Sugar Maples, January

What years of weather did to branch and bough
No canopy of shadow covers now,

And these great trunks, when the wind's rough and bleak,
Though little shaken, can be heard to creak.

It is not time, as yet, for rising sap
And hammered spiles.  There's nothing there to tap.

For now, the long blue shadows of these trees
Stretch out upon the snow, and are at ease.

Richard Wilbur 
(originally printed in the New Yorker, collected in The Best American Poetry 2013)

"So much of what I love about poetry lies in the vast possibilities of voice, the spectacular range of idiosyncratic flavors that can be embedded in a particular human voice reporting from the field. One beautiful axis of voice is the one that runs between vulnerability and detachment, between 'It hurts to be alive' and 'I can see a million miles from here.' A good poetic voice can do both at once."

--Tony Hoagland in Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets, November 25, 2013

Asked by an interviewer about his “study” of several poets, [Philip] Larkin responded, “Oh...one doesn’t study poets! You read them, and think, That’s marvelous, how is it done, could I do it? and that’s how you learn.” 

(quoted in On Poetry: Points of Entry, Nov. 24, 2013, Sunday Book Review, New York Times, by David Orr)

Nuthatch

What if a sleek, grey-feathered nuthatch
flew from a tree and offered to perch
on your left shoulder, accompany you

on all your journeys? Nowhere fancy,
just the brief everyday walks, from garage
to house, from house to mailbox, from
the store to your car in the parking lot.

The slight pressure of small claws
clasping your skin, a flutter of wings
every so often at the edge of vision.

And what if he never asked you to be
anything? Wouldn't that be so much
nicer than being alone? So much easier
than trying to think of something to say? 

"Nuthatch" by Kirsten Dierking, from Tether. 

© Spout Press, 2013

(October 7, 2013 - excerpt from Time Magazine article, "Power Surge," by Bryan Walsh, p. 39)

The same innovations that have resurrected oil and gas production in the U.S. have extended the age of fossil fuels, making it that much more difficult to break free of them.  A number of independent studies have suggested that the world has to stop emitting carbon dioxide by midcentury to avoid dangerous climate change.  We're not likely to get there if we keep inventing ways to extract and then burn the hydrocarbons still in the ground.  "It appears that the good Lord has set up a real test for us," says Bill McKibben, the writer-activist who helps lead the group 350.org.   "We have to decide if we want a habitable planet or not--and if we do, we can't dig this stuff up."

The threat of climate change is very real, and we now know that we're ingenious enough to extract more than enough hydrocarbons to burn ourselves alive.  McKibben is right.  If we want a habitable world, we'll need to choose it.

Afternoon on a Hill
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

 I will be the gladdest thing
   Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
   And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
   With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
   And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
   Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
   And then start down! 


(I hate the word "gladdest" and this isn't my favorite of Millay's poems, 
but I have stood on this hill and visited Millay's house, and the poem 
recreates a lovely memory.)

Butterfly Prayer Square  (The butterfly is a symbol of resurrection and renewal.) 

This cloth is adapted from a Drops (Garn Studio) butterfly motif chart for a free sweater pattern.  I wrote the directions based on their butterfly chart.  I have made numerous changes along the way.

Cast on 19 stitches with worsted-weight yarn and size 7 needles.

Rows 1-4:  Knit
Row 5:  (wrong side) k4,  p11,  k4    (Extra knit sts to prevent rolling.)
Row 6 and all even (right side) rows:  Knit
Row 7:  k3,  p13,  k3
Row 9:  k3,  p2,  k1,  p7,  k1,  p2,  k3
Row 11:  k3,  p2,  k2,  p5,  k2,  p2,  k3
Row 13:  k3,  p2,  k4,  p1,  k4,  p2,  k3
Row 15:  k3,  p3,  k3,  p1,  k3,  p3,  k3
Row 17:  k3,  p4,  k2,  p1,  k2,  p4,  k3
Row 19:  k3,  p3,  k3,  p1,  k3,  p3,  k3
Row 21:  k3,  p2,  k4,  p1,  k4,  p2,  k3
Row 23:  k3,  p1,  k4,  p3,  k4,  p1,  k3
Row 25:  k3,  p6,  k1,  p6,  k3
Row 27:  k4,  p11,  k4  (Extra knit sts to prevent rolling.)
Rows 28-31:  Knit
Bind off loosely.  Weave in ends.

(version #4)

Descending Dove Prayer Square
 

3" x 5" size        Size 7 needles, worsted-weight yarn

Cast on (long tail) 19 stitches.

Rows 1 to 4: knit

Row 5:  k4, p11, k4  (WS)  (Extra k sts to prevent rolling.)

Row 6 (and all even rows):  knit (RS)

Row 7:  k3, p6, k1, p6, k3

Row 9:  k3, p5, k3, p5, k3

Row 11:  k3, p3, k7, p3, k3

Row 13:  k3, p1, k11, p1, k3

Row 15:  k3, p1, k3, p1, k3, p1, k3, p1, k3

Row 17:  k3, p1, k1, p3, k3, p3, k1, p1, k3

Row 19:  k3, p5, k3, p5, k3

Row 21:  k3, p4, k5, p4, k3

Row 23:  k3, p3, k3, p1, k3, p3, k3

Row 25:  k3, p3, k1, p5, k1, p3, k3

Row 27:  k4, p11, k4   (Extra k sts to prevent rolling.)

Rows 28-31:  knit

Bind off loosely. 

(version #3)

Single Cross Prayer Square (3-stitch x 9-stitch version)

Cast on 17 stitches using knitting worsted on size 7 needles.

Row 1-4:   Knit all. 
Row 5:   k4, p9, k4      (Wrong side) 
Row 6 and all even rows:   Knit all sts.     (Right Side) 
Rows 7, 9, 11, 13, 15:   k3, p4, k3, p4, k3 
Rows 17, 19, 21:   k3, p1, k9, p1, k3 
Rows 23 and 25:   k3, p4, k3, p4, k3 
Row 27:   k4, p9, k4 
Rows 29-31:   Knit across.  
Bind off loosely.

Some churches have started a new ministry using small knitted prayer cloths to give as reminders of God's presence in our lives.  I've searched the internet for patterns and have adapted them to this ministry.  The first one follows, and I intend to add more.

Single Cross Prayer Square (2-stitch x 6-stitch version)

  Use knitting worsted on size 7 needles.
 Cast on 16 stitches with long tail cast on.

 Rows 1-4: knit
 Row 5: k4, p8, k4  (Extra k sts help prevent rolling.)
 Row 6 and all even rows: knit  (Right side)
 Row 7: k3, p4, k2, p4, k3  (Wrong side)
 Row 9: k3, p4, k2, p4, k3
 Row 11: k3, p4, k2, p4, k3
 Row 13: k3, p4, k2, p4, k3 

 Row 15: k3, p4, k2, p4, k3
 Row 17: k3, p4, k2, p4, k3
 Row 19: k3, p2, k6, p2, k3
 Row 21: k3, p2, k6, p2, k3
 Row 23: k3, p4, k2, p4, k3
 Row 25: k3, p4, k2, p4, k3
 Row 27: k4, p8, k4 (Extra k sts help prevent rolling.) 
 Row 28-31: knit  Bind off loosely.

The Harvest Bow       by Seamus Heaney

As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,

And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall—
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,

Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.

The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser—
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.

hunger 


"Give 'em what they want.
They won't even know they want it."

Always
feeding the hunger
of an appetite
for nothing,
not one calorie.

That would take guts
and time
and sacrifice.

So
make it easy.
All flash and no dash.
Fleeting trendy lite.

Make it skim the surface
only.

Make it slide off the mind
or
come nowhere near.

And then abbreviate it
so tht u r rdy 4
the nxt bt of flf.

You won't even know you are starving
you will be so full.


lkm, February 2013

Jane Hirshfield from Remembering Seamus Heaney at poets.org 

 In the poems, it seems to me, were two bedrock qualities, along with the virtuosity of Heaney’s singing and seeing—that signature joy in existence, and then the tempering knowledge of human choice, character, story, consequence. Consequence, above all perhaps—his words were never arabesques drawn on air for the sake of their own shapes. Beauty served him as a sextant for navigation, as a larger righting of justice and deepening of connection. Deepening mattered: his poems went as often into the earth as above it, and it’s interesting to notice how many of them take on some vertical axis, whether digging or climbing.
Two lines from his 2010 book, Human Chain, came to mind and stayed, once I’d taken in the shock of his too-soon passing—

I had my existence. I was there.
Me in place and the place in me.

An Interruption by Robert S. Foote

A boy had stopped his car
To save a turtle in the road;
I was not far
Behind, and slowed,
And stopped to watch as he began
To shoo it off into the undergrowth—

This wild reminder of an ancient past,
Lumbering to some Late Triassic bog,
Till it was just a rustle in the grass,
Till it was gone.

I hope I told him with a look
As I passed by,
How I was glad he'd stopped me there,
And what I felt for both
Of them, something I took
To be a kind of love,
And of a troubled thought
I had, for man,
Of how we ought
To let life go on where
And when it can.

At any rate, when light breaks over me

The way it did on the road beyond Coleraine

Where wind got saltier, the sky more hurried

And silver lamé shivered on the Bann

Out in mid-channel between the painted poles,

That day I’ll be in step with what escaped me.

Seamus Heaney (1939 - August 30, 2013)

Mother Night

by James Weldon Johnson

 

 

Eternities before the first-born day, 

Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame, 

Calm Night, the everlasting and the same, 

A brooding mother over chaos lay. 

And whirling suns shall blaze and then decay, 

Shall run their fiery courses and then claim 

The haven of the darkness whence they came; 

Back to Nirvanic peace shall grope their way. 

So when my feeble sun of life burns out, 

And sounded is the hour for my long sleep, 

I shall, full weary of the feverish light, 

Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt, 

And heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep 

Into the quiet bosom of the Night.

JOHN HOLLANDER

October 28, 1929 - August 17, 2013

________________________________

Some Playthings

A trembling brown bird

standing in the high grass turns

out to be a blown

oakleaf after all.

Was the leaf playing bird, or

was it "just" the wind

playing with the leaf?

Was my very noticing

itself at play with

an irregular

frail patch of brown in the cold

April afternoon?

These questions that hang

motionless in the now-stilled

air: what of their

frailty, in the light

of even the most fragile

of problematic

substances like all

these momentary playthings

of recognition?

Questions that are asked

of questions: no less weighty

and lingeringly

dark than the riddles

posed by any apparent

bird or leaf or breath

of wind, instruments

probing what we feel we know

for some kind of truth.

Excerpt from A DRAFT OF LIGHT.

"Is there anything I can do to make myself enlightened?"

"As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning."

"Then of what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?"

"To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise."

-Anthony deMello, from One Minute Wisdom

The Present
I wanted to give you something —
no stone, clay, bracelet,
no edible leaf could pass through.
Even a molecule's fragrance by then too large.
Giving had been taken, as you soon would be.
Still, I offered the puffs of air shaped to meaning.
They remained air.
I offered memory on memory,
but what is memory that dies with the fallible inks?
I offered apology, sorrow, longing. I offered anger.
How fine is the mesh of death. You can almost see through it.
I stood on one side of the present, you stood on the other.

by Jane Hirshfield

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire’s own daughter,
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head, as she rode by.

 by Robert Graves

The Balloon of the Mind  by W. B. Yeats

 

Hands, do what you're bid:
Bring the balloon of the mind
That bellies and drags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.