The people you have loved deeply remain with you. – Henri Nouwen
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The Tunnel – Mark Strand
A man has been standing
in front of my house
for days. I peek at him
from the living room
window and at night,
unable to sleep,
I shine my flashlight
down on the lawn.
He is always there.
After a while
I open the front door
just a crack and order
him out of my yard.
He narrows his eyes
and moans. I slam
the door and dash back
to the kitchen, then up
to the bedroom, then down.
I weep like a child
and make obscene gestures
through the window. I
write large suicide notes
and place them so he
can read them easily.
I destroy the living
room furniture to prove
I own nothing of value.
When he seems unmoved
I decide to dig a tunnel
to a neighboring yard.
I seal the basement off
from the upstairs with
a brick wall. I dig hard
and in no time the tunnel
is done. Leaving my pick
and shovel below,
I come out in front of a house
and stand there too tired to
move or even speak, hoping
someone will help me.
I feel I’m being watched
and sometimes I hear
a man’s voice,
but nothing is done
and I have been waiting for days.
(from Collected Poems)
who could say no?
Charles Simic, from “The Necessity of Poetry”
Louise Bogan on the practice of lyric poetry
The practice of lyric poetry – the most intense, the most condensed, the most purified form of language – must be centered in a genuine gift. The chances of getting away with pure fakery within it are very small. One cannot fib – it shows. One cannot manipulate – it spoils. One cannot apply decoration from the outside; or pretend that non-feeling is feeling; or indulge in any of the lower-grade emotions, such as self-pity. The truth: and we can look back and see that piece of paper, in Dante, burning in the way paper always burns; and feel the coolness of Shakespeare’s flowers; and the wet loops of Sabrina’s hair. All immortal and all true.
But it’s silly to suggest the writing of poetry is something ethereal, a sort of sou-crashing, devastating emotional experience that writes you. I have no fancy ideas about poetry. It’s not like embroidery or painting on silk. It doesn’t come to you on the wings of a dove. It’s something you have to work hard at.
THE ENGINE
The secure pulses of the heart
Drive and rock in dark precision,
Though life brings fever to the mouth
And the eyes vision.
Whatever joy the body takes,
Whatever sound the voice makes purer,
Will never cause their beat to faint
Or become surer.
These perfect chambers, and their springs,
So fitly sealed against remorse
That keep the lifting shaft of breath
To its cool course,
Cannot delay, and cannot dance –
Until, wrung out to the last drop,
The brain, knowing time and love, must die,
And they must stop.
(from Journey Around My Room, the autobiography of Louise Bogan)
A question in marriage
It is a question in marriage, to my feeling, not of creating a quick community of spirit by tearing down and destroying all boundaries, but rather a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude, and shows him this confidence, the greatest in his power to bestow. A togetherness between two people is an impossibility, and where it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a reciprocal agreement which robs either one party or both of his fullest freedom and development. But, once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!
Therefore this too must be the standard for rejection or choice: whether one is willing to stand guard over the solitude of a person and whether one is inclined to set this same person at the gate of one’s own solitude, of which he learns only through that which steps, festively clothed, out of the great darkness.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
The New Colossus – Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
See that you do not despise one of these little ones…
(photo: Greene, Maine – January 2019)
The disciples approached Jesus and said,
“Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?”
He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said,
“Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
Whoever becomes humble like this child
is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones,
for I say to you that their angels in heaven
always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.
What is your opinion?
If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,
will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills
and go in search of the stray?
And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it
than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.
In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father
that one of these little ones be lost.
– Mt 18:1-5, 10, 12-14
Prayer by Eric Doyle, OFM
Lord of my origin
Draw me closer to you
Lord of my existence
Direct all my ways
Lord of my calling
Give me strength to go on
Lord of my faith
Preserve me from doubt
Lord of my hope
Keep me from despair
Lord of my love
Let me never grow cold
Lord of my past
May I never forget you
Lord of my present
Be near me always
Lord of my future
Keep me faithful to the end
Lord of my life
Let me live in your presence
Lord of my death
Receive me at last
Lord of my eternity
Bless me forever. Amen
(Photo: Evergreen Cemetery – Portland, Maine, August 2019)
Ask Me – William Stafford
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.
(Photo: Chama River, Abiquiu, New Mexico – September 2018)
August Prayer
This morning I give thanks
for breath
for breathing
I give thanks for
open windows and
French doors half-opened
and half-shut
This morning I give thanks
for clear glass tumblers
of cold Sebago water
and the crickets
of course and the crows
thanks for the cool
wash cloth
the comfort of hands
thanks for the taste of lemon
and the hair brush
this morning
I give thanks
for the shadow
that lingers a moment
then leaves the world
(photo: Portland, Maine – August 2014)
Edge of Atlantic 