Poem for a grey morning.

A Friend’s Umbrella

by Lawrence Raab

The History of Forgetting) --

Ralph Waldo Emerson, toward the end
of his life, found the names
of familiar objects escaping him.
He wanted to say something about a window, 
or a table, or a book on a table.

But the word wasn't there,
although other words could still suggest
the shape of what he meant.
Then someone, his wife perhaps,

would understand: "Yes, window! I'm sorry,
is there a draft?" He'd nod.
She'd rise. Once a friend dropped by 
to visit, shook out his umbrella
in the hall, remarked upon the rain.

Later the word umbrella
vanished and became
the thing that strangers take away.

Paper, pen, table, book:
was it possible for a man to think
without them? To know 
that he was thinking? We remember
that we forget, he'd written once, 
before he started to forget.

Three times he was told
that Longfellow had died.

Without the past, the present
lay around him like the sea.
Or like a ship, becalmed,
upon the sea. He smiled

to think he was the captain then,
gazing off into whiteness,
waiting for the wind to rise. 

"A Friend's Umbrella" by Lawrence Raab, from The History of Forgetting. © the Penguin Group, 2009.

One night

How long the sun and moon have been turning day and night, just to spend one night with You! - Rumi

Makes me want to read

“It is the hour when the light over the sink,  a fluorescent meant for washing dishes, suddenly usurps the fire of the dying sun...” — Jill Ciment, Heroic Measures

Exiled together

Revelation Must Be Terrible

Revelation must be terrible 
with no time left to say goodbye.

Imagine the moment staring at
the still waters with only the brief tremor of your body 
to say you are leaving everything 
and everyone you know behind.

Being far from home is hard, 
but you know, at least, we 
are exiled together.

When you open your eyes to the world
you are on you own for the first time.

No one is even interested in saving you now
and the world steps in to test the calm fluidity 
of your body from moment to moment,
as if it believed you could join 
its vibrant dance of fire and calmness 
and final stillness...

as if you were meant to be exactly where you are, 
as if like the dark branch of a desert river
you could flow on without a speck of guilt
and everything - everywhere would still be 
just as it should be,
as if your place in the world mattered 
and the world could neither speak nor hear the fullness 
of its own bitter and beautiful cry without the deep well 
of your body resonating in the echo...

knowing that it takes only that one terrible 
word to make the circle complete,
revelation must be terrible 
knowing you can never hide your voice again.

- David Whyte

Breakfast

Terms of Endearment

by Sue Ellen Thompson

The Leaving: New and Selected Poems) --

Sweet biscuit of my life,
I've been thinking of your smile
and how I'd steal a little bite
of it if you were here; of the delights

I've known in the alleyway between
the whitewashed storefronts of your teeth;
of how I've pressed one smithereen
after another of mille-feuille, mousseline

of late-night conversation upon your lips,
forever poised at the brink of kissdom,
their slightest sigh enough to lift
a tableskirt. Perfectest pumpkin

in the patch, your heft on mine
is what I crave, your brows so fine
I could not carve them with a steak knife.
You have the acorn eyes

of the football season, the ass
of an autumn afternoon, of boys en masse
in soccer shorts. Yours is the vast
contained candescence of a Titian under glass,

it is the gold leaf laid
by February sun, the lemonade's 
pale wash in August. Should you fade,
like sun on windowsills crocheted

with shadow, then suddenly gone dark,
your face will leave its watermark
upon this page, which is already part
of love's confection, our little work of art. 

Terms of Endearment" by Sue Ellen Thompson, from The Leaving: New and Selected Poems. © Autumn House Press, 2001.