Land of the living
What a funny phrase
Not all of us are living, Some of us are dying
Not all of us like this so called land
Some of us prefer the sky
A vibrant land of adventure and love
Only for a selected few to enjoy
I hope you are selected
Contemplative poems
Contemplative poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
Snowflakes
It's a short life
For us, for everyone really
Like a snowflake we form, we grow ,we fall
and we melt away
But that short moment of falling is a lifetime
Seeing everyone else fall with you
Unaware of when we will Touch the ground and melt away
It's beautiful, almost peaceful
Almost.
Yet there is the thought
the undeniable truth
The truth that it may look Beautiful but it hurts
When a snowflake falls before you do
It hurts but you haven't hit yet
So grow and fall before you touch that ground
Before you melt away
TIMES
Anytime you need an extra hour
remember you can do it;
no one will care.
Tell your boss, the teachers at your school,
dentist–whomever–TIME CHANGE!
It depends, as Einstein said,
and hours are anyway makebelieve.
Even sunrise and sunset
are most precarious,
depending as they do on balance,
the fine rim of universal turn.
For the days to be long,
for time to pass slow,
there must be markers of excitement, but
why would I want a comet to fall,
anything but this
INTERVIEWING MRS. WILKINSON: The Place
My sister and me managed pretty well,
and there weren’t any family around,
so they let us stay on in the house.
I’ve been here ever since.
Married Arthur when I was seventeen,
and he farmed a bit with me when he wasn’t logging,
but he didn’t last too long.
Stepped on a nail and got blood poisoning.
Never had time to have a baby,
and never wanted another man, after Arthur.
My sister left here right after Gram died,
went out west and never came back.
I hear she’s dead now, too.
I’ve kept things up pretty well, I’d say, like Gram did.
Still have hens, the flowers, and pumpkins and beans and that.
I spend all summer out in the yard.
CLEANING THE ATTIC
Scraps from every quilt I’ve made,
linoleum blocks, pillows that don’t match
anything but each other
which someday I’ll recover.
Tight ice skates, mildewed ski boots,
The winter sleeping bag
that he promised
would keep me warm.
The print of a scarecrow in a brown coat
that hung above the piano
till I couldn’t stand it any more
even though my father made the frame.
Mother’s Marine Corps scrapbook.
Textbooks from before the Flood
arguing the case for Continental Drift,
books filled with proofs
ICE STORM SONG
birches bent in arches filigreed like churches
oak and popple pop and crackle
ash and maple split in time
spruce and hemlock hold together closing like umbrellas
and over all the sharp clear smell of fresh cut pine.
Kame Terraces, Salisbury
Once rivers limined the stone mountains
with gravel and sand.
Below, the ice-blocked valley;
across, the wild flow of melt.
Three kinds of oak.
Witch hazel and teaberry
undergrow the logged-over
never-plowed land.
So much time,
yet not enough time.
I want to be like a river
on the edge of the ice—
letting go as I can,
holding whatever I must hold.
KINGSLAND BAY
What is your name and what
do you know and what
together can we do?
Folded, weighted, shifting,
broken and remade,
the layers hidden underneath.
And where on this map
of shifting stone
do we belong?
Come walk and name
this place, this very place,
this weather and these trees:
limestone bluff,
the edge edged with white cedar
—and the rain.
And when the blowdown comes
REPORT: March 8, 2022, 6:30 a.m.
REPORT: MARCH 8, 2022, 6:30 A.M.
I don’t yet know the news from afar. Here,
the backyard is a sheet of ice. In the low spot
in the drive, the gravel has washed away, leaving
a narrow ditch. Before sunrise, the sky is gray
and yellow. All the undones of autumn poke through
the grubby snow. A rabbit scrounges for seed
under the bird feeder. The dog looks out
the window and begins to scream at a squirrel.
Coffee’s good. The north wind is rising.
A PHOTO OF BORIS
There is no Boris in the family tree.
I found the photo in a box in a closet.
On the back, in Nana’s scrawl,
the one word: “Boris.”
A little boy, perhaps two years old,
standing on the seat of a chair against a drapery.
His hair was parted and neat.
He wore a dark jacket and pants,
sturdy shoes.
They’d put a hoop around his neck.
In one hand, he held a stick like the ones
big boys used to turn a hoop along a road.
His expression was puzzled, alarmed:
Why do they want me standing here,
with a hoop around my neck?
So many photos in the box:
OPEN STUDIO POEM #18
Under snow, under solid ground,
earth knits a fabric of mycelium,
bulb, the roots of chrysanthemum
and rose. The February landscape
shapes a shifting collage
of branch and cloud,
a splash of of jay-blue.
We stay secluded, painting
our lives with aplomb.
MATTER: A Pantoum
What gods do is make and let the pieces fall.
Billions of clocks on billions of beaches
turning as our hands move however they
move or our four legs or six or eight.
Billions of eyes in billions of deserts
move through their times or none and
we move our two legs or four or six or eight and
our hearts and chloroplasts, mycelium,
our many eyes or none.
Our structures crystalize, the plates
and hearts and chloroplasts and mycelium
subduct and bump as we rise and fall.
The structure of our crystals, how the plates
and all we do is an echo of clapping hands as we
subduct and bump and rise and fall.
With voices, silences, wavings of branches
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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