unask

 

blue winter

 

Winter uses all the blues there are.
One shade of blue for water, one for ice,
Another blue for shadows over snow.
The clear or cloudy sky uses blue twice-
Both different blues. And hills row after row
Are colored blue according to how far.
You know the bluejay's double-blur device
Shows best when there are no green leaves to show.
And Sirius is a winterbluegreen star.

 

Robert Francis

 

 

the bench

 

Are you looking for me? I am next to you, on the bench.
My shoulder is leaning on yours.

When you really look for me, you'll see me at once
in the tiniest fraction of time.

The seeker asks: what is God?
I am the breath inside the breath.

 

Kabir, transl. Tom Davis

 

 

love the wild swan

 

Does it matter whether you hate your . . . self?
At least love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

 

From Robinson Jeffers, Love the wild swan

 

 

music of hair

 

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?

Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.

 

From Galway Kinnell, Wait

 

 

the work of winter

 

The work of winter starts fermenting in my head
how with the hands of a lover or a midwife
to hold back till the time is right

force nothing, be unforced
accept no giant miracles of growth
by counterfeit light

trust roots, allow the days to shrink
give credence to these slender means
wait without sadness and with grave impatience

here in the north where winter has a meaning
where the heaped colors suddenly go ashen
where nothing is promised

learn what an underground journey
has been, might have to be; speak in a winter code
let fog, sleet, translate; wind, carry them.

 

Adrienne Rich

 

 

mist

 

I wrote a poem on the mist
And a woman asked me what I meant by it.
I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist,
how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,
And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening
into points of mystery quivering with color.

I answered:
The whole world was mist once long ago and some day it will all go back to mist,
Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue
And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers
Go running back to dust and mist.

 

Carl Sandburg, Last answers

 

 

Because You Asked About The Line Between Prose And Poetry

 

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

 

Howard Nemerov