The Shed Notebook: National Poetry Month: "Driving Montana"

Tomorrow I will be driving Montana. I am not driving across the whole state, but will see beautiful landscapes in the western part of the state. When I think of poems about Montana, I think of Richard Hugo. This is one that captures Monday on the road.

Driving Montana

The day is a woman who loves you.  Open.
Deer drink close to the road and magpies
spray from your car.  Miles from any town
your radio comes in strong, unlikely
Mozart from Belgrade rock and roll
from Butte.  Whatever the next number
you want to hear it.  Never has your Buick
found this forward a gear.  Even
the tuna salad in Reedpoint is good.

Towns arrive ahead of imagined schedule
Absorakee at one.  Or arrive so late--
Silesia at nine--you recreate the day.
Where did you stop along the road
and have fun?  Was there a runaway horse?
Did you park at that house, the one
alone in a void of grain, white with green
trim and red fence, where you know you lived
once?  You remembered the ringing creek,
the soft brown forms of far off bison.
You must have stayed hours, then drove on.
In the motel you know you’d never seen it before.

Tomorrow will open again, the sky wide
as the mouth of a wild girl, friable
clouds you lose yourself to.  You are lost
in miles of land without people, without
one fear of being found, in the dash
of rabbits, soar of antelope, swirl
merge and clatter of streams. 
                                    --Richard Hugo 

The Shed Notebook: National Poetry Month: "An Observation"

An Observation 

True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.
And so I watched my mother's hands grow scarred,
She who could heal the wounded plant or friend
With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;
I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,
But now her truth is given me to live,
As I learn for myself we must be hard
To move among the tender with an open hand,
And to stay sensitive up to the end
Pay with some toughness for a gentle world.

May Sarton

I have always had a collection of gardening gloves close, but I too find it hard to use them. I want to feel those plants with my fingers. My mom was better at wearing gloves, but she still had hands that showed toughness and hard work.  Her hands also had a gentle touch. My hands are the same.

The Shed Notebook: National Poetry Month: "A Friend Is A Treasure"

Today I want to honor my friends with this poem. I am blessed with old friends, new friends, family that are friends, work friends, and neighbor friends. When I need a friend, someone is always there. 

A Friend is a Treasure

by Jean Kyler McManus

A friend is someone we turn to,
When our spirits need a lift,
A friend is someone we treasure,
For true friendship is a gift.

A friend is someone we laugh with,
Over little personal things,
A friend is someone we're serious with,
In facing whatever life brings.

A friend is someone who fills our lives,
With beauty and joy and grace.
And makes the world that we live in
A better and happier place!

The Shed Notebook: National Poetry Month: "Kindness"

 

 I can't celebrate National Poetry Month without posting this poem. Each time I read it, it speaks to me in yet another way.  The line I love this time is  "Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore"  Kindness makes sense to me.  How does it speak to you? 

Kindness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

The Shed Notebook: National Poetry Month: Remember Me

Yesterday  I learned of the death of a former student. My prayers go out to the family and I hope these words are of some comfort to everyone that loved him.

Remember Me

by Anthony Dowson

Speak of me as you have always done.
Remember the good times, laughter, and fun.

Share the happy memories we've made.
Do not let them wither or fade.

I'll be with you in the summer's sun
And when the winter's chill has come.

I'll be the voice that whispers in the breeze.
I'm peaceful now, put your mind at ease.

I've rested my eyes and gone to sleep,
But memories we've shared are yours to keep.

Sometimes our final days may be a test,
But remember me when I was at my best.

Although things may not be the same,
Don't be afraid to use my name.

Let your sorrow last for just a while.
Comfort each other and try to smile.

I've lived a life filled with joy and fun.
Live on now, make me proud of what you'll become.

The Shed Notebook: A Poem for the Day: "In the End We Are All Light"

I revisited a whole collection of blog posts this morning to remind me of the poems I have posted during National Poetry Month. I have often posted the same poems multiple times. This is one of them. A treasure.

In The End We Are All Light

I love how old men carry purses for their wives,
those stiff light beige or navy wedge-shaped bags
that match the women’s pumps,
with small gold clasps that click open and shut.
The men drowse off in medical center waiting rooms,
with bags perched in their laps like big tame birds
too worn to flap away. Within, the wives slowly undress,
put on the thin white robes, consult, come out
and wake the husbands dreaming openmouthed.

And when they both rise up
to take their constitutional,
walk up and down the block, her arms are free as air,
his right hand dangles down.

So I, desiring to shed this skin
for some light silken one,
will tell my husband, “Here, hold this,”
and watch him amble off into the mall among the shining
cans of motor oil, my leather bag
slung over his massive shoulder bone,
so prettily slender-waisted, so forgiving of the ways
we hold each other down, that watching him
I see how men love women, and women men,
and how the burden of the other comes to be
light as a feather blown, more quickly vanishing.

-Liz Rosenberg