Tuesday night in my class we all wrote poetry--thought I'd share my stab at it, if no other reason than it keeps me humble.
This Moment
Right now, right this moment
I sit
A jumble of hope and anxiety
The voices of my sister, mother, grandmothers
Urging me to fulfill unrealized dreams
The past leaning like a ladder against this minute.
I am truth and fiction,
Pretending to know what I don't:
Unwilling to be the dunce in the corner.
Expectation threatening my fractured shoulders.
I've learned no man is an island,
I say "I can only do so much."
I don't believe myself,
But hope for things unuttered, unseen.
I sit
Right now, for this moment.
10 comments:
I think it's beautiful Maury. I really love it.
Wow aunt maury.. that is WONDERFUL! I've never known someone who could write poetry so beautifully, and now i do! If you ever get famous i can have the privilege to jump up and down and say "that's my aunt that's my aunt!!" :)
okay just for fun... thought you might like this poem that was on my friend Amy's blog... let me know what you think. Carly & i love it too..
Valentine for Ernest Mann
by Naomi Shihab Nye
You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.
Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.
Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.
Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.
p.s. This poem was written when the author's student asked her to write a poem for him. thought that made it more interesting.
Jamie,
I really like that poem. It reminds me of one of my favorites, "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman:
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
Here's one that gets me thinking:
The Trouble with Poetry
By Billy Collins
The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night--
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky--
the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.
And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,
and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.
Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.
But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.
And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.
And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti--
to be perfectly honest for a moment--
the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.
My heart swells with glee
for The Office finale.
My soul sings with joy.
How's that for poetry, not so much overwrought though. Overwought with excitement, maybe.
I didn't even mean to rhyme. That just happened. I'm that good.
I like it Maury. You're so brave to share it. Good job.
Praying
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
Mary Oliver
Maury that was great! I'm not a poet so I'll spare you all and leave it at that :) ! Hope you post some of your amazing work again!
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