December 2009
19 posts
Eleven Addresses to the Lord
Sole watchman of the flying stars, guard me against my flicker of impulse lust: teach me to see them as sisters & daughters. Sustain my grand endeavours: husbandship & crafting. Forsake me not when my wild hours come; grant me sleep nightly, grace soften my dreams; achieve in me patience till the thing be done, a careful view of my achievement come. Make me from time to time the...
Laura Gibson - A Peacefulness That Belies An Old... →
Oh, is it love? Yes, yes it is. →
Things I Know
I know how the cow’s head turns to gaze at the child in the hay aisle; I know the way the straw shines under the one bare light in the barn. How a chicken pecks gravel into silt and how the warm egg rests beneath the feathers—I know that too, and what to say, watching the rain slide in silver chains over the machine shed’s roof. I know how one pail of water calls to another and how it...
“They stood like soldiers, stiff, before
as if they had been called to war.
In...”
– (from Tulips by Ricky Ian Gordon)
Suits.
Each morning, as I confront my closet’s array, I have to admit again that the life I lead is hardly good enough: I have not been named ambassador to Malta; I am not on the board of any college or large corporation; I shall not receive a major prize today and pose for photographers. Those suits, the shirts, the ties are ready, but I am not, and the shoes are shined as they wait for...
Nights Our House Comes to Life
Some nights in midwinter when the creek clogs With ice and the spines of fir trees stiffen Under a blank, frozen sky, On these nights our house comes to life. It happens when you’re half asleep: A sudden crack, a fractured dream, you bolting Upright – but all you can hear is the clock Your great-grandfather found in 1860 And smuggled here from Dublin for his future bride, A...
“Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the...”
– Starlings in Winter by Mary Oliver
“The moment arrives when you say,
‘I don’t dislike this man,
but...”
– Vanishing Point by Freya Manfred
(I Shall Cross This River by The Black Atlantic)