The Most Romantic Poem

I love this poem by Becky Hemsley, it’s called “Breathe”: https://mountainhighcoaching.com/listening-to-your-own-thoughts-believing-in-yourself/

What She Was Wearing by Denver Butson this is my suicide dress she told him I only wear it on days when I’m afraid I might kill myself if I don’t wear it you’ve been wearing it every day since we met he said and these are my arson gloves so you don’t set fire to something? he asked exactly and this is my terrorism lipstick my assault and battery eyeliner my armed robbery boots I’d like to undress you he said but would that make me an accomplice? and today she said I’m wearing my infidelity underwear so don’t get any ideas and she put on her nervous breakdown hat and walked out the door

What a joy to read everyone’s comments! Always yes to more poetry on CoJ :) Here’s one I love, from astronomer-poet Rebecca Elson: “Antidotes to Fear of Death” Sometimes as an antidote To fear of death, I eat the stars. Those nights, lying on my back, I suck them from the quenching dark Til they are all, all inside me, Pepper hot and sharp. Sometimes, instead, I stir myself Into a universe still young, Still warm as blood: No outer space, just space, The light of all the not yet stars Drifting like a bright mist, And all of us, and everything Already there But unconstrained by form. And sometime it’s enough To lie down here on earth Beside our long ancestral bones: To walk across the cobble fields Of our discarded skulls, Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis, Thinking: whatever left these husks Flew off on bright wings.

I’m going to be (self) indulgent and share two! First is “Lifeguard” by Joshua Rivkin My father is modest. He didn’t save hundreds from drowning. Just a few dozen. Gathered from the swell, the riptide, rough, rough waves he carried them ashore. Half-lit, he tells it again. The storm against sky, the lifeguard without fear alone in the water, the crowd gathered to witness. Here’s what to notice: the danger of weather, failures of the other people to help, we never know what happened to the boy. This is my humble brag, my bravado, my foolish affection to write the same poem year after year. In some versions I am the lifeguard. In others I’m drowning. Then I’m sky. Then wave. And then an excerpt from my all-time favorite: T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding” We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always– A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead I played about the front gate, pulling flowers. You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums. And we went on living in the village of Chokan: Two small people, without dislike or suspicion. At fourteen I married My Lord you. I never laughed, being bashful. Lowering my head, I looked at the wall. Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back. At fifteen I stopped scowling, I desired my dust to be mingled with yours For ever and for ever and for ever. Why should I climb the lookout? At sixteen you departed, You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies, And you have been gone five months. The monkeys make sorrowful noises overhead. You dragged your feet when you went out. By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses, Too deep to clear them away! The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind. The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden; They hurt me. I grow older. If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang, Please let me know beforehand, And I will come out to meet you As far as Cho-fu-Sa. (Rihaku)

Lots of Mary Oliver here: I’m in her camp too. Love this gem: THE WORLD I LIVE IN I have refused to live locked in the orderly house of reasons and proofs. The world I live in and believe in is wider than that. And anyway, what’s wrong with Maybe? You wouldn’t believe what once or twice I have seen. I’ll just tell you this: only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one.

This post…chef’s kiss….perfection! Last winter I started reading more poetry and transcribing my favorites into a blank journal…it’s now one of my favorite rituals. I’ll post two that have resonated lately: “Alphabet” by Naomi Shihab Nye One by one the old people of our neighborhood are going up into the air Their yards still wear small white narcissus sweetening winter Their stones glisten under the sun but one by one we are losing their housecoats their formal phrasings their cupcakes When I string their names on the long cord when I think how there is almost no one left who remembers what stood in that brushy spot ninety years ago When I pass their yards and the bare peach tree bends a little When I see their rusted chairs sitting in the same spots What will be forgotten falls over me like the sky over our whole neighborhood Or the time my plane circled high above our street the roof of our house dotting the tiniest “i” “Lullaby for the Grieving” by Ashley M. Jones At the Sipsey River make small steps in this wild place there are signs of life everywhere. sharp spaces, too: the slip of a rain-glazed rock against my searching feet small steps, like prayers— each one a hope exhaled into the trees. please let me enter. please, let me leave whole. there are too, the tiny sounds of faraway birds. the safety in the promise of their song. the puddle forming, finally, after summer rain. the golden butterfly against the cave-dark. maybe there are angels here, too— what else can I call the crown of light atop the leaves? what else can I call My footsteps forward, small, small, sure?

Last night, 9/29, while in Nashville for work, I went to Samin Nosrat’s event with Ann Patchett and sat next to a young woman who was also there alone. The event started late so we talked about life, motherhood, and both of us losing our fathers in 2018. We talked cookbooks and I recommended Jenny Rosenstrach’s Dinner A Love Story—and she said she recognized the name because she loves Cup of Jo! So hi to the young mom from the old mom who sat next to you and thank you, Joanna, for fostering such a wonderful space. It made this long time reader of CofJ happy to know younger women have found it too!

I am loving reading all of these poems so much. Want to also give a shout-out to the late Andrea Gibson, who has been mentioned here already. A poem I live by: WELLNESS CHECK In any moment, on any given day, I can measure my wellness by this question: Is my attention on loving, or is my attention on who isn’t loving me?

Have been working with theater students this week on Lemn Sissay’s Some Things I Like. I like wrecks, I like ex-junkies, I like flunks and ex-flunkies, I like the way the career-less career, I like flat beer, I like people who tell half stories and forget the rest, I like people who make doodles in important written tests, I like being late. I like fate. I like the way teeth grate, I like laceless shoes cordless blues, I like the one-bar blues, I like buttonless coats and leaky boats, I like rubbish tips and bitten lips, I like yesterday’s toast, I like cold tea, I like reality, I like ashtrays, I write and like crap plays. I like curtains that don’t quite shut, I like bread knives that don’t quite cut, I like rips in blue jeans, I like people who can’t say what they mean, I like spiders with no legs, pencils with no lead, Ants with no heads, worms that are half dead. I like holes, I like coffee cold. I like creases in neat folds. I like signs that just don’t know where they’re going, I like angry poems, I like the way you can’t pin down the sea. See.

One of my favorite poems: ADVICE FOR MY DAUGHTERS Don’t believe the first things, don’t believe the last things, believe what you see. Don’t sit too close to drains or spend too long at a stove. Always know where the exit is. Don’t store too much. Know what to give away. Hold as much as you can carry. If you have children give them magic, soft songs, a coin under a pillow, but don’t give them everything. Sleep in good linen, enjoy the smell of lemon, breathe deeply, dream deeply, if you don’t know what to do, do something. Don’t diet, or be a martyr. Life is suffering, but you are lucky so you might as well be happy.

Shear by Christina Stoddard I want a haircut that can win a bar fight. I want a haircut that will throw my things on the lawn so I can finally get out of here. A gale is tearing all the shutters on this house and I want a haircut that feels like that howling. I need everyone to knowI’m coming for them because I have nothing left to lose. I’m tossing the glass jars on my vanity and the plastic comb I drag across my scalp. Because we all expect to grow old and soft and too many people I love just won’t. I want a haircut that can stop time so I can give myself one more hello from her, one more of everything before she climbs into the car that will not make it back. There is money in my wallet and I want a haircut that will raise an army. If it worked for that girl and her ships, it can work for me. I want a haircut that can bring down a plague and settle a bet. That can write its own love sonnet and pitch a script. I’m so tired of having this face, boring as a faucet. Where’s the pizazz? I want so much more than what I’m getting, my fury bursts like a galaxy. I want a haircut that will call God’s bluff ====***==== This work leaves me breathless in the best way. Can also be read here https://tinhouse.com/shear/

In her room at the prow of the house Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden, My daughter is writing a story. I pause in the stairwell, hearing From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys Like a chain hauled over a gunwale. Young as she is, the stuff Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy: I wish her a lucky passage. But now it is she who pauses, As if to reject my thought and its easy figure. A stillness greatens, in which The whole house seems to be thinking, And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor Of strokes, and again is silent. I remember the dazed starling Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago; How we stole in, lifted a sash And retreated, not to affright it; And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door, We watched the sleek, wild, dark And iridescent creature Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove To the hard floor, or the desk-top, And wait then, humped and bloody, For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits Rose when, suddenly sure, It lifted off from a chair-back, Beating a smooth course for the right window And clearing the sill of the world. It is always a matter, my darling, Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish What I wished you before, but harder. The Writer, Richard Wilbur

Two of my very favorite poems.. Teaching a Child the Art of Confession by David Shumate It is best not to begin with Adam and Eve. Original Sin is baffling, even for the most sophisticated minds. Besides, children are frightened of naked people and apples. Instead, start with the talking snake. Children like to hear what animals have to say. Let him hiss for a while and tell his own tale. They’ll figure him out in the end. Describe sin simply as those acts which cause suffering and leave it at that. Steer clear of musty confessionals. Children associate them with outhouses. Leave Hell out of the discussion. They’ll be able to describe it on their own soon enough. If they feel the need to apologize for some transgression, tell them that one of the offices of the moon is to forgive. As for the priest, let him slumber a while more. More than Happiness by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer I wish you the peace that comes when we trust ourselves to meet whatever life brings. I wish you love beyond happy endings— the kind of love that seeps into everything no matter where the story goes. Today, I planted cosmos in the garden. Inevitably, they will grow into cosmos. This is what I wish for you— the delight of growing inevitably into yourself. The thrill of knowing your beauty makes a difference in the world— how, in the garden of my heart, you are ever blooming, like a surprise larkspur brought in as a seed, and now that it’s here, it will never leave. https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2023/05/26/more-than-happiness/

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.” Mary Oliver

I have never heard or read anything so vulnerable and moving since watching a small indie movie called Fall (1997) by Eric Schaeffer. I memorized all of it and small little poems by the “fax fairy” from the movie. Oh my heart and mind! You can watch it on Amazon Prime right now, the plot sounds so clichéd, but 20 years later I still remember it. Fall (poem at the end of the movie) written by Eric Schaeffer I’ve wanted to tell you for awhile now. I wanted to say it as you reached for a tea cup in your kitchen that night after we fought about why do we always have to eat Chinese food on your floor and then made up. I wanted to say it as the moonlight shone in on you as you slept in your bed the first time we made love there, when I felt your heart racing against my chest, in your sweet foyer in Spain when you first saw your roses even though I wasn’t there, but mostly I wanted to say it the last night I saw you, as I held you in my arms looking down at your precious face knowingly looking up at me still inside you, quiet motionless but so inside you. I wanted so badly to tell you that…the words each time graced my lips like an imposter only to fall away like some great lizard that was taken out to sea to reign its fury on the dark ocean alone, unbeknownst to any hearing. I pray that you can hear them for what they are, feel them for what they are and not mar them with the knowledge that they stand apart from your ability to reciprocate them. Please take them in your heart and feel them with your eyes closed and your soul open for just a moment my voice speaking them softly in your ear with a kiss. When your head lightly moves to dance, when your tongue finds my lips, when you ramble over a glass of wine, when you sit naked after we’ve made love, when you act boldly, when you laugh, when you squeeze my hand, when you call my name in a gruff whisper, when your heart races on my chest in a close embrace, when you love me. What I’m sad about is selfish, I’m mad at God’s timing. I’m only a man, and as a man I miss you. I miss you terribly. I miss your kiss, I miss your smile, oh how I miss your smile, but most of all, I miss the moment that hasn’t happened yet. The moment when you let yourself fall for me. What makes it hard for me is knowing how much you care for me, how much in a way you do love me, how much you would enjoy smiling wryly as you hurled yourself backwards off the cliff and said, catch me baby. If I didn’t know that I could make you a villain, me a victim and soothe myself, but I can’t because it isn’t the truth. The truth we both know. The truth is, not today. I know that you’re not leaving Philippe for me and I wouldn’t want you to, I would want you to leave him for you. I also know you would never fly a million miles just to see me smile at you, someday maybe, but not today. So I guess I had better disappear, Sarah. I know you’ll be okay and soon I will be too; and maybe just maybe if God so desires the day will come when as friends we will find ourselves accidentally strolling along the white cliffs of Dover or the mountain rocks of Mendocino, or the emerald north of the Scottish seaboard or the glistening harbor of old New York and from the heights in the stars amongst the angels who’s arms will cradle us in a moment neither of us was told about but knew like our oldest happiness we will look into each other’s eyes and know it is today, it is today. And whether that day is tomorrow or next week or next year or next lifetime I will finally get to tell you to your sweet face, the face that I will miss more than I could ever tell that I love you, I love you, ah baby I love you, and you’ll smile wryly close your eyes say catch me baby and fall.

Visitors from Abroad By Louise Glück Sometime after I had entered that time of life people prefer to allude to in others but not in themselves, in the middle of the night the phone rang. It rang and rang as though the world needed me, though really it was the reverse. I lay in bed, trying to analyze the ring. It had my mother’s persistence and my father’s pained embarrassment. When I picked it up, the line was dead. Or was the phone working and the caller dead? Or was it not the phone, but the door perhaps? My mother and father stood in the cold on the front steps. My mother stared at me, a daughter, a fellow female. You never think of us, she said. We read your books when they reach heaven. Hardly a mention of us anymore, hardly a mention of your sister. And they pointed to my dead sister, a complete stranger, tightly wrapped in my mother’s arms. But for us, she said, you wouldn’t exist. And your sister — you have your sister’s soul. After which they vanished, like Mormon missionaries. The street was white again, all the bushes covered with heavy snow and the trees glittering, encased with ice. I lay in the dark, waiting for the night to end. It seemed the longest night I had ever known, longer than the night I was born. I write about you all the time, I said aloud. Every time I say “I,” it refers to you. Outside the street was silent. The receiver lay on its side among the tangled sheets, its peevish throbbing had ceased some hours before. I left it as it was; its long cord drifting under the furniture. I watched the snow falling, not so much obscuring things as making them seem larger than they were. Who would call in the middle of the night? Trouble calls, despair calls. Joy is sleeping like a baby.

One that always resonates with me — reminds me to see things on their own terms — is Wendell Berry’s “To know the dark”: To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

I’m a fan of both Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon. While I do see the beauty in this there’s part of me that’s like…the woman works for the man’s pleasure, what a shocker.

This poem reminds me strongly of Trumpet Vine by Kate Wolf, an incredible singer-songwriter out of Northern California from the folk scene of the 70s/80s. Sarah McColl, author of Joy Enough, wrote a beautiful tribute to Kate on her substack, LOST ART (always excellent) if you’re interested: https://sarahmccoll.substack.com/p/kate-wolf-a-love-story Anyways, the song goes: The trumpet vine grew in the kitchen window And bloomed bright orange on the wall You sat in the morning light, holding a guitar As the first summer rain began to fall Like the gentle raindrops your words fell in the air Making things so clear as we quietly sat there It reminded me of other times you had come before And brought a song or just walked in through the kitchen door Now, it seems the truest words I ever heard from you Were said at kitchen tables we have known ‘Cause somehow in that warm room with coffee on the stove Our hearts were really most at home Sittin’ at a table, lookin’ hard at you Catchin’ up on stories of the things we’d tried to do And it seems we really said the most when we didn’t talk at all Let the songs speak for us like the sunlight on the wall Now, as we come and go in sunshine and in rain Some years are seen more clearly than the rest And if it weren’t for kitchen songs and mornings spent with friends We all might lose the things we love the best I can see you sittin’ there beneath the trumpet vine The sunlight through the window in the kitchen in my mind You came when you were needed, I could not ask for more Than to turn and find you walkin’ through the kitchen door

Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America by Matthew Olzmann —Southern Pines, NC Tell me what it’s like to live without curiosity, without awe. To sail on clear water, rolling your eyes at the kelp reefs swaying beneath you, ignoring the flicker of mermaid scales in the mist, looking at the world and feeling only boredom. To stand on the precipice of some wild valley, the eagles circling, a herd of caribou booming below, and to yawn with indifference. To discover something primordial and holy. To have the smell of the earth welcome you to everywhere. To take it all in, and then, to reach for your knife.

I love this poem. I’ve had Jane Kenyon’s poem, “Otherwise,” pinned to a board above my desk for years. It’s about her marriage to Donald Hall, and it’s a similar reminder to me to appreciate the beauty of the everydayness of life. https://poets.org/poem/otherwise

Beirut – Palestine Train Sarah Huneidi I dream of a liberation that follows the unbroken curves of our coastline, taking a train to swim in the life-giving water beneath the rocks at Naquora – head in Lebanon, feet in Palestine – not knowing when we crossed the border, because there is no border, only homeland.

All I Ever Wanted Katie Ford When I thought it was right to name my desires, what I wanted of life, they seemed to turn like bleating sheep, not to me, who could have been a caring, if unskilled, shepherd, but to the boxed-in hills beyond which the blue mountains sloped down with poppies orange as crayfish all the way to the Pacific seas in which the hulls of whales steered them in search of a mate for whom they bellowed in a new, highly particular song we might call the most ardent articulation of love, the pin at the tip of evolution, modestly shining. In the middle of my life it was right to say my desires but they went away. I couldn’t even make them out, not even as dots now in the distance. Yet I see the small lights of winter campfires in the hills— teenagers in love often go there for their first nights—and each yellow-white glow tells me what I can know and admit to knowing, that all I ever wanted was to sit by a fire with someone who wanted me in measure the same to my wanting. To want to make a fire with someone, with you, was all.

Beautiful poems to start my day with, thank you to everyone who shared them. I think I had forgotten how much I loved and needed poetry. X

I never expected that reading the comments section this early morning would make me feel so happy. I don’t have a poem to share but I will read every single one posted. Joy!

If I must die by Refaat Alareer (1979 – 2023)- On December 6, 2023, he was murdered by an Israeli airstrike along with his brother, sister, and their children in Israel’s ongoing genocidal siege of Gaza of 2023. If I must die, You must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze– and bid no one farewell not even to his flesh not even to himself– sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love If I must die let it bring hope let it be a tale

The Skylight You were the one for skylights, I opposed Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed, Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof Effect, I liked the snuff-dry feeling, The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling. Under there, it was all hutch and hatch, The blue slates kept the heat like midnight thatch. But when the slates came off, extravagant Sky entered and held surprise wide open, For days I felt like an inhabitant Of that house where the man sick of the palsy Was lowered through the roof, had his sins forgiven, Was healed, took up his bed and walked away. —Seamus Heaney

I am reminded of this old favourite: When all the others were away at Mass’ by Seamus Heaney When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other’s work would bring us to our senses. So while the parish priest at her bedside Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying And some were responding and some were crying I remembered her head bent towards my head, Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives – Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

I think I need to come back and read that at another time, because right now, how I’m understanding the end of that poem, it’s like, “We ACTUALLY slept. It was a miracle.” And I picture sleep deprivation. But I have a feeling that’s not what the author meant lol. Anyway, mine is also about a miracle! It’s the second poem in Mary Oliver’s book Devotions: This morning the Redbirds’ eggs have hatched and already the chicks are chirping for food. They don’t know where it’s coming from, they just keep shouting, “More! More!” As to anything else, they haven’t had a single thought. Their eyes haven’t yet opened, they know nothing about the sky that’s waiting. Or the thousands, the millions of trees. They don’t even know they have wings. And just like that, like a simple neighborhood event, a miracle is taking place.

This poem has kept me company through some of the hardest times of my life. It gives me the chills. The Journey – Mary Oliver One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice— though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do— determined to save the only life you could save.

what a gift these poems – and you all – are. thank you X

“When I am sad and weary When I think all hope has gone When I walk along High Holborn I think of you with nothing on.” — Celia Celia by Adrian Mitchell

Everything that was broken has forgotten its brokenness. I live now in a sky-house, through every window the sun. Also your presence. Our touching, our stories. Earthy and holy both. How can this be, but it is. Every day has something in it whose name is Forever. Mary Oliver

My favorite poem (always makes me cry) is Barbara Ras’s You Can’t Have it All: But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back. You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August, you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love, though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys until you realize foam’s twin is blood. You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs, so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind, glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness, never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you all roads narrow at the border. You can speak a foreign language, sometimes, and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead, but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts, for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream, the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand. You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed, at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise. You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump, how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards, until you learn about love, about sweet surrender, and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you, you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept. There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s, it will always whisper, you can’t have it all, but there is this.

Alone By Jack Gilbert I never thought Michiko would come back after she died. But if she did, I knew it would be as a lady in a long white dress. It is strange that she has returned as somebody’s dalmatian. I meet the man walking her on a leash almost every week. He says good morning and I stoop down to calm her. He said once that she was never like that with other people. Sometimes she is tethered on their lawn when I go by. If nobody is around, I sit on the grass. When she finally quiets, she puts her head in my lap and we watch each other’s eyes as I whisper in her soft ears. She cares nothing about the mystery. She likes it best when I touch her head and tell her small things about my days and our friends. That makes her happy the way it always did.

A Pablo Neruda line that lives rent-free in my brain: I want To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees

This is one I keep thinking about these days: “Sorry if I’ve been acting weird The last few decades It’s just that I was born to dilly dally But I’ve been forced to hurry-scurry I was made to trade seashells for blueberries Poppies for pine cones Stories for songs While everyone I love sits round the same fire But instead, here I am with the entire world in my pocket waiting for more news to break us hoping your email never finds me -Lindsey Rush

In praise of joe by Marge Piercy Next I love you hot I love you iced and in a pinch I will even consume you tepid. Dark brown as wet bark of an apple tree, dark as the waters flowing out of a spooky swamp rich with tannin and smelling of thick life— but you have your own scent that even rising as steam kicks my brain into gear. I drink you rancid out of vending machines, I drink you at coffee bars for $6 a hit, I drink you dribbling down my chin from a thermos in cars, in stadiums, on the moonwashed beach. Mornings you go off in my mouth like an electric siren, radiating to my fingertips and toes. You rattle my spine and buzz in my brain. Whether latte, cappuccino, black or Greek you keep me cooking, you keep me on line. Without you, I would never get out of bed but spend my life pressing the snooze button. I would creep through wan days in the form of a large shiny slug. You waken in me the gift of speech when I am dumb as a rock buried in damp earth. It is you who make me human every dawn. All my books are written with your ink. From The Crooked Inheritance

This is a song, but it’so beautiful I feel like it’s poetry. At Last by Etta James At last, my love has come along My lonely days are over And life is like a song Ooh yeah, yeah At last, the skies above are blue My heart was wrapped up in clover The night I looked at you I found a dream, that I could speak to A dream that I can call my own I found a thrill to rest my cheek to A thrill that I have never known Ohh yeah yeah You smile You smile Oh and then the spell was cast And here we are in heaven For you are mine At last

The only poem I know by heart – love it so much. I Heard a Bird Sing I heard a bird sing In the dark of December. A magical thing And sweet to remember. “We are nearer to Spring Than we were in September,” I heard a bird sing In the dark of December. Oliver Herford

The gone too soon Irish ex priest poet John O Donohue just floors me every time. My best friend of 30 plus years got married last fall, I read this at their ceremony in a small, beautiful multi denominational church in Chelsea (London). Bennacht (a blessing) On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you. And your eyes freeze behind the gray window, and the ghost of loss gets in to you, May a flock of colours, indigo, red, green and azure blue come to awaken in you a meadow of delight. When the canvas frays in the currach (small boat) of thought, and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you, May there come across the waters a path of yellow moonlight to bring you safely home. May the nourishment of the earth be yours, May the clarity of light be yours, may the fluency of the oceans be yours. And so may a slow win work these words of love around you, An invisible cloak to mind your life.

I love this poem. Donald Hall was my grandparents’ longtime neighbor in Danbury, NH. For most of my childhood I only knew him as the eclectic man who lived down the road and attended my grandfather’s church. As an adult, I have fallen in love with his poetry. Now that my grandparents and Donald have all passed, I love running across Donald Hall’s work. It takes me back to many childhood memories of spending time with my incredible grandparents in NH.

I consider the brilliant Adrienne Lenker from the band Big Thief a poet. Their recent contribution has been on repeat: Incomprehensible Incomprehensible Incomprehensible, let me be Highway 17, cotton candy rain Drivin’ with my lover, we missed our plane So we added on the hours to see the lupine flowers Way out past the border, we blew through Thunder Bay The pine trees are narrow, a billion broken arrows The ravens and the crows, robins and the sparrows All across Ontario, static on the stereo Went swimmin’ in the lake, Old Woman Bay Travelin’ with some stuff I left when I was a kid Mr. Bear and the wooden box I hid Full of broken gadgets that mean nothin’ now The only thing I’ll keep are the letters and the photographs In two days it’s my birthday and I’ll be 33 That doesn’t really matter next to eternity But I like a double number, and I like an odd one too And everything I see from now on will be somethin’ new “I’m afraid of getting older, ” that’s what I’ve learned to say Society has given me the words to think that way The message spirals, “Don’t get saggy, don’t get grey” But the soft and lovely silvers are now fallin’ on my shoulder My mother and my grandma, my great-grandmother too Wrinkle like the river, sweeten like the dew And as silver as the rainbow scales that shimmer purple blue How can beauty that is livin’ be anything but true? So let gravity be my sculptor, let the wind do my hair Let me dance in front of people without a care Let me be naked alone with nobody there With mismatched socks and shoes and stuff stuffed in my underwear Incomprehensible, let me be Incomprehensible, let me be Incomprehensible, let me be

I went to a poetry reading with Donald Hall when I was a college freshman in the 70’s. I’m 71 now and he ignited my life long love of poetry, the one you shared was beautiful, thank you.

This one’s a favorite: The Neighborhood So Far If my heart is a house then it stands on your street in the little village where you are paperboy, mailman, garbage collector, water meter reader, building inspector, vacuum cleaner salesman, UPS driver, yard crew, chimney sweep, window washer, tax assessor, magazine solicitor, census taker, snow shoveler, house painter, voyeur, door to door scam artist, vandal, burglar, thief extortionist, thief burglar, thief arsonist arsonist arsonist. —Ron Carlson (2012)

This is my absolute favorite by Stanley Kunitz Touch Me Summer is late, my heart. Words plucked out of the air some forty years ago when I was wild with love and torn almost in two scatter like leaves this night of whistling wind and rain. It is my heart that’s late, it is my song that’s flown. Outdoors all afternoon under a gunmetal sky staking my garden down, I kneeled to the crickets trilling underfoot as if about to burst from their crusty shells; and like a child again marveled to hear so clear and brave a music pour from such a small machine. What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire. The longing for the dance stirs in the buried life. One season only, and it’s done. So let the battered old willow thrash against the windowpanes and the house timbers creak. Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.

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.

Since it has the same lyricism of the Ox-Cart Man (also by Donald Hall), I can’t read this without picturing the ox-cart man and his wife as the characters. So no wonder that after (or anticipation of) walking 20 days round trip to the Portsmouth Market to sell wares that the entire family has made all year (for the ox-cart man), and after 20 days of solo parenting two kids (for the wife), they really cherish a glass of wine, good meal/conversation, and sleeping in their own bed.

Two poems that I’m resonating with these days: wherever you are by Maya Stein Wherever you are, be there. Take up space. Occupy the full dimension. Unfold the map of your body. Celebrate its topographical wonder, its unpredictable weather. Make a pool of your movements, then swim through the ripples, parting the room with your footsteps. Make no apology for the squeak of your soles, how your jacket swishes at your thighs, that the dust is making you sneeze. Consider it all a kind of orchestra, you tuning the keys, you lifting the horn of your whole self to the air. Let the notes of you blast out, at a register and speed that won’t leave you hungry or empty. Let anyone hear, as they walk by with their shoulders up, pretending not to listen. Wherever you are, remember why you are here: to sing. and by Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners: Dark and cold we may be, but this Is no winter now. The frozen misery Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move; The thunder is the thunder of the floes, The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring. Thank God our time is now when wrong Comes up to face us everywhere, Never to leave us till we take The longest stride of soul we ever took. Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise Is exploration into God. Where are you making for? It takes So many thousand years to wake, But will you wake for pity’s sake!

For something a little different: On Leaving the Bachelorette Brunch by Rachel Wetzsteon: Because I gazed out the window at birds doing backflips when the subject turned to diamonds, because my eyes glazed over with the slightly sleepy sheen your cake will wear, never let it be said that I’d rather be firing arrows at heart-shaped dartboards or in a cave composing polyglot puns. I crave, I long for transforming love as surely as leaves need water and mouths seek bread. But I also fear the colder changes that lie in wait and threaten to turn moons of honey to pools of molasses, broad front porches to narrow back gardens, and tight rings of friendship to flimsy things that break when a gold band brightly implies Leave early, go home, become one with the one the world has told you to tend and treasure above all others. You love, and that’s good; you are loved, that’s superb; you will vanish and reap some happy rewards. But look at the birds.

My uncle read this poem at my cousin’s wedding and I’ve loved it ever since. Prayer for a Marriage For Kathleen When we are old one night and the moon arcs over the house like an antique China saucer and the teacup sun follows somewhere far behind I hope the stars deepen to a shine so bright you could read by it if you liked and the sadnesses we will have known go away for awhile—in this hour or two before sleep—and that we kiss standing in the kitchen not fighting gravity so much as embodying its sweet force, and I hope we kiss like we do today knowing so much good is said in this primitive tongue from the wild first surprising ones to the lower dizzy ten thousand infinitely slower ones—and I hope while we stand there in the kitchen making tea and kissing, the whistle of the teapot wakes the neighbors. — Steve Scafidi

I’m forever thinking about how weird and cool and fragile our bodies are, so this Emily Dickinson poem is always going through my mind. I don’t have a tattoo, but if I did, I might get “Profound—precarious Property—” on my arm. I am afraid to own a Body— I am afraid to own a Soul— Profound—precarious Property— Possession, not optional— Double Estate—entailed at pleasure Upon an unsuspecting Heir— Duke in a moment of Deathlessness And God, for a Frontier. (Confession: I do not entirely get the second half of the poem, but I like it!)

One of my favorites is this poem by Hollie McNish, who is absolutely brilliant. when i see the man’s wrinkles they do not look like wrinkles to me they look like wizard skin; like wisdom; like dumbledore; like merlin; like gandalf; like saracen; like morgan freeman playing god; like silver hair on mountain top; like riding in on horseback; like davos seaworth; like stannis baratheon; like jorah mormont; like president; like riches, like thirty years in business; like james bond; like pretty woman; like a twenty-year-old age gap between co-stars in hollywood; like quiz show hosts, like attenborough; like gq feature interviews shoulder shot front covers; like black and white photographs of george clooneys zoomed in ripened face; like caves of expensive wines to dust off and uncork and savour for their maturity when i see the woman’s wrinkles they look like wrinkles to me McNish, Hollie. Slug: The Sunday Times Bestseller (pp. 291-292).

I’m new to poetry too and have just a few poets I love. One of my gateway poets has been David Gate and I love so much of his work. One of my favorites from him is “Stay Weird”. I have several nerdy interests and have struggled with either hiding them to be accepted – thus feeling less like myself vs letting them be known in their entirety and feeling like an outcast. I have this poem on my shelf behind my jewelry box, so I see it every morning as a reminder that being myself is worthwhile. Make your corner of this planet as weird as you want to geek out in every way your quirky heart desires be a fan be a stan embrace obsession value expression remember that a doctor is just a body nerd and a rock star is just a music dork so there is no point hiding all the ways you are unique because every single one of us is a gorgeous little freak

Peanut Butter by Eileen Myles (an excerpt) “why shouldn’t something I have always known be the very best there is.” The whole thing is just heart-clutching: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54620/peanut-butter

I’m in a Denise Levertov phase right now, but for romance, David Whyte’s The Truelove stuns me every time. The Truelove There is a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours, especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held out to you this way. I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness and what we feel we are worthy of in this world. Years ago in the Hebrides, I remember an old man who walked every morning on the grey stones to the shore of baying seals, who would press his hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the water, and I think of the story of the storm and everyone waking and seeing the distant yet familiar figure far across the water calling to them and how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking, and that calling, and that moment we have to say yes, except it will not come so grandly so Biblically but more subtly and intimately in the face of the one you know you have to love so that when we finally step out of the boat toward them, we find everything holds us, and everything confirms our courage, and if you wanted to drown you could, but you don’t because finally after all this struggle and all these years you simply don’t want to any more you’ve simply had enough of drowning and you want to live and you want to love and you will walk across any territory and any darkness however fluid and however dangerous to take the one hand you know belongs in yours.

flower work is not easy; remaining soft in fire takes time — poem by nayyirah waheed

I have too many favorites to count, but “Love is Not All” by Edna St. Vincent Millay is my favorite love poem (https://poets.org/poem/love-not-all-sonnet-xxx), “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop is one of the poems that sticks in my head the most (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art), and “Where My Books Go” by William Butler Yeats speaks to me as a reader, writer, and all around lover of words (https://englishverse.com/poems/where_my_books_go)

The Quiet World BY JEFFREY MCDANIEL In an effort to get people to look into each other’s eyes more, and also to appease the mutes, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words, per day. When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant I point at chicken noodle soup. I am adjusting well to the new way. Late at night, I call my long distance lover, proudly say I only used fifty-nine today. I saved the rest for you. When she doesn’t respond, I know she’s used up all her words, so I slowly whisper I love you thirty-two and a third times. After that, we just sit on the line and listen to each other breathe.

Ok this is going to sound real low brow but I was on TikTok the other night and saw a post about someone going about their day as if it just might be the best day of their life. And I’ll tell you that got me right off the TikTok and onto acting as if today was quite possibly the best day of my life. I run really melancholic so this has fit me like a bad shoe but I still like it. Anyway, that’s this poem for me, too. I know the moment, I can smell the garlic, and I am both the garlic crusher and the person in the chair. A lot weighs on me these days, and yet it really is a miracle.

I love how Donald Hall writes. I think I need to go pull Ox-Cart Man off the shelf and read it!

I’m 26 and getting married at the end of this year in New Zealand. I have been searching for poems about love, family, and marriage to be read by my cousin on the day at the ceremony. The comment section here has been such a wonderful spot to read through. I’ve been turning to COJ archives to find the right words. If anyone has any favorites or poems that are special to them, I’d be so grateful if you’d share. x Lauren

This one gets me every time: https://poetryarchive.org/poem/loch-ness-monsters-song/ Maybe not profound, but a small delight every single time ;)

I started reading poetry again during the pandemic and got the idea that I’d write out a poem every week to hang up where the whole family could read it. (Above the toilet in our bathroom…apologies Mary Oliver, Lisel Mueller, Billy Collins, etc). I stopped at this one and have been reading it over and over for years, now. Thank you by Ross Gay If you find yourself half naked and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing, again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says you are the air of the now and gone, that says all you love will turn to dust, and will meet you there, do not raise your fist. Do not raise your small voice against it. And do not take cover. Instead, curl your toes into the grass, watch the cloud ascending from your lips. Walk through the garden’s dormant splendor. Say only, thank you. Thank you.

Tenderness has time here, for I now know, if there is not enough time to light candles in the evening, I am living outside of my means. — Tess Guinery

“she asked ‘you are in love what does love look like’ to which i replied ‘like everything i’ve ever lost come back to me.’” –Nayyirah Waheed

Oh my heart, how beautiful. This poem has been in my head and in my heart lately. A Word on Statistics Out of every hundred people those who always know better: fifty-two. Unsure of every step: almost all the rest. Ready to help, if it doesn’t take long: forty-nine. Always good, because they cannot be otherwise: four—well, maybe five. Able to admire without envy: eighteen. Led to error by youth (which passes): sixty, plus or minus. Those not to be messed with: forty and four. Living in constant fear of someone or something: seventy-seven. Capable of happiness: twenty-some-odd at most. Harmless alone, turning savage in crowds: more than half, for sure. Cruel when forced by circumstances: it’s better not to know, not even approximately. Wise in hindsight: not many more than wise in foresight. Getting nothing out of life except things: thirty (though I would like to be wrong). Doubled over in pain and without a flashlight in the dark: eighty-three, sooner or later. Those who are just: quite a few at thirty-five. But if it takes effort to understand: three. Worthy of empathy: ninety-nine. Mortal: one hundred out of one hundred— a figure that has never varied yet. by Wislawa Szymborska

I love Donald Hall’s imagery and the simple pleasures both he and Jane shined lights on in their poetry. Bonus points for their Michigan connections — he was a prof at U of M, and Jane was an Ann Arbor native who met him as a UM graduate student when she studied poetry.

Andrea Gibson’s poetry has changed my life. Their wife, Meg Falley, is also a poet and her work is beautiful as well. Andrea passed this summer and there’s a movie coming out on Andrea and Meg’s love story this November called Come See Me In the Good Light. This is one of my favorite poems they’ve written: https://davidhusted.com/blogs/1-sleeping-softly-in-this-bed/posts/7294180/poem-of-the-year