Ode to Clumsiness

Like emotion expressed in unwanted motion
Putting your money where your mouth is
but instead of delicately swallowing
a dark stain on your white blouse
and your boobs have increased their noticeability but not in a good way
Like when you are in love but you refuse to admit it
so your whole body shakes and even though
you are wearing comfortable jeans, t-shirt and
versatile footwear
It's like you are a toddler chasing the impossible task of hitting a baseball
or riding a bike
Like being a waitress in a wine bar
with the best of intentions and a big smile
but with no sense of where her
attached limbs act
at any given moment
Crash!
There goes another...

"Carmel Point" by Robinson Jeffers,

Poems: "Carmel Point" by Robinson Jeffers, from The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers. © Stanford University Press, 1989. Reprinted with permission.(buy now)

Carmel Point

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses—
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop
rockheads—
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine
beauty Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff. —As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

Opinion

TUESDAY, 29 JANUARY, 2008
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Poem: "Opinion" by Baron Wormser, Subject Matter: Poems. © Sarabande Books, 2004. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Opinion

Halfway to work and Merriman already has told me
What he thinks about the balanced budget, the Mets'
Lack of starting pitching, the dangers of displaced
Soviet nuclear engineers, soy products, and diesel cars.


I look out the window and hope I'll see a swan.
I hear they're bad-tempered but I love their necks
And how they glide along so sovereignly.
I never take the time to drive to a pond


And spend an hour watching swans. What
Would happen if I heeded the admonitions of beauty?
When I look over at Merriman, he's telling Driscoll
That the President doesn't know what he's doing
With China. "China," I say out loud but softly.
I go back to the window. It's started snowing.

Ode to Sunday Nights--by Sophie Mootz

Like the anticipation
of a tetnus shot
or a dentist appointment
never knowing
which way to turn
but always
stuck

Ode to Clinginess

Ode to Clinginess

by Sophie Mootz

Like electrons and protons

And girls with long clean hair at birthday parties filled with balloons

And goat-heads hidden throughout hikes in the southwest

Impossible to separate from Cocker Spaniel coats

And Velcro on shoes

And clothing and other

Functional purposes

And cat hair on velvet

And lint on flannel

And boys overthrown

By emotional insecurity

Stuck in a clashing culture of crevices

Where age-old paradigms

Are passed down

In the mismatch of

An ever-changing society

A Color ofSKy Tony Hoagland

Poem: "A Color of the Sky" by Tony Hoagland, from What Narcissism Means To Me. © Graywolf Press, 2003. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

A Color of the Sky

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn't make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I'd rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it's spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer's song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.
She's like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I'm glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,
dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature's wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It's been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.

Desert Places

MONDAY, 7 JANUARY, 2008
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Poem: "Desert Places" by Robert Frost, from The Poetry of Robert Frost. © Henry Holt and co. Reprinted with permission.(buy now)

Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it—it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs,
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less—
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.