FARMER IN THE DELL
I have often wondered about
that noble, gutsy cheddar
that dared to stand alone.
The Farmer in the Dell
3
Category Archives: poetry
Wendy Darling
WENDY DARLING
You know it would have never worked.
Still, you remember his wild eyes
the night he showed you London
in a way you’d never seen.
The stars meant things to him,
especially the second to the right.
And you wanted him to love you
enough to leave, but you didn’t
love him enough
to stay.
The ground feels cold—
but solid—
beneath your quiet feet.
Routine
ROUTINE
Wringing the Rubik’s cube for a solution,
gentle skill reconciles nine tiny blue squares to become a face
segregated from the greens, reds, and yellows.
Your nimble fingers work salvation into the block
then offer it to me, a finished product fallen to my lap.
Music plays, people talk, we tell stories—life continues—
as I confuse the cube into madness and return it again.
Seven Friends
We were supposed to make promises,
let our tongues taste commitment
and then say things aloud.
But the afternoon sun made us lazy,
lying on the warm wood of that dock,
while one—I think it was you—
dragged a reed through the waters,
that slick rip the only noise.
We were sixteen, seventeen, and
thought we’d already made our plans,
imagined the future was our own.
Seven of us that summer, and the next,
only two.
You and I made awkward conversation,
their absences throbbing like wounds
between us as we wished for that day
on the dock, when—given another chance—
we would have found our voices.
Strum
The right direction,
that guitar.
The only way to remember
the fire, the tiptoes, the dark,
the rush and the lap of the lake
is to find the right chords since
last summer was a love song.
Power & Poetry
When the stars fall, then do they fall to you?
Do you collect them in your room, in your fists?
And is your blood red like ours,
or a string of lyrics, if you opened your vein?
The scar, the recipe for spring.
Your hesitations reinvent color.
Your choices taste like fireworks.
Your whispers, the ghosts of philosophers,
the ones who spoke truth as best they knew how.
Timing, a poem
TIMING
In Prague,
Tuesday takes his hand,
dragging him into the
streets of orange-tiled roofs.
In Minneapolis,
Monday bars my way.
What new secrets
have stubbed his toe?
When I wake,
the sunlight on my face
is already ancient.
Let’s Get Lost by bluecoloursofnature
i ♥ e.e. cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings is a genius, and he wrote this poem:
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Afterward
AFTERWARD
Rediscovery is slow,
tentative,
a necklace beaded
with doubt and risk.
We who once touched
and knew and loved
are moved like strangers
to the start,
and I have to wonder:
What will break
if I take your hand?
Jeopardy
JEOPARDY
Answer: One summer night I lay alone in a grassy field outlined in pines whose perfume stained the sky. In the distance, a pocket of people played guitar and sang quiet songs. The grass beneath my head was soft as a pillow, and the stars felt close enough for me to use the Big Dipper to ladle up a heaping scoop of memento constellations from this perfect night. Then, though I couldn’t see it, a hand pressed me gently into the earth. There, beneath that great palm, I felt eyes gazing at me with delight and charity, and I for once welcomed eternity.
Question: Do you believe in God?
JACKIE LEA SOMMERS 