Poetry Friday: "Equinox"

I've missed the last few Poetry Fridays, but am hoping to find my way back to them. My soul just feels more right when I pause to feed it poetry every now and then, you know?

In any case, this is one of my very favorite poetic discoveries of the last few years. To me, it carries a melancholy and reflectiveness that fits perfectly with the mood that fall often brings as it sweeps in past summer, carrying us toward winter whether we want to go there or not. And although it's most definitely wintry in NYC this week, until just recently, it's felt like an extended autumn. So I'm hoping it's not too late in the season to share this poem, because it's so lovely that I didn't want to wait until all the way to next year to do so.

Take a deep breath before you begin reading--maybe even (as I always do when I read it) think for a minute of those "rare visitors" who have altered the chemistry of your world with their blazing entrances and leavings--and then soak this one in deep.

"Equinox"
by Patricia Hooper

Clouds go over. The maples flare again.
In the garden the last bright asters
blaze in the autumn air
the way my skin burned
when you turned to me
in the chill breeze off the lake.

The days are cool, now,
the nights are deep, and long.
At the feeder a red-winged blackbird
has come in from the fields
and sorts among the seeds.
A rare visitor--
even if he finds what he wants,
he'll never stay here.

These are the last days.
Already the stalks of lilies
have withered, and the gold petals
of the rose melt on the grass.
But the sky flames, more intense.
I didn't see it coming.
For the few days you were here with me,
all the familiar warnings disappeared.

Poetry Friday: "I Would Like to Describe"

The stanza of this poem that begins "and just to say-I love" does that thing in me that good poetry always does--it leaves me breathless, and all emotion, thinking, "why have I never thought of putting those words together like that before?!" But then again...that's kind of the point of this poem, isn't it?

I Would Like to Describe
by Zbigniew Herbert
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott

I would like to describe the simplest emotion
joy or sadness
but not as others do
reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light
which is being born in me
but I know it does not resemble
any star
for it is not so bright
not so pure
and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage
without dragging behind me a dusty lion
and also anxiety
without shaking a glass full of water
to put it another way
I would give all metaphors
in return for one word
drawn out of my breast like a rib
for one word
contained within the boundaries
of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say—I love
I run around like mad
picking up handfuls of birds
and my tenderness
which after all is not made of water
asks the water for a face

and anger
different from fire
borrows from it
a loquacious tongue

so is blurred
so is blurred
in me
what white-haired gentlemen
separated once and for all
and said
this is the subject
and this is the object

we fall asleep
with one hand under our head
and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us
and taste the earth
with their tiny roots
which next morning
we tear out painfully

Poetry Friday: "To a Girl Writing Her Father's Death"

One of my favorite professors in college shared today's poem (one of my all-time favorites) with us, at the start of a semester-long intensive poetry writing workshop. There was instantly something I loved so much about this poem--about the poet's voice, about the way reading it makes me catch my breath a little, and about the true, hard things she has to say about the often-painful act of writing. So I asked my professor if I could borrow the collection of poetry that it was from...and then, I'm ashamed to say, I somewhat-purposefully "forgot" to return the book to him. I just didn't want to give up those words.

That professor remained a mentor to me long after the semester's workshop ended--in fact, he later supervised the publishing internship that was my first step into working in children's books--and when I graduated and was packing to move and bidding my goodbyes to campus, I finally confessed that I still had his book, and promised to return it before leaving for good. He instead kindly told me that I should continue to keep the pilfered book as a graduation gift, and to hold dear the poem in it that I'd loved so much. So now I'm turning around, and sharing it with all of you, especially you writers, as the editor in me thinks about your stories, and echoes the poet's instructions, "Speak. Make holy detail....And forgive me for asking."

"To a Girl Writing Her Father's Death"
by Beckian Fritz Goldberg

Sometimes the lake water writes and writes and gets
no answer. You tell me, It was just October.
That is good. His voice was full of love and laughter. Not
so good. Full of copper, jacks-of-diamonds, cubes
of honey, I could believe. But I did not know
your father. The moment when the cable snapped from
the boat has, however, its drama. Yet it is not
enough. Try to understand the need out here for
gestures, wind, raw sound. Was it a spasm
of sex in the motor, light shingling
his black hair as the boat spun
on its wide iris down? Were you standing?
I know this must be painful, standing
at the edge of your white page with someone
gone under. You were sixteen and he called you
Princess, though it is a cliche to be
called Princess. And to be sixteen. Yet
I have looked at you and you are not now
much older. You could wear tiaras,
your blond waves pure as the back
of the knee. Though you wear your carrot rouge
in clumsy circles, which makes me
love you. I have not lost a father
except in my dreams. But each one has left
my mouth open. Speak. Make holy
detail. Let the water bend over you like cold
eyeballs. Let in the scream and the lining of the scream
and the prismic figure eights of oil
mad on the wake--and forgive me
for asking. You have to think of the world
which gave and took your father.
The world which asks for him now.
There's no sense writing poems unless
you see the mob: We who gather for the red
pulse of every ambulance, we who crowd
lifeguards kissing the still blue lips of
children on the beach, and murmur who
and how, hungry for every morsel
of this life that is not ours, not really. Not
for long. But for the asking.