Poem of the Week, by Mary Oliver

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Excerpt from Work
– Mary Oliver

4.

All day I have been pining for the past.
That’s when the big dog, Luke, breathed at my side.
Then she dashed away then she returned
in and out of the swales, in and out of the creeks,
her dark eyes snapping.
Then she broke, slowly,
in the rising arc of a fever.

And now she’s nothing
except for mornings when I take a handful of words
and throw them into the air
so that she dashes up again out of the darkness,

like this–

this is the world.



—

For more information on Mary Oliver, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mary-oliver

Poem of the Week, by William Stafford

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Remembering Brother Bob
– William Stafford

Tell me, you years I had for my life,
tell me a day, that day it snowed
and I played hockey in the cold.
Bob was seven, then, and I was twelve,
and strong. The sun went down. I turned
and Bob was crying on the shore.

Do I remember kindness? Did I
shield my brother, comfort him?
Tell me, you years I had for my life.

Yes, I carried him. I took
him home. But I complained. I see
the darkness; it comes near: and Bob,
who is gone now, and the other kids.
I am the zero in the scene:
“You said you would be brave,” I chided
him. “I’ll not take you again.”
Years, I look at the white across
this page, and think: I never did.

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For more information on William Stafford, please click here: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/224
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Poem of the Week, by Sharon Olds

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STATION
– Sharon Olds

Coming in off the dock after writing,
I approached the house,
and saw your long grandee face
in the light of a lamp with a parchment shade
the color of flame.

An elegant hand on your beard. Your tapered
eyes found me on the lawn. You looked
as the lord looks down from a narrow window
and you are descended from lords. Calmly, with no
hint of shyness you examined me,
the wife who runs out on the dock to write
as soon as one child is in bed,
leaving the other to you.

Your long
mouth, flexible as an archer’s bow,
did not curve. We spent a long moment
in the truth of our situation, the poems
heavy as poached game hanging from my hands.

For more information on Sharon Olds, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/sharon-olds
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Poem of the Week, by Heather Sellers

Posted on by alisonmcghee

Unloose
– Heather Sellers

Fifth grade, summer of the green one-piece.
I was waiting out in front of the ymca, downtown
Orlando, and there was a man on a motorcycle
under the portico where Mom picked me up.
I was in the green suit like skin, barefoot
on the hot concrete. Dancing. For the first time
I could see how a man could have been a possible boy.
That was the day I didn’t step away, go back inside.
He had water-blue eyes, a long beard, no shirt,
and jeans I knew to be “bell-bottoms,” but they had
no bells. His body was muscle smooth,
like a horse. Those pants had seams running
down the center of the legs. Useless seams.
I could feel my finger wanting to . . .
Finger! I put it in my mouth. I put a second finger
in, like a baby. He held his helmet in his arm,
like a football. “Hi,” I said. But I meant
Can I ride? I meant around the parking lot. I meant
sit on the bike for one minute. I meant I don’t have
a real mother. (Where was my mother?)
I felt wings grow out of my back from the straps
of the green suit. I stepped toward his motorcycle,
stepped out of my story. I only wanted to prove that
I wasn’t afraid, wasn’t like her. He said, “No, it’s hot!”
Too late. I’d already pressed my knee against the silver pipe.
I heard the fizzle, the spit, felt
the bright pain and the shame. On my kneecap
that afternoon remains: Black heart of scar.
The beginning of the girl in two pieces.

 

– For more information on Heather Sellers, please click here: http://heathersellers.com/site/index.html

Poem of the Week, by David Bottoms

Posted on by alisonmcghee

In a U-Haul North of Damascus
– David Bottoms

1

Lord, what are the sins
I have tried to leave behind me? The bad checks,
the workless days, the scotch bottles thrown across the fence
and into the woods, the cruelty of silence,
the cruelty of lies, the jealousy,
the indifference?

What are these on the scale of sin
or failure
that they should follow me through the streets of Columbus,
the moon-streaked fields between Benevolence
and Cuthbert where dwarfed cotton sparkles like pearls
on the shoulders of the road. What are these
that they should find me half-lost,
sick and sleepless
behind the wheel of this U-Haul truck parked in a field
on Georgia 45
a few miles north of Damascus,
some makeshift rest stop for eighteen wheelers
where the long white arms of oaks slap across trailers
and headlights glare all night through a wall of pines?

2

What was I thinking, Lord?
That for once I’d be in the driver’s seat, a firm grip
on direction?

So the jon boat muscled up the ramp,
the Johnson outboard, the bent frame of the wrecked Harley
chained for so long to the back fence,
the scarred desk, the bookcases and books,
the mattress and box springs,
a broken turntable, a Pioneer amp, a pair
of three-way speakers, everything mine
I intended to keep. Everything else abandon.

But on the road from one state
to another, what is left behind nags back through the distance,
a last word rising to a scream, a salad bowl
shattering against a kitchen cabinet, china barbs
spiking my heel, blood trailed across the cream linoleum
like the bedsheet that morning long ago
just before I watched the future miscarried.

Jesus, could the irony be
that suffering forms a stronger bond than love?

3

Now the sun
streaks the windshield with yellow and orange, heavy beads
of light drawing highways in the dew-cover.
I roll down the window and breathe the pine-air,
the after-scent of rain, and the far-off smell
of asphalt and diesel fumes.

But mostly pine and rain
as though the world really could be clean again.

Somewhere behind me,
miles behind me on a two-lane that streaks across
west Georgia, light is falling
through the windows of my half-empty house.
Lord, why am I thinking about this? And why should I care
so long after everything has fallen
to pain that the woman sleeping there should be sleeping alone?
Could I be just another sinner who needs to be blinded
before he can see? Lord, is it possible to fall
toward grace? Could I be moved
to believe in new beginnings? Could I be moved?


—
For more information on David Bottoms, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/david-bottoms
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