Tag Archives for Poem

It’s Past Midnight and I’m Reading Poems

to my beloved. Absent still.

My eyes cloud these nights

not from lack of sleep,

but from not resting upon her instead.

Sweet apparition of mine, completion

of life, a full century between us,

a warm, undulating sea between us,

wet-kissing

the stoic rocky coastline north and

south the deserted beach.

Continents have been known to drift,

—apart some, yet others

a fused land mass become,

diamonds for offsprings,

new moon lighting their path.

It’s past midnight

the new day has begun—

light awaits its turn in the dark.

A Poem (And A Photograph)

Share

NICOLAS

My five-year-old brother hands me my mail,
Happy Birthday, he says while smiling
content to be eating pretzels and peanut butter
before dinner. I flip through the stack
of unopened bank statements.
Nicolas has decided that uncooked pasta
is worth trying. He offers me some.
No, thank you. I’m not hungry, I say.
He reaches for the sugar bowl, the teapot,
the clock: they are companions, belong together.

He thinks of home. Mama? Papa? he asks.
I explain they are near, at The Mermaid Inn.
I distract him by changing a light bulb.
We agree the kitchen is too bright.

And, later, when asked by our father
the child says, yes, in fact he would
like to thank god for something:

cupcakes.

—Sherisse Alvarez

A Poem (And A Photograph)

Share

Waiting

New York, like my heart, is desolate since you left
and the presence of yesterday remains encrusted
to the lining of my lungs.

You’re not here and I can’t think of much else
or find solace in the corners bent on hiding
the face of hope from my face.

I cant stand being inside this skin
you’ve not caressed in an eternity of loss.
I’ve tried escaping through the surface cracks.

Waiting is a foreign game I never learned to play
and yet, waiting seems to be the only way to get
to where love patiently awaits.

Wislawa Szymborska’s Parable

I read today of Ms. Szymborska’s passing at age 88 in Krakow, Poland. As a tribute, I repost this entry from August 2011.

I have a book of her poetry, given to me by my poet daughter, that I treasure. It’s one of only four books that I keep in a special place: on top of my toilet. I keep it there so that I could read it often. I’m sure Ms. Szymborska would be OK with that.

Godspeed, dear poet! Poland and the rest of the world will miss you — but we have your poems. . .

Some fishermen pulled a bottle from the deep. In it was a scrap of paper, on which were written the words: “Someone, save me! Here I am. The ocean has cast me up on a desert island. I am standing on the shore waiting for help. Hurry. Here I am!”

“There is no date. Surely it is too late by now. The bottle could have been floating in the sea a long time,” said the first fisherman.

“And the place is not indicated. We do not even know which ocean,” said the second fisherman.

“It is neither too late nor too far. The island called Here is everywhere,” said the third fisherman.

They all felt uneasy. A silence fell. So it is with universal truths.

Wislawa Szymborska, From Sól (Salt) 1962

A Poem (And A Drawing)

Share

Grace


I entered the cathedral
of the sungod, slash sungodess
—their mythological names
escape me now— barefoot and
weary, under branched arches
of ash, maple and oak.
On a bell tower of tall clouds,
birds of color clang in unison,
the scattered flock called
to worship in the lit afternoon.

We gather, silently,
under the celestial dome
emptied of all need for repentance
because we did not sin,
in confidence, I’ve been told.
A priestess of sincere smiles,
like ripe fruits, blesses herself
and tells us to bless each other,
before yielding the altar
to a choir of youth.
A spiritual joins our voices
in joyous exuberance, clapping
to unrehearsed notes, clapping
bodies swaying in the wind,
tasting the certainty of heaven
in scales flavored with honey and milk.

The celebration winds down,
the service will soon fade
–as dew by early morning rays.
I sit in quiet reverence, breathing
ecstasy, eating truth. On this day,
in the majestic simplicity of nature,
on fiery wings, I saw grace descend
onto the shoulders of earth.

A Poem (and a Photograph)

Share

Here’s Where I Am

After forty years on the road,
I am coming home to you,
my angel queen.

Ahead I see your castle-home
on top of the world
sitting in front of the perfect dawning of the sun–
daily hopes arising out of the blue
coral depths of your pupils.

My steps guided by an ancient calling
–like sirens in the mist–
a song I’ve heard
rustling through your hair
while kissing your skin.

A scent of satisfaction
inundates the road I walk
and sooth these lungs
you helped me fathom.
The road has opened up considerably
and I notice, for the first time,
the flowers that rise up
to touch the butterflies
suspended in mid-air
coloring each side.

There are lights
on all your windows
as I turn the last corner of the road.

I cross the garden
you fertilized with patient years;
I see the open door
and I walk into
this holy space and the warmth
of your internal fire
envelopes my tired bones
making them new again.
I am reborn as I cross the door,
I become a new man with your embrace and
holding hands we walk
up the last few steps.

Rejoicing in the welcome
you extend, I bring
my soul, may hands and my joys
to our bed. To sleep,
finally, to sleep in you, next to you
as you sleep in a womb of your creation.

Our home in God, blessed
by the children we’ll create
out of the gentle collisions of our cells
in the afternoon of the first day
that precedes the eternity
love is.

I’ve come home,
darling, I am home.
Home to run through
every room, open all the windows
and let life in.

I bring life with me
after a whole life of not knowing
life
until you showed me all I missed.

All of life I missed you–now I know
as I arrive home I bring the truth
in the inner linings of my eyes
and under my fingertips.

From under an arched window
high in our tower
we look at the new world
that spreads to the horizon all around
a world of possibilities
where the sun and the moon
dance around
the million stars that light heaven’s way.

I am home. Finally arrived
to meet your eyes. Home
made of stone, clay and the rituals
that made possible the history of the world
from beginning to today.

I am home,
home at last

here’s where I am

Image: Landscape viewed from the New Bridge, Puente Nuevo, in Ronda, Malaga province, Andalusia, Spain.
Photograph by: Carl Curman
Date: 1878
Format: Cyanotype

A Poem (and a Photograph)

Share

Simple Gifts

Lost ballon—colored blue—
searching for the infant hand it lost,
descends from heaven
upon the path tired soles walk
in the darkness of night.

A bell from a distant tower
dissolves into song,
after a clear moment
discovered between lines
of an ancient paragraph.

The voice of a lover
—abducted by old thoughts—
heard again for the first time,
naked words, dressed in white,
unchained, over water purified.

Simple gifts, ours for the asking,
freely given
by a philanthropic deity
unconcerned with the value
we affix to things.

A Sunday Poem (and a Photograph)

Share

Image Info

A Fluttering Butterfly

A butterfly fluttered by
my window after the thoughts
of you that occupied my mind
came and went.

Lightness of beauty
coloring a gray morning
of autumn at the end of one more
century of relevance,
dread parading in front
of my overcast eyes,
heavy with the weight of the past

’til

the mass of unresolved drama
sank, unceremoniously,
around the midday mark –
surviving only joy, passion and
the spontaneous spark
that flames the grace in my heart.

And I watch as new possibility
takes flight, following
a fluttering butterfly

up

and into the brightening skies.

Related Articles