Motoring

I park my car in the drive,

It is clean and washed

And the tires are glossed,

I don’t jive

With junk tossed

Behind my seat,

Or dirt ‘neath my feet

My mats are swept

And in my trunk are kept

Only the things I need

To ride.

Soliloquy

Delightful

Dappled

De-lovely,

Ritual rite of spring

Really quite red and rosy

E’en enough to sing

Richer, rarer

Than golden gossamer wing

Cherish ye it, young-lightly

Like nature’s wedding ring.

Spring

Marvelous

Miraculous

May-middle cold

Makes me think that

Maybe the minor matters

Mean more than mine alone.

Sequitur

I sat alone in somber wakeness

Perfectly aware of my innate weakness

Too frail for frankness

Too scared for greatness

 

And pondered then my thankless

Though every so often, painless

Act of remaining gracious

In the defeat of my own candór.

Something

I like pregnant evenings like these

It might rain

I hope it rains

Let’s get inside before it rains.

Admonition

Woe to he

Who buries his head

In the summer sand

And does not know

The hour of high tide.

Labor

Long, languishing, leery days,

Determining dream or detriment,

Requiring nearly next to nothing

But the sweat of your brow

And the ache in your back; ——

Why to noonday swelter

Must we ever surrender

Our well-deserved slumber

Under cooler covers?

Music

A poem by Anne Porter:

When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother’s piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying

Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country

I’ve never understood
Why this is so

But there’s an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

 

“Music” by Anne Porter from Living Things:  Collected Poems.  ©Steerforth Press, 2006.  As heard this morning on NPR’s “The Writer’s Almanac.”  —this poem struck deeply within me, and echoes my own reflections on music.  MBH

My Own Best Friend

Always

After

Chasing

Along, behind you,

Trying

To capture

The certain somethings

You did right —

—

(The end?)

April

April

Is fawning

Fleeting

Finishing,

Nearly over

And I

Wonder why

It all rushed by,

Too quick to be noticed.