#PoetryBreak: Sometimes David Whyte

David Whyte: “Sometimes” from This Human Moment on Vimeo.

#Poetry Break: blessing the boats

Silence (M.A. Reilly, Maine, 2015)

blessing the boats

Lucille Clifton, 1936 - 2010

(at St. Mary’s)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back    may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

i am accused of tending to the past

We are Testing Bombs (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

i am accused of tending to the past 

         -   Lucille Clifton


i am accused of tending to the past 
as if i made it, 
as if i sculpted it 
with my own hands. i did not. 
this past was waiting for me 
when i came, 
a monstrous unnamed baby, 
and i with my mother's itch 
took it to breast 
and named it 
History. 
she is more human now, 
learning languages everyday, 
remembering faces, names and dates. 
when she is strong enough to travel 
on her own, beware, she will.

Pass the Poetry: Superman

note, passed to superman

            -    Lucille Clifton

Superman by Andy Warhol

sweet jesus, superman,
if i had seen you dressed in your blue suit
i would have known you.
maybe that choirboy clark
can stand around
listening to stories
but not you, not with
metropolis to save
and every crook in town
filthy with kryptonite.
lord, man of steel,
i understand the cape,
the leggings, the whole
ball of wax. you can trust me,
there is no planet stranger
than the one i’m from.

Dear Superman Poem: 

"Dear Superman," by Ron Koertge from Geography of the Forehead (University of Arkansas Press).

I know you think that things
will always be the same: I'll rinse
out your tights, kiss you good-bye
at the window, and every few weeks
get kidnapped by some stellar goons.

But I'm not getting any younger,
and you're not getting any older.
Pretty soon I'll be too frail
to take aloft, and with all those
nick-of-time rescues, you're bound
to pick up somebody more tender
and just as ga-ga as I used to be.
I'd hate her for being 17 and you
for being… what, 700?

I can see your sweet face as you read
this, and I know you'd like to siphon
off some strength for me, even if it
meant you could only leap small buildings
at a single bound. But you can't,
and, anyway, would I want to
just stand there while everything
else rushed past?

Take care of yourself and of the world
which is your own true love. One day
soon, as you patrol the curved earth,
that'll be me down there tucked in
for good, being what you'll never be
but still

    Your friend,
    Lois Lane






if i should
 
to Clark Kent

   - Lucille Clifton, from The Book of Light (1993)

enter the darkest room
in my house and speak
with my own voice, at last,
about its awful furniture,
pulling apart the covering
over the dusty bodies: the randy
father, the husband holding ice
in his hand like a blessing,
the mother bleeding into herself
and the small imploding girl,
i say if i should walk into
that web, who will come flying
after me, leaping tall buildings?
you?