Wear

Wear
by Philip Booth


I hate how things wear out.


Not elbows, collars, cuffs;
they fit me, lightly frayed.


Not belts or paint or rust,
not routine maintenance.


On my own hook I cope
with surfaces: with all


that rubs away, flakes off, or fades
on schedule. What eats at me


is what wears from the in-
side out: bearings, couplings,


universal joints, old
differentials, rings,


and points: frictions hidden
in such dark they build


to heat before they come
to light. What gets to me


is how valves wear, the slow
leak in old circuitry,


the hairline fracture under
stress. With all my heart

I hate pumps losing prime,
immeasurable over-


loads, ungauged fatigue
in linkages. I hate


myself for wasting time
on hate: the cost of speed


came with the bill of sale,
the rest was never under


warranty. Five years
ago I turned in every


year; this year I rebuild
rebuilt parts. What hurts


is how blind tired I get. 


"Wear" by Philip Booth, from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999. © Viking, 1999. 

After a Month of Rain

After a Month of Rain
by Linda Pastan


Everything I thought I wanted
is right here,
particularly when the sun
is making such a comeback,


and the lilac engorged
with purple has recovered
from its severe pruning,
and you will be back soon


to dispel whatever it is
that overtakes me like leaf blight,
even on a day like this. I can still
hear remnants of the rain


in the swollen stream
behind the house, in the faint
dripping under the eaves,
persistent as memory.

And all the things I didn't think
I wanted, cut like the lilac back
to the root, push up again
from underground. 


"After a Month of Rain" by Linda Pastan, from Traveling Light. © W.W. Norton & Co., 2011.


From the Writer's Almanac

Another View of your Paunch

Self-Portrait as a Bear

by Donald Hall

Here is a fat animal, a bear
that is partly a dodo.
Ridiculous wings hang at his shoulders
as if they were collarbones
while he plods in the bad brickyards
at the edge of the city, smiling
and eating flowers. He eats them
because he loves them
because they are beautiful
because they love him.
It is eating flowers which makes him so fat.
He carries his huge stomach
over the gutters of damp leaves
in the parking lots in October,
but inside that paunch
he knows there are fields of lupine

and meadows of mustard and poppy.
He encloses sunshine.
Winds bend the flowers
in combers across the valley,
birds hang on the stiff wind,
at night there are showers, and the sun
lifts through a haze every morning
of the summer in the stomach.

"Self-Portrait as a Bear" by Donald Hall, from White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1964-2006. © Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.

 clipped from writersalmanac.publicradio.org

The good, the bad and the inconvenient

The good, the bad and the inconvenient

by Marge Piercy

Gardening is often a measured cruelty:
what is to live and what is to be torn
up by its roots and flung on the compost
to rot and give its essence to new soil.

It is not only the weeds I seize.
go down the row of new spinach—
their little bright Vs crowding—
and snatch every other, flinging

their little bodies just as healthy,
just as sound as their neighbors
but judged, by me, superfluous.
We all commit crimes too small

for us to measure, the ant soldiers
we stomp, whose only aim was to
protect, to feed their vast family.

It is I who decide which beetles
are "good" and which are "bad"
as if each is not whole in its kind.
We eat to live and so do they,
the locusts, the grasshoppers,

the flea beetles and aphids and slugs.
By bad I mean inconvenient. Nothing
we do is simple, without consequence
and each act is shadowed with death.

"The good, the bad and the inconvenient" by Marge Piercy, from The Crooked Inheritance. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

Horse/Violin

14
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti


Don't let that horse
                                    eat that violin
    cried Chagall's mother
                                             But he
                        kept right on
                                                 painting


And became famous


And kept on painting
                                       The Horse With Violin In Mouth


And when he finally finished it
he jumped up upon the horse
                                                     and rode away
                  waving the violin


And then with a low bow gave it
to the first naked nude he ran across


And there were no strings
                                                 attached 


"14" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from A Coney Island of the Mind. © New Directions Publishing, 1958. 

Listen to the poem set to music.
http://tinyurl.com/HorseViolinMusic

To Happiness

To Happiness
by Carl Dennis


If you're not approaching, I hope at least
You're off to comfort someone who needs you more,
Not lost wandering aimlessly
Or drawn to the shelter of well-lit rooms
Where people assume you've arrived already.


If you're coming this way, send me the details—
The name of the ship, the port it leaves from—
So I can be down on the dock to help you
Unload your valises, your trunks and boxes
And stow them in the big van I'll have rented.


I'd like this to be no weekend stay
Where a single change of clothes is sufficient.
Bring clothes for all seasons, enough to fill a closet;
And instead of a single book for the bedside table
Bring boxes of all your favorites.


I'll be eager to clear half my shelves to make room,
Eager to read any titles you recommend.
If we've many in common, feel free to suggest
They prove my disposition isn't to blame
For your long absence, just some problems of attitude,

A few bad habits you'll help me set to one side.
We can start at dinner, which you're welcome
To cook for us while I sweep and straighten
And set the table. Then light the candles
You've brought from afar for the occasion.


Light them and fill the room I supposed I knew
With a glow that shows me I was mistaken.
Then help me decide if I'm still the person I was
Or someone else, someone who always believed in you
And imagined no good reasons for your delay. 


"To Happiness" by Carl Dennis, from Unknown Friends. © Penguin, 2007.

From The Writer's Almanac

Word of the day

ha·mar·ti·a  (hä-mär'-tē-ä ) n. Tragic flaw. 
[Greek, from hamartanein, to miss the mark, err.] 
Many a noble literary character has been brought low by his hamartia.