The Gryphon's Feather Studio

visiting the graveyard

  

 

Visiting the Graveyard

by Mary Oliver

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I think of death

it is a bright enough city

and every year more faces there

are familiar

but not a single one

notices me,

though I long for it,

and when they talk together,

which they do

very quietly,

it's in an unknowable language—

I can catch the tone

but understand not a single word—

and when I open my eyes

there's the mysterious field, the beautiful trees.

There are the stones.

— Mary Oliver,

from "Red Bird"

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry: Column 28

A COLUMN TO BE SHARED BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Speckled Trout

Water-flesh gleamed like mica:

orange fins, red flankspots, a char

shy as ginseng, found only

in spring-flow gaps, the thin clear

of faraway creeks no map

could name. My cousin showed me

those hidden places. I loved

how we found them, the way we

followed no trail, just stream-sound

tangled in rhododendron,

to where slow water opened

a hole to slip a line in,

and lift as from a well bright

shadows of another world,

held in my hand, their color

already starting to fade.

Ron Rash

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. First published in Weber Studies, 1996, and reprinted from Raising the Dead,; Iris Press, 2002, by permission of the author. Copyright © 1996 by Ron Rash, a writer and professor of Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University, whose newest novel is Saints at the River, Picador Press, 2005.

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry: Column 30

A COLUMN TO BE SHARED BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

 

Boy and Egg

Every few minutes, he wants
to march the trail of flattened rye grass
back to the house of muttering
hens. He too could make
a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh
it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it
to his ear while the other children
laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,
so little yet, too forgetful in games,
ready to cry if the ball brushed him,
riveted to the secret of birds
caught up inside his fist,
not ready to give it over
to the refrigerator
or the rest of the day.

Naomi Shihab Nye

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from Fuel, published by BOA Editions by permission of the author. Copyright © 1998 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry: Column 78

A COLUMN TO BE SHARED BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Moss

How must it be

to be moss,

that slipcover of rocks?—

imagine,

 

greening in the dark,

longing for north,

the silence

of birds gone south.

 

How does moss do it,

all day

in a dank place

and never a cough?—

 

a wet dust

where light fails,

where the chisel

cut the name.

 

Bruce Guernsey

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from Peripheral Vision, published by Small Poetry Press, Pleasant Hill, CA. Copyright © 1997 by Bruce Guernsey and reprinted by permission of the author, whose latest book is “The Lost Brigade,” Water Press and Media, 2005.

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry: Column 83

a column to be shared by Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate

Green Tea

There is this tea

I have sometimes,

Pan Long Ying Hao,

so tightly curled

it looks like tiny roots

gnarled, a greenish-gray.

When it steeps, it opens

the way you woke this morning,

stretching, your hands behind

your head, back arched,

toes pointing, a smile steeped

in ceremony, a celebration,

the reaching of your arms.

Dale Ritterbusch

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from Far From the Temple of Heaven, Black Moss Press, April 2006, by permission of the author. Copyright © 2005 by Dale Ritterbusch.

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry: Column 313

A COLUMN TO BE SHARED BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Back from the Fields

Until nightfall my son ran in the fields,

looking for God knows what.

Flowers, perhaps. Odd birds on the wing.

Something to fill an empty spot.

Maybe a luminous angel

or a country girl with a secret dark.

He came back empty-handed,

or so I thought.

 

Now I find them:

thistles, goatheads,

the barbed weeds

all those with hooks or horns

the snaggle-toothed, the grinning ones

those wearing lantern jaws,

old ones in beards, leapers

in silk leggings, the multiple

pocked moons and spiny satellites, all those

with juices and saps

like the fingers of thieves

nation after nation of grasses

that dig in, that burrow, that hug winds

and grab handholds

in whatever lean place.

 

It’s been a good day.

 

Peter Everwine

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2004 by Peter Everwine, whose most recent book of poetry is From the Meadow: Selected and New Poems, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2004. Poem reprinted from The Place That Inhabits Us, Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010, by permission of Peter Everwine and the publisher.

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry: Column 301

A COLUMN FOR SHARING BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Great Blue Heron

I drive past him each day in the swamp where he stands

on one leg, hunched as if dreaming of his own form

the surface reflects. Often I nearly forget to turn left,

buy fish and wine, be home in time to cook and chill.

Today the bird stays with me, as if I am moving through

the heron’s dream to share his sky or water—places

he will rise into on slow flapping wings or where

his long bill darts to catch unwary frogs. I’ve seen

his slate blue feathers lift him as dangling legs

fold back, I’ve seen him fly through the dying sun

and out again, entering night, entering my own sleep.

I only know this bird by a name we’ve wrapped him in,

and when I stand on my porch, fish in the broiler,

wine glass sweating against my palm, glint of sailboats

tacking home on dusky water, I try to imagine him

slowly descending to his nest, wise as he was

or ever will be, filling each moment with that moment’s

act or silence, and the evening folds itself around me.

T. Alan Broughton

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by T. Alan Broughton from his most recent book of poetry, A World Remembered, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010. Reprinted by permission of T. Alan Broughton and the publisher.

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry: Column 214

a column to be shared by Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate

Ted Kooser writes: Sometimes I wonder at my wife's forbearance. She's heard me tell the same stories dozens of times, and she still politely laughs when she should. Here's a poem by Susan Browne, of California, that treats an oft-told story with great tenderness.

(today's my anniversary, so I chose this column with Joe's great patience in listening to my oft-repeated childhood tales in mind.)

On Our Eleventh Anniversary

You're telling that story again about your childhood,   

when you were five years old and rode your blue bicycle   

 

from Copenhagen to Espergaerde, and it was night   

and snowing by the time you arrived,   

 

and your grandparents were so relieved to see you,   

because all day no one knew where you were,   

 

you had vanished. We sit at our patio table under a faded green   

umbrella, drinking wine in California's blue autumn,   

 

red stars of roses along the fence, trellising over the roof   

of our ramshackle garage. Too soon the wine glasses will be empty,   

 

our stories told, the house covered with pine needles the wind   

has shaken from the trees. Other people will live here.   

 

We will vanish like children who traveled far in the dark,   

stars of snow in their hair, riding to enchanted Espergaerde.

Susan Browne

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2007 by Susan Browne. Poem reprinted from Mississippi Review Vol. 35, nos. 1-2, Spring 2007, and reprinted by permission of the author and publisher

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry: Column 240

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE



The Paleontologist’s Blind Date

You have such lovely bones, he says,

holding my face in his hands,

 

and although I can almost feel

the stone and the sand

 

sifting away, his fingers

like the softest of brushes,

 

I realize after this touch

he would know me

 

years from now, even

in the dark, even

 

without my skin. 

Thank you, I smile—

 

then I close the door

and never call him again.

Philip Memmer

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Philip Memmer, whose most recent book of poetry is Lucifer: A Hagiography, Lost Horse Press, 2009. “The Paleontologist’s Blind Date,” from Threat of Pleasure by Phil Memmer, ©2008 Word Press, Cincinnati, Ohio.

American Life in Poetry

American Life in Poetry: Column 306

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE



Remaking a Neglected Orchard

It was a good idea, cutting away

the vines and ivy, trimming back

the chest-high thicket lazy years

had let grow here. Though it wasn’t for lack

 

of love for the trees, I’d like to point out.

Years love trees in a way we can’t

imagine. They just don’t use the fruit

like us; they want instead the slant

 

of sun through narrow branches, the buckshot

of rain on these old cherries. And we,

now that I think on it, want those

things too, we just always and desperately

 

want the sugar of the fruit, the best

we’ll get from this irascible land:

sweetness we can gather for years,

new stains staining the stains on our hands.

 

Nathaniel Perry

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Nathaniel Perry, and reprinted from Gettysburg Review, Vol. 23, no. 1, Spring 2010, by permission of Nathaniel Perry and the publisher.