Ode to Silence by Megan Sexton

Megan

Glory to the half rest, to the breath between
           the third and fourth beats,
                       the dwindling arrow of the decrescendo,
to the sunrise over Malibu, and its sleeping starlets,
           the empty horizon,
                       the city's great thought still looming,
to parked cars, the cold engine seconds before ignition
           dreaming of the road
                       unwound and endless,
to the lull before ecstasy, the saint's vigil
           of the dark soul in suffering,
                       the grip of the heart before release,
to the inaction of love before the reaction,
           of the hand before it reaches out,
                       its sharp twitch of self-consciousness,
to the embryo, the soft dream of the womb,
           the golden truth of genesis,
                       the sustained hush and its amplitude.

For a Traveler by Jessica Greenbaum

Mary

Megan

I only have a moment so let me tell you the shortest story,

about arriving at a long loved place, the house of friends in Maine,

their lawn of wildflowers, their grandfather clock and candid

portraits, their gabled attic rooms, and woodstove in the kitchen,

all accessories of the genuine summer years before, when I was

their son’s girlfriend and tied an apron behind my neck, beneath

my braids, and took from their garden the harvest for a dinner

I would make alone and serve at their big table with the gladness

of the found, and loved. The eggplant shone like polished wood,

the tomatoes smelled like their furred collars, the dozen zucchini

lined up on the counter like placid troops with the onions, their

minions, and I even remember the garlic, each clove from its airmail

envelope brought to the cutting board, ready for my instruction.

And in this very slight story, a decade later, I came by myself,

having been dropped by the airport cab, and waited for the family

to arrive home from work. I walked into the lawn, waist-high

in the swaying, purple lupines, the subject of   June’s afternoon light

as I had never been addressed — a displaced young woman with

cropped hair, no place to which I wished to return, and no one

to gather me in his arms. That day the lupines received me,

and I was in love with them, because they were all I had left,

and in that same manner I have loved much of the world since then,

and who is to say there is more of a reason, or more to love?

Forgetfulness by Billy Collins

Mary

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart. 

A Wife - at daybreak I shall be by Emily Dickinson

Mary

A Wife—at daybreak I shall be—
Sunrise—Hast thou a Flag for me?
At Midnight, I am but a Maid,
How short it takes to make a Bride—
Then—Midnight, I have passed from thee
Unto the East, and Victory—

Midnight—Good Night! I hear them call,
The Angels bustle in the Hall—
Softly my Future climbs the Stair,
I fumble at my Childhood's prayer
So soon to be a Child no more—
Eternity, I'm coming—Sire,
Savior—I've seen the face—before! 

Trillium by Louise Gluck

Mary

Megan

When I woke up I was in a forest. The dark

seemed natural, the sky through the pine trees

thick with many lights.

I knew nothing; I could do nothing but see.

And as I watched, all the lights of heaven

faded to make a single thing, a fire

burning through the cool firs.

Then it wasn’t possible any longer

to stare at heaven and not be destroyed.

Are there souls that need

death’s presence, as I require protection?

I think if I speak long enough

I will answer that question, I will see

whatever they see, a ladder

reaching through the firs, whatever

calls them to exchange their lives—

Think what I understand already.

I woke up ignorant in a forest;

only a moment ago, I didn’t know my voice

if one were given to me

would be so full of grief, my sentences

like cries strung together.

I didn’t even know I felt grief

until that word came, until I felt

rain streaming from me.

Applesauce by Ted Kooser

Mary

Megan

I liked how the starry blue lid

of that saucepan lifted and puffed,

then settled back on a thin

hotpad of steam, and the way

her kitchen filled with the warm,

wet breath of apples, as if all

the apples were talking at once,

as if they'd come cold and sour

from chores in the orchard,

and were trying to shoulder in

close to the fire. She was too busy

to put in her two cents' worth

talking to apples. Squeezing

her dentures with wrinkly lips,

she had to jingle and stack

the bright brass coins of the lids

and thoughtfully count out

the red rubber rings, then hold

each jar, to see if it was clean,

to a window that looked out

through her back yard into Iowa.

And with every third or fourth jar

she wiped steam from her glasses,

using the hem of her apron,

printed with tiny red sailboats

that dipped along with leaf-green

banners snapping, under puffs

of pale applesauce clouds

scented with cinnamon and cloves,

the only boats under sail

for at least two thousand miles.

Permission Granted by David Allen Sullivan

Mary

Megan

You do not have to choose the bruised peach

or misshapen pepper others pass over.

You don't have to bury

your grandmother's keys underneath

her camellia bush as the will states.

You don't need to write a poem about

your grandfather coughing up his lung

into that plastic tube—the machine's wheezing

almost masking the kvetching sisters

in their Brooklyn kitchen.

You can let the crows amaze your son

without your translation of their cries.

You can lie so long under this

summer shower your imprint

will be left when you rise.

You can be stupid and simple as a heifer.

Cook plum and apple turnovers in the nude.

Revel in the flight of birds without

dreaming of flight. Remember the taste of

raw dough in your mouth as you edged a pie.

Feel the skin on things vibrate. Attune

yourself. Close your eyes. Hum.

Each beat of the world's pulse demands

only that you feel it. No thoughts.

Just the single syllable: Yes ...

See the homeless woman following

the tunings of a dead composer?

She closes her eyes and sways

with the subways. Follow her down,

inside, where the singing resides.

Wage Peace by Judyth Hill

Megan

Mary

Wage Peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and fresh mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for thank you in 3 languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the word seemed so fresh and precious:

Have a cup of tea and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

The Truly Great by Stephen Spender

Megan

Mary

I think continually of those who were truly great.

Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history

Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,

Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition

Was that their lips, still touched with fire,

Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.

And who hoarded from the Spring branches

The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget

The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs

Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.

Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light

Nor its grave evening demand for love.

Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother

With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,

See how these names are fêted by the waving grass

And by the streamers of white cloud

And whispers of wind in the listening sky.

The names of those who in their lives fought for life,

Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.

Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun

And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Postscript by Seamus Heaney

Megan

Mary

And some time make the time to drive out west

Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,

In September or October, when the wind

And the light are working off each other

So that the ocean on one side is wild

With foam and glitter, and inland among stones

The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit

By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,

Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,

Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads

Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.

Useless to think you'll park or capture it

More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,

A hurry through which known and strange things pass

As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways

And catch the heart off guard and blow it open 

Rain on the Roof by Janet Frame

Mary

Megan

My nephew sleeping in a basement room

has put a sheet of iron outside his window

to recapture the sound of rain falling on the roof.

I do not say to him, The heart has its own comfort for grief.

A sheet of iron repairs roofs only. As yet unhurt by the demand

that change and difference never show, he is still able

to mend damages by creating the loved rain-sound

he thinks he knew in early childhood.

Nor do I say, In the travelling life of loss

iron is a burden, that one day he must find

within himself in total darkness and silence

the iron that will hold not only the lost sound of the rain

but the sun, the voices of the dead, and all else that has gone.

Hummingbird Sleep by Coleman Barks

Megan

Mary

A hummingbird sleeps among the wonders.

Close to dark, he settles on a roosting limb

and lowers his body temperature

to within a few degrees of the air's own.

As the bird descends into torpor,

he assumes his heroic sleep posture,

head back, tilted beak pointing to the sky,

angling steep, Quixotic, Crimean.

This noctivation, the ornithologist word for it,

is very like what bears do through the winter.

Hummingbirds live the deep drop every night.

You can yell in his face and shake the branch.

Nothing. Gone. Where? What does he dream of?

He dreams he is the great air itself, the substance

he swims in every day, and the rising light

coming back to be his astonishing body.

Next Time by Joyce Sutphen

Megan

Mary

I'll know the names of all of the birds

and flowers, and not only that, I'll

tell you the name of the piano player

I'm hearing right now on the kitchen

radio, but I won't be in the kitchen,

I'll be walking a street in

New York or London, about

to enter a coffee shop where people

are reading or working on their

laptops. They'll look up and smile.

Next time I won't waste my heart

on anger; I won't care about

being right. I'll be willing to be

wrong about everything and to

concentrate on giving myself away.

Next time, I'll rush up to people I love,

look into their eyes, and kiss them, quick.

I'll give everyone a poem I didn't write,

one specially chosen for that person.

They'll hold it up and see a new

world. We'll sing the morning in,

and I will keep in touch with friends,

writing long letters when I wake from

a dream where they appear on the

Orient Express. "Meet me in Istanbul,"

I'll say, and they will.

The Weight of Yesterday by Eric Pankey

Mary

Megan

Like a fish trap woven from grasses,

It allows passage of the element

In which it is suspended.

Like the light at Lascaux,

It is transparent

And dissolves as salt does on the tongue.

A fragile filament of graphite

Or three columbine seeds,

Or a dime would tip the scales.

Rolled between your fingers,

It crumbles like a dried sage leaf

To fragrant dust wind disperses.

You wonder how such a small thing,

Removed as if a mote from your eye,

Could have caused such irritation.

Held in your palm, it is a smidgen,

An iota, a whit, nothing

A tear could not wash away.

Garlic Planting Time by Helen Lehndorf

Mary

Megan

There has not been much to recommend the future lately,
but still you go outside in gumboots, three layers of wool,
the rhythms of the garden offering solace.

Under dark hills that are not the mountain
you were born under, you prepare the beds
for the shortest day. Preventative medicine.

You stoop, claw at the earth
digging over the dirt, raking in
sheep manure and comfrey tea.

You hope to grow enough for a whole year. It
will hang in plaits around the garage, drying
in the warm summer air, warding off colds and evil spirits.

Have you noticed how there is a lull in the cold,
before it rains? It gets a little warmer. This is
what to look for – small breaks in the weather. Breathers.

When a friend brings you cloves
of new varieties: silverskin, purple stripe –
you cradle them like a papery currency, rustling gift.

This is storing and healing. This is
planning and tending. With muddy fists,
you take possession of the year.

Canticle of Clouds by Jennifer Atkinson

Megan

Mary

Stratus—stuff and nonsense;

                                           how things tear and frazzle;

A happenstance of riffle and spume; dust and diaspora; in short, the long view.

Cirrus—easy come;

                              how things tendril, spindle, and tuft;

The ice- and milt-stippled current; a sigh; the intervention of drift.

Contrail—a stitch in time;

                                       how things linger and fade;

Legato passage, the having been; seam in the collateral damask.

Cumulus—two heads are better;

                                               how things swell and rush

To judgment; the hurly-burly of Moe and Larry; magisterial pomp, pratfallen.

Nimbus—see no, speak no evil;

                                              how things brim and spill;

Part and whole; the unmarked field over a field; pure radiance put to use.