Poetry

by Phillip Levine, February 26, 2007

How to Get Here

Dear Friends: We’re looking forward to your visit.
You must come by foot, but don’t fret;
our lands are wild but pleasant.
Travel light and carry a weapon.
Approach the mountain from the north.
Ascend through the scrub pine to the summit’s clearing.
The high hills are heaven, but you mustn’t linger.
Look south for our smoke then descend into the valley.
Stick to the walnut grove. It’s your best chance.
Beware the savages. Their darts are deadly. They seethe
despite our olive branches. Stay low and silent and cross the river.
You must swim, but the current is mild, assuming the rains hold.
If you make the meadow, you’re home free, practically.
Tread swiftly across the clover, but keep to the edge
and use the shade of the forest. Rest here if you must.
Savor the honeysuckle, but be mindful of the bear traps.
In fact, seek out the bears and bring one.
We’re down to our last few potatoes here.
Hurry.

Bones of Small Birds

Loving me is like
loving a bird that changes colors
(my drunk handwriting in black pen
reminds me of my fathers).

I tell you I’m sorry, you think
you are in love with me, I apologize and
mean it, sincerely, I wouldn’t want to be
the wounded and I wish I could weep.

I was there the night you lay on the pavement,
you spoke later of demons and dreaming my face,
of heartbeat racing, crows and blackbirds,
of rose-colored glasses which made the moon a rotten peach,
you said it was impossible to live without me but I
was out of your reach, I knew exactly how you felt.
I know you know I’m thinking about you,
right now.

(as eighteen blackbirds and my father
fly away)

—Sam Dillon







Self-Portrait as Indecisive

I bumped into some ripe asparagus under
the tomato plants, though it’s almost fall,
yellowish, a trifle pale but tall
I could’ve picked them yesterday
had I watered then. Saint Paul says it’s better
to marry than burn. How much better?
Who’s Paul he should know? What about marry
and burn? (May you be like a chandelier:
Hang all day and burn all night.)
What is this other than a desire to be
elsewhere, other than? Yet I can almost see
a line, a sliver that separates now from forever,
a hair floating in and out of sunlight.

—Lee Gould


New Year’s Eve, 2006

This is for the one
who drove off
with no first
or last kiss of this
or last year, who
departed before hope
or a half glass
of nostalgia; whose music is not even an echo
in a plastic horn, nor a false note stuck
in the long neck of a trombone;
whose portraits are shaded in charcoal
and then thrown away,
whose great eyes are made dull
by the bright palette
of day. She loves
the imagination most
but something beautiful
must have failed her,
like the monotony of the sea
or the way birds leave us
in the grips of gravity.
It is not known if she is fragile
or stoic, or what she has done
without, so wishes must be made
low, in secret, like prayers nested
inside sound, that she might drive into
the next hopeless bend
with flecks of confetti
on her shoulders, too light
for even her ghosts
to defend.

—Kristen Henderson