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Promissory Note
by Galway Kinnell
If I die before you
which is all but certain
then in the moment
before you will see me
become someone dead
in a transformation
as quick as a shooting star’s
I will cross over into you
and ask you to carry
not only your own memories
but mine too until you
too lie down and erase us
both together into oblivion.
"Promissory Note" by Galway Kinnell, from Strong Is Your Hold. © Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Not Yet
by Jane Hirshfield
Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened, with milk.
Out the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch—
one maple leaf lifted back.
I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:
Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken.
Not-yet-shattered, not-yet-sectioned,
not-yet-strewn.
Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love,
not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured; not-yet-
Not-yet-not.
I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure,
I ask him only to stay.
"Not Yet" by Jane Hirshfield from The Lives of the Heart. © Harper Collins, 1997
The Window
by Raymond Carver
A storm blew in last night and knocked out
the electricity. When I looked
through the window, the trees were translucent.
Bent and covered with rime. A vast calm
lay over the countryside.
I knew better. But at that moment
I felt I'd never in my life made any
false promises, nor committed
so much as one indecent act. My thoughts
were virtuous. Later on that morning,
of course, electricity was restored.
The sun moved from behind the clouds,
melting the hoarfrost.
And things stood as they had before.
"The Window" by Raymond Carver from Ultramarine. © Vintage, 1986
Sidekicks
by Ron Koertge
They were never handsome and often came
with a hormone imbalance manifested by corpulence,
a yodel of a voice or ears big as kidneys.
But each was brave. More than once a sidekick
has thrown himself in front of our hero in order
to receive the bullet or blow meant for that
perfect face and body.
Thankfully, heroes never die in movies and leave
the sidekick alone. He would not stand for it.
Gabby or Pat, Pancho or Andy remind us of a part
of ourselves,
the dependent part that can never grow up,
the part that is painfully eager to please,
always wants a hug and never gets enough.
Who could sit in a darkened theatre, listen
to the organ music and watch the best
of ourselves lowered into the ground while
the rest stood up there, tears pouring off
that enormous nose.
"Sidekicks" by Ron Koertge, from Life on the Edge of the Continent. © University of Arkansas Press, 1982.
How happy is the little Stone
by Emily Dickinson
How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn't care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears—
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity—
It's the birthday of the poet C.K. Williams , born in Newark, New Jersey (1936). His two greatest passions in high school were girls and basketball. He was a good basketball player, 6 feet 5 inches, and he was recruited to play in college. But then he wrote a poem for a girl he was trying to impress, and she was actually impressed, and so he decided he should be a poet instead. He dropped out of college to move to Paris because that's where he thought a poet ought to live. He didn't write at all while he was there, but he did realize that he didn't know anything and should probably go back to college. He said: "It was an incredibly important time. Not much happened and yet my life began then. I discovered the limits of loneliness." He went back and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and started publishing books of poetry, books like Tar (1983), Flesh and Blood (1987), and The Singing (2003), which won the National Book Award. (From The Writer's Almanac.)
Commuter Buddhist
by Jeffrey Harrison
I'm learning to be a Buddhist in my car,
listening to a book on tape. One problem
is that, before I've gotten very far,
my mind gradually becomes aware
that it has stopped listening, straying from
the task of becoming a Buddhist in my car.
I'm also worried that listening will impair
my driving, as the package label cautions,
but I haven't noticed that, at least so far.
In fact, I may be driving with more care.
There's a sensation of attentive calm
that's part of becoming a Buddhist in your car.
A soothing voice drones on until the car
is transformed into a capsule of wisdom
traveling at high speed, and you feel far
from anywhere but where you really are ...
which is nowhere, really. The biggest problem
is getting the Buddhism out of your car
and into your life. I've failed at that so far.
"Commuter Buddhist" by Jeffrey Harrison, from Into Daylight. © Tupelo Press, 2014.
