is by William Stafford, from his collection Even in Quiet Places.  

You Reading This: Stop

Don't just stay tangled up in your life.

Out there in some river or cave where  you

could have been, some absolute, lonely

dawn may arrive and begin the story

that means what everything is about.

So don't just look, either:

let your whole self drift like a breath and learn

its way down the trees.  Let that fine 

waterfall-smoke filter its gone, magnified presence

all through the forest.  Stand here till all that

you were can wander away and come back slowly,

carrying a strange new flavor into your life.

Feel it?  That's what we mean.  So don't just 

read this.  rub your thought over it.

Now you can go on.

The second poem is by Linda Pastan, from her collection Carnival Evening.

The Happiest Day

It was early May, I think

a moment of lilac or dogwood

when so many promises are made

it hardly matters if a few are broken.

My mother and father still hovered

in the background, part of the scenery

like the houses I had grown up in,

and if they would be torn down later

that was something I knew

but didn't believe.  Our children were asleep 

or playing, the youngest as new 

as the smell of the lilacs,

and how could I have guessed 

their roots would be shallow

and would be easily transplanted.

I didn't even guess that I was happy.

The small irritations that are like salt

on melon were what I dwelt on,

though in truth they simply

made the fruit taste sweeter.

So we sat on the porch

in the cool morning, sipping

hot coffee.  Behind the news of the day--

strikes and small wars, a fire somewhere--

I could see the top of your dark head

and thought not of public conflagrations

but of how it would feel on my bare shoulder.

If someone could stop the camera then...

if someone could only stop the camera

and ask me: are you happy?

perhaps I would have noticed

how the morning shone in the reflected 

color of the lilac.  Yes, I might have said

and offered a steaming cup of coffee.

With each of these poems, my thoughts skip like a stone across the pond to a future me.  My mind whirls when I imagine the bright rings left behind in the skittering path of years, glittering like the sun on the water.   

Wishing you a bright new year.  May your 2009 be filled with hope and light and bright shining moments.