Poetry To My Ears

I have always loved poetry. The first poem I ever memorized was "The Swing" by Robert Louis Stevenson.

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown--
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

Because of my good friend A., I'm aware that it's poetry month in the literary world. So many people find it inaccessible or unreadable, and that makes me sad, because there are countless numbers of poems that move me.

Some of my favorite poets include: Lucille Clifton, e e cummings, Longfellow, Sappho, Pablo Neruda, Nikki Giovanni . . . I could go on and on.

My favorite poem of all time is by e e cummings, and I was quite mad when it was featured in In Her Shoes, because Cameron Diaz read it, and I want to punch her in the face.

But here it is anyway:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you



here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart



i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

A lot of people don't know about Lucille Clifton. This is one of my favorites of hers, called Wishes for Sons:

i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
I wish them no 7-11.

i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.

later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.

let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.

Turnabout's fair play, so I decided I'd share a couple of my poems.

arial
halfway between heaven and the stars
in a halflight with chex mix and ginger ale
over the hum of wings that god didn't make

halfway between stars of home and another galaxy
stars, mist, clouds
lights of brighter places i
know more deeply.

sign of the cross, whorls of streets
blocks like andromeda
me in a tiny seat, wondering:
who else thinks all this?

scooped into the ladle of the big dipper
cradled there
even 33,000 feet in the air
stars don't look any closer.

nine-year-old questions
so, are you, like, getting your Master's,
Or what? She questions
Saucily, a little haughtily,
with her arm draped across the chair-back.

She's like a forty-year-old aunt right then,
Instead of my nine-year-old niece.

I'm struggling through my Bachelor's
Right now, I tell her.

And I wonder if she'll follow
Through on her threat
To work at Petco
When she grows up.

florida poem
splashes of water coos of doves whisper of palm leaves
everyone whispering life stories
all in quiet conspiracy

bathing beauties desperate for a little melanin-damage
craving UV mineral deposits thwarted by radiation-blocking clouds
or so it seems.

six long slender stalks of legs barely blossoming
into post-sixteendom. barely blossoming into
womanly wavers of hips.

losing sense of time lulled by white noise
beach babble screeching laughter
everyone telling their stories.