May

The backyard apple tree gets sad so soon,

takes on a used-up, feather-duster look

within a week.

 

The ivy’s spring reconnaissance campaign

sends red feelers out and up and down

to find the sun.

 

Ivy from last summer clogs the pool,

brewing a loamy, wormy, tea-leaf mulch

soft to the touch

 

and rank with interface of rut and rot.

The month after the month they say is cruel

is and is not.

 

                                ~ Jonathan Galassi

 

“Apple Tree in Blossom” by Carl Fredrik Hill, 1877

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In Praise of My Bed

At last I can be with you!

The grinding hours

since I left your side!

The labor of being fully human,

working my opposable thumb,

talking, and walking upright.

Now I have unclasped

unzipped, stepped out of.

Husked, soft, a be-er only,

I do nothing, but point

my bare feet into your

clean smoothness

feel your quiet strength

the whole length of my body.

I close my eyes, hear myself

moan, so grateful to be held this way.

 

~ Meredith Holmes

 

Posted in honor of finals week at Chapman University, throughout which the promise of sleep eventually has been ever-present, urging me to finish and finish strong so I can stumble with half-closed eyes to my well-earned reward…

 

Rodolfo Amoedo, 1892

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For a Student Sleeping in a Poetry Workshop

I’ve watched his eyelids sag, spring open

   Vaguely and gradually go sliding

      Shut again, fly up

With a kind of drunken surprise, then wobble

   Peacefully together to send him

      Home from one school early.  Soon his lashes

Flutter in REM sleep.  I suppose he’s dreaming

   What all of us kings and poets and peasants

      Have dreamed: of not making the grade,

Of draining the inexhaustible horn cup

   Of the cerebral cortex where ganglions

      Are ganging up on us with more connections

Than atoms in heaven, but coming up once more

   Empty.  I see a clear stillness

      Settle over his face, a calming of the surface

Of water when the wind dies.  Somewhere

   Down there, he’s taking another course

      Whose resonance (let’s hope) resembles

The muttered thunder, the gutter bowling, the lightning

   Of minor minions of Thor, the groans and gurgling

      Of feral lovers and preliterate Mowglis, the songs

Of shamans whistled through bird bones.  A worried neighbor

   Gives him the elbow, and he shudders

      Awake, recollects himself, brings back

His hands from aboriginal outposts,

   Takes in new light, reorganizes his shoes,

      Stands up in them at the buzzer, barely recalls

His books and notebooks, meets my eyes

   And wonders what to say and whether to say it,

      Then keeps it to himself as today’s lesson.

 

                         ~ David Wagoner, posted in honor of our dedicated professors on this National Teacher Day

 

“In the Classroom” by Paul Louis Martin des Amoignes, 1886

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Winds of May

Winds of May, that dance on the sea,

Dancing a ring-around in glee

From furrow to furrow, while overhead

The foam flies up to be garlanded,

In silvery arches spanning the air,

Saw you my true love anywhere?

Welladay!  Welladay!

For the winds of May!

Love is unhappy when love is away!

 

~ James Joyce

 

Miranda from “The Tempest” by John William Waterhouse, 1916

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April Midnight

When I discovered this poem, it evoked my relationship with books and the reading I do late at night, after the work is done.  For me, literature is the dancer; I am, of course, the dreamer enjoying its dance, and together we roam the streets of London and beyond…

 

Side by side through the streets at midnight,

Roaming together,

Through the tumultuous night of London,

In the miraculous April weather.

 

Roaming together under the gaslight,

Day’s work over,

How the Spring calls to us, here in the city,

Calls to the heart from the heart of a lover!

 

Cool the wind blows, fresh in our faces,

Cleansing, entrancing,

After the heat and the fumes and the footlights,

Where you dance and I watch your dancing.

 

Good it is to be here together,

Good to be roaming,

Even in London, even at midnight,

Lover-like in a lover’s gloaming.

 

You the dancer and I the dreamer,

Children together,

Wandering lost in the night of London,

In the miraculous April weather.

 

                                       ~ Arthur Symons

 

“Trafalgar Square by Moonlight” by Henry Pether, circa 1865

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When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,

And moan th’ expense of many a vanish’d sight;

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.  

 

           ~ William Shakespeare, reportedly born on this day in 1564 and died on this day in 1616

 

“Lost in Thought” by James Carroll Beckwith, 1908

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The Nineteenth of April

This year, till late in April, the snow fell thick and light:

Thy truce-flag, friendly Nature, in clinging drifts of white,

Hung over field and city: now everywhere is seen,

In place of that white quietness, a sudden glow of green.

 

The verdure climbs the Common, beneath the leafless trees,

To where the glorious Stars and Stripes are floating on the breeze.

There, suddenly as Spring awoke from Winter’s snow-draped gloom,

The Passion-Flower of Seventy-six is bursting into bloom.

 

Dear is the time of roses, when earth to joy is wed,

And garden-plot and meadow wear one generous flush of red;

But now in dearer beauty, to her ancient colors true,

Blooms the old town of Boston in red and white and blue.

 

~ From “The Nineteenth of April” by Lucy Larcom

 

“Boston Common at Twilight” by Childe Hassam, 1885

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Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

 

                              ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

Photograph of Millay by Arnold Genthe, 1914

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Today

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

 

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

 

and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

 

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

 

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

 

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

 

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

 

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

 

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

 

                   ~ Billy Collins

 

“A Spring Day” by Friedrich Kallmorgen, 1887

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Tulips

The tulips make me want to paint,

Something about the way they drop

Their petals on the tabletop

And do not wilt so much as faint,

 

Something about their burnt-out hearts,

Something about their pallid stems

Wearing decay like diadems,

Parading finishes like starts,

 

Something about the way they twist

As if to catch the last applause,

And drink the moment through long straws,

And how, tomorrow, they’ll be missed.

 

The way they’re somehow getting clearer,

The tulips make me want to see –

The tulips make the other me

(The backwards one who’s in the mirror,

 

The one who can’t tell left from right),

Glance now over the wrong shoulder

To watch them get a little older

And give themselves up to the light.

 

                              ~ A. E. Stallings

 

“Rote und gelbe Tulpen” by Lovis Corinth, 1918

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