April is National Poetry Month: Good Poems for Hard TImes

"At times life becomes impossible, and you curl up under a blanket in a dim room behind the drawn shades and you despise your life. It can help to say words. Moaning helps. So does prayer. Poems help". Garrison Keillor in the introduction to Good Poems for Hard Times. This is the second anthology selected by Garrison Keillor from the collections that have been heard on The Writer's Almanac on public radio. When I first began reading this collection I thought all the poems would be about dealing with sadness. Actually, many are uplifting and remind us of happiness, birthdays, and spring. The poem I have chosen for today reminds me of the things that surround us every day. We need those things.

Things
Lisel Mueller

What happened is, we grew lonely

living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
the table four stout legs
which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues
as smooth as our own
and hung tongues inside bells
so we could listen
to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles
the pitcher received a lip,
the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us
was recast in our image;
we gave the country a heart,
the storm an eye,
the cave a mouth
so we could pass into safety.