Once in a blue moon the library has new poetry books come in. It affords me the rare opportunity to hold a poetry book in my hand and sate my curiosity if the words on the page are any good (for me). Today I am going to share a poem from Charles Simic's book "The Lunatic" and Angela Jackson's book "It Seems Like a Mighty Long Time". I'm throwing one of my own in there for good measure.
"So Early In The Morning"
It pains me to see an old woman fret over
A few small coins outside a grocery store--
How swiftly I forget her as my own grief
Finds me again--a friend at death's door
And the memory of the night we spent together.
I had so much love in my heart afterward,
I could have run into the street naked
Confident anyone I met would understand
My madness and my need to tell them
About life being both cruel and beautiful,
But I did not--despite the overwhelming evidence:
A crow bent over a dead squirrel in the road,
The lilac bushes flowering in some yard,
And the sight of a dog free from his chain
Searching through a neighbor's trash can.
Charles Simic
"Fuchsia"
On the boat she reclined
In a fuchsia bathing suit.
While he sat
And watched her.
Enticing creature that she was.
Mellow from being
Out of the bottomless water,
In love with him.
Quick-limbed,
He made fun of her,
Fearing the deep, cold ocean.
She flapped her wings
Like a chicken
And squawked.
She was right to have been so afraid.
Think of the years they spent
Wandering, plowing
Through deep water.
Losing sight of each other,
Seeing, now and then,
A bobbing head.
Angela Jackson
"Different Nights, Different Mornings"
In the morning we compare our nights.
He tells me about over-priced beers
at our favorite bar and later
how his friend left him alone
with his drunk father;
how he tried to get him
out of the backwoods strip club
and saw one of the dancers
giving hand jobs at the bar.
My night was less entertaining
filled with patients rife with anxiety,
low blood sugars and chest pain.
And then there was the baby,
innocent and dead when the ambulance brought him,
but we worked on him with medicine and hope.
My fingers cramped after 45 minutes
of compressions, my back screaming
in agony and my heart breaking.
We had different nights,
different mornings.
He is always quick to change
the subject in the face of grief.
It makes me feel alone.
Aleathia Drehmer
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