Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

- Maggie Smith (the other one)

The Visitor

 A neighborhood tuxedo cat’s walking the fence line

and the dogs are going bonkers in the early morning.

The louder they bark, the more their vexation grows,

the less the cat seems to care. She’s behind my raised

beds now, no doubt looking for the family of field mice

I’ve been leaving be because, why not? The cat’s

dressed up for this occasion of trespass, black tie

attire for the canine taunting, but the whole clamor

is making me uneasy. This might be what growing

older is. My problem: I see all the angles of what

could go wrong so I never know what side to be on.

Save the mice, shoo the cat, quiet the dogs? Let

the cat have at it? Let the dogs have at it? Instead,

I do what I do best: nothing. I watch the cat

leap into the drainage ditch, dew-wet fur against

the day lilies, and disappear. The dogs go quiet

again, and the mice are safe in their caves, and

I’m here waiting for something to happen to me

Ada Limón

Futility

 Move him into the sun— 

Gently its touch awoke him once, 

At home, whispering of fields half-sown. 

Always it woke him, even in France, 

Until this morning and this snow. 

If anything might rouse him now 

The kind old sun will know. 

Think how it wakes the seeds— 

Woke once the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides 

Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? 

Was it for this the clay grew tall? 

—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil 

To break earth's sleep at all?

Wilfred Owen

A few bits

 MY candle burns at both ends;

  It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–
  It gives a lovely light!

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making friends with death 
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 
It well may be that in a difficult hour, 
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, 
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 
Or trade the memory of this night for food. 
It well may be. I do not think I would. 

Edna st Vincent Millay

Happiness

 Why, Dot asks, stuck in the back

seat of her sister’s two-door, her freckled hand
feeling the roof for the right spot
to pull her wide self up onto her left,
the unarthritic, ankle – why
does her sister, coaching outside on her cane,
have to make her laugh so, she flops
back just as she was, though now
looking wistfully out through the restaurant
reflected in her back window, she seems bigger,
and couldn’t possibly mean we should go
ahead in without her, she’ll be all right, and so
when you finally place the pillow behind her back
and lift her right out into the sunshine,
all four of us are happy, none more
than she, who straightens the blossoms
on her blouse, says how nice it is to get out
once in awhile, and then goes in to eat
with the greatest delicacy (oh
I could never finish all that) and aplomb
the complete roast beef dinner with apple crisp
ad ice cream, just a small scoop.

- Wesley McNair

Saki

 “While the Shepherds watched their flocks by night / All seated on the ground / A high-explosive shell came down / And mutton rained around.”

The Lantern Bearers (Maxfield Parrish, 1908)

 

Poetry and Documentaries

 Last night we went to bed early and lay there each doing our thing. I found Good Poems on my Kindle and giggled at the biographies of the anthologized poets (he stabbed Marlowe just to watch him die). Then I found out that Wallace Stevens was an executive at an insurance firm and wrote poems during his commute. I had to read you The House Was Quiet and the World was Calm. Then I had to read you To His Coy Mistress. Then you asked me about the Metaphysical Poets so I had to read you A Valediction Forbidding Mourning. Then you showed me one of your favorite BBC nature documentaries about South America. It's the kind of evening that makes me grateful for every bit of my Boring Little Life (trademark pending). 

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 –1950)

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 

And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 

Yet many a man is making friends with death 

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 

It well may be that in a difficult hour, 

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 

Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, 

I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 

Or trade the memory of this night for food. 

It well may be. I do not think I would. 

my new office hours

 

Zelda

 

Why I go to the gym

 Cycling home I thought of our talk that morning and all the (hopefully) imaginary and/or temporary problems that may (or may not) arise. Instead of anxiety, I suddenly realized that maybe instead of punishing you for all the mistakes others have made and all the stupid things they’ve done, I should give you some credit for never having let me down. It’s always a tug of war but when I’ve had a good work out, I feel like I might be winning. 

Above all else

 … you have to keep on moving.

41 (Und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, dann leben sie noch heute.)

This morning J and I discovered an activity that I find quite calming. We talk on the phone and pick a prime number and go up from there and try to find the next one. I don’t actually do any math in my head or anything - just agree or idly speculate whether the number is divisible by whatever. Mostly it’s soothing to hear his voice and him thinking out loud. It’s kind of like bed time stories - enough momentum to keep me interested but no threat of unpleasant surprises. Und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, dann leben sie noch heute.