Butterflies

Some days her main job seems to be

to welcome back the Red Admiral

as it lights on a leaf of the yellow

forsythia. It is her duty to stop & lean

over to take in how it folds & opens

its wings. Then, too, there is the common

Tiger Swallowtail, which seems to her

entirely uncommon in how it moves

about the boundaries of this clearing

we made so many years ago. If she leaves

the compost bucket unwashed to rescue

a single tattered wing from under the winter

jasmine or the blue flowers of the periwinkle

& then spends a whole afternoon at our round

oak table surrounded by field guides

& tea until she is sure—yes—that it belongs to

a Lorquin's Admiral, or that singular

mark is one of the great cat's eyes

of a Milbert's Tortoiseshell, then she is

simply practicing her true vocation

learning the story behind the blue beads

of the Mourning Cloak, the silver commas

of the Satyr Anglewing, the complex shades

of the Spring Azure, moving through this life

letting her sweet, light attention land

on one luminous thing after another.

 

Poem copyright ©2017 by Samuel Green, "Butterflies."  

I do my best to deliver an engaging and Deliberate telling of the good story of our beeing as I choose to say It
and how I Like Beeing among all the rest of you as you be
and I truly hope that Someday your being will want to Bee with me in our Beeing kind of world
And we can all expand our breathe along with the universe as it expands and breathes Within us and without us
and regardless of what we have to say about it.
And I talk about the Buddha and sometimes he is on the side of the road and sometimes she is upside down
and I am here to tell you that life can be strange and wonderful at the same time
and I write about Melanie and her help with my finding reality again
and my trip to the Yucatan with my two boys
and going to the movies as a ten year old
and the girls in my teen age life
and my father being tough as nails and stinging me with that
and my mother being so very vulnerable and leaving me with that
and then there is me learning how to Bee
in the here and now kind of moment and the alive kind of moment
and I do not want to leave out the music in my life and Miles Davis
and the Mayan Kings and a girl dressed in a Nurses outfit
And mostly I wrote this book to reveal myself to my wife and to my family and to anyone who Reads this book really
and I really want all of you to enjoy your beeing in the alive kind of world and of the right now in this moment kind of world.

Charles H. Grimes

Ann Arbor 2014

Militants to Certain Other Women

You who pass coldly by when the police rush upon us,
When they wrench away our banners,
(Beautiful banners whose colors cry a demand for liberty)
You who criticize or condemn
(Declaring you “believe in suffrage,
Worked for it in your state, and your mother
knew Susan B. Anthony”)
Can you think in terms of a nation?
Could you die, (or face ridicule) for your belief?
For the freedom of women, for your freedom,
we are fighting; 
For your safety we face danger, bear torture;
For your honor endure untellable insult.
To win democracy for you we defend the banners of democracy
Till our banners and our bodies
Are flung together on the pavement,
Waiting at the gates of government,
We have made of our weariness a symbol
Of women’s long wait for justice.
We have borne the hunger and hardship of prison,
To open people’s eyes
To men’s determination to imprison the power of women.
You women who pass coldly by,
Do you imagine your freedom is coming
As a summer wind blows over fields?
Slowly it has advanced by a sixty-years’ war,
(Those who have fought in it have not forgotten)

And that war is not won.
Strongly entrenched, the foe sits plotting.
Close to his lines our banners fly,
Signalling where to direct the fire,
Greater forces are needed, reserves and recruits.
Are you for winning or for waiting,
Women who watch the banners go down?
Women who say, “Suffrage is coming,”
While suffrage goes by you into Prussia?
Case to be content with applauding speeches, and praising politicians.
Patience is shameful.
Awake, rise, and act. 

Katharine Rolston Fisher - 1871-1949

This poem is in the public domain.

[we are]

we are
prayer in the long boat
                                               a rhizomatic scream
                                               surrounded by the dark dagger
                                                                        of the ocean
                         scripture
                         in its entirety
                         is anticipation of the lilt
                                                   and yet
there is no word
for the rhythm
             we endure
             across this dirtless moment
                                                    antibird, we sing like birds
                                                    textured and untrained
             rugged the love
             that claps
in the chasm of our black palms

Copyright © 2019 by Quenton Baker. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 28, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

Great Bear

When the day pours down in a silken glaze    the great bear walks up       and up each milk-white step of noon leaving the restless woods    and her green cave of weeds       emptying her pockets of berries, roots, and grubs climbing past the crows in the lemony air    above the hornbeam and chestnut oak       between cloud and mountain. She slowly shakes aside the heavy rug of her fur    and muscle of her body       letting go memories of grievous winters    boom and howl of the wind and weight       of each cub, before it was born wending up the stairs of the night chorus    into the embrace of grandmother sky,       with bones as light and fierce as polished suns. I tell you this so you won't be surprised    if the scent of pine sap drifts down       with milkweed, and memories of wild fat summers — if you too    are stretched out in the field watching       for the rise of the great mother. Remember your enchantment:    every day is a doorway       every moment is the world revealing itself. Death is not waiting at the end,    but is here, vibrating with promises       of wider horizons and songs in different languages. We are not waiting, but are    constant and becoming as we climb       listening for learning what the river wants    and how the plants became healers —       letting go of our bodies slowly, carrying nothing else into    the black and silver night       but the great shining we came from, and are.

Watched by crows and friend to salamanders, Lisa Creech Bledsoe is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She is the author of two full-length books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019), and Wolf Laundry (2020), and she has new poems out or forthcoming in American Writers Review, The Main Street Rag, Jam & Sand, The Writer’s Cafe Magazine, Cabinet of Heed, and Front Porch Review, among others.

Gwendolyn Brooks, "truth" from Blacks

And if sun comes How shall we greet him? Shall we not dread him, Shall we not fear him After so lengthy a Session with shade? Though we have wept for him, Though we have prayed All through the night-years— What if we wake one shimmering morning to Hear the fierce hammering Of his firm knuckles Hard on the door? Shall we not shudder?— Shall we not flee Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter Of the familiar Propitious haze? Sweet is it, sweet is it To sleep in the coolness Of snug unawareness. The dark hangs heavily Over the eyes.

Today is the birthday of the poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000).

If you would rise, then rise like the dawn sky
golden light seeping into your dreams, molasses slow and syrupy sweet
dawn rises in your chest like summer
blowing copal scented breath into your lungs
And painting your eyes in amber and gold
If you would dance, then dance with the morning
Twirl with the barely visible spirits that dance in flickers of flame and foxfire
Sing with the birdsong that ripples across the sky
Tell your memories to the eastern winds, carrying the stories of dawn
If you must invoke, then invoke the knowledge of the Eastern wind
To the knowledge, that once learned, changes everything
Invoke the light that calls the seed to unfurl, the flower to unfurl
If you must pray, then pray the prayers of sunflowers
Feet planted in black earth and face ever following the light
If you would enchant, then start with longing,
Drown under the song of the sirens and let longing seep from your skin like perfume
If you would be cleansed, then come at dawn and listen
For the sunrise is the song that renews, and illuminates
And all shadows must fall away from its rays
Until the night settles her skirts over the earth again

- The Green Witch's Homestead

Kahlil Gibran on Joy & Sorrow

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater thar sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

What Issa Heard

Two hundred years ago Issa heard the morning birds
singing sutras to this suffering world.

I heard them too, this morning, which must mean,

since we will always have a suffering world,
we must also always have a song.

by David Budbill

Mr. Darcy

In the end she just wanted the house

               and a horse not much more what

       if  he didn’t own the house or worse

                       not even a horse how do we

separate the things from a man the man from

               the things is a man still the same

       without his reins here it rains every fifteen

                       minutes it would be foolish to

marry a man without an umbrella did

               Cinderella really love the prince or

       just the prints on the curtains in the

                       ballroom once I went window-

shopping but I didn’t want a window when

               do you know it’s time to get a new

       man one who can win more things at the

                       fair I already have four stuffed

pandas from the fair I won fair and square

               is it time to be less square to wear

       something more revealing in North and

                       South she does the dealing gives him

the money in the end but she falls in love

               with him when he has the money when

       he is still running away if the water is

                       running in the other room is it wrong

for me to not want to chase it because it owns

               nothing else when I wave to a man I

       love what happens when another man with

                       a lot more bags waves back

by Victoria Chang

“The Good News” by Thich Nhat Hanh

They don’t publish
the good news.
The good news is published
by us.
We have a special edition every moment,
and we need you to read it.
The good news is that you are alive,
and the linden tree is still there,
standing firm in the harsh Winter.
The good news is that you have wonderful eyes
to touch the blue sky.
The good news is that your child is there before you,
and your arms are available:
hugging is possible.
They only print what is wrong.
Look at each of our special editions.
We always offer the things that are not wrong.
We want you to benefit from them
and help protect them.
The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile,
singing the song of eternity.
Listen! You have ears that can hear it.
Bow your head.
Listen to it.
Leave behind the world of sorrow
and preoccupation
and get free.
The latest good news
is that you can do it.
– Thich Nhat Hanh

Instructions on Not Giving Up

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

 

By Ada Limón From Ten Poems for Difficult Times

Thirteen Ways to Love the Rain (after Wallace Stevens)

I
Moss profusion dangling from branches
II
mist’s dew-faced gleam
III
bucketing, lashing, mizzling, a whole vocabulary
IV
sun’s glimmer on wet stones
V
the way a broken umbrella dances, urban tumbleweed
VI
walking home that night so soaked I no longer cared
VII
moodiness of rain, defying perpetual optimism
VII
splashing puddles in wellies, like we did as children
VIII
curling up to read by rain-splattered windows
IX
fat drops falling slowly, then gaining momentum
X
the ferocity of storms, wind blowing you sideways
XI
arcs of color crossing the sky
XII
birds huddled on quiet city streets,
XIII
how it keeps me inside with you.

Christine Valters Paintner

Cutting Loose

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.
 

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.
 

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path — but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on earth, again and again.

 

by William Stafford, from 10 Poems for Difficult Times

 

MYSTERIES, YES

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.”

― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

[love is more thicker than forget]

love is more thicker than forget

more thinner than recall

more seldom than a wave is wet

more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly

and less it shall unbe

than all the sea which only

is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win

less never than alive

less bigger than the least begin

less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly

and more it cannot die

than all the sky which only

is higher than the sky

E.E. Cummings, “[love is more thicker than forget]” from Complete Poems 1904-1962, edited by George J. Firmage. Copyright 1926, 1954, 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1985 by George James Firmage. Reprinted with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.