Found Poem

On my desk was this poem...

Tuna sandwich, sliced toms
Corn salad w/lime + cilantro
Tom + cuke + feta + v/o + s/p
Crusty bread
Pellagrino H2O
Chilled lemonade
Energy bars (no chocolate)

...or was it a picnic? Or, is it a picnic-poem?

Evensong

Tess Gallagher, photo by Teresa Olson

It is attention to the simple everyday acts that keep me grounded. This poem by the great poet Tess Gallagher perfectly reminds me of the beauty of the ordinary and the simple connections that can enrich and deepen my days. Gallagher walks to the mailbox to post a letter. She pays attention to the smallest and greatest things. This attention brings her peace, and fits this simple moment into the meaning of her life.

We all do these simple things, but do we notice both the weight and beauty and freedom of it? It is such a pleasure. Someone, some saint probably, and I paraphrase, said that attention was the greatest kind of love. In our fast moving, demanding lives, attention becomes the most precious thing.


Under Stars

The sleep of this night deepens
because I have walked coatless from the house
carrying the white envelope.
All night it will say one name
in its little tin house by the roadside.

I have raised the metal flag
so its shadow under the roadlamp
leaves an imprint on the rain-heavy bushes.
Now I will walk back
thinking of the few lights still on
in the town a mile away.

In the yellowed light of a kitchen
the millworker has finished his coffee,
his wife has laid out the white slices of bread
on the counter. Now while the bed they have left
is still warm, I will think of you, you
who are so far away
you have caused me to look up at the stars.

Tonight they have not moved
from childhood, those games played after dark.
Again I walk into the wet grass
toward the starry voices. Again, I
am the found one, intimate, returned
by all I touch on the way.


"Under Stars" copyright (c) 1987 by Tess Gallagher. Reprinted from "Amplitude: New & Selected Poems," Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. Gallagher's most recent book of poetry is "Dear Ghosts: Poems," Graywolf Press, 2006.

The Exquisite Web

One of the best things about this web is that before going to bed, as I am about to do, I can type the words "rilke poems" into goggle and end on this note:

The Wait

It is life in slow motion,
it's the heart in reverse,
it's a hope-and-a-half:
too much and too little at once.

It's a train that suddenly
stops with no station around,
and we can hear the cricket,
and, leaning out the carriage

door, we vainly contemplate
a wind we feel that stirs
the blooming meadows, the meadows
made imaginary by this stop.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by A. Poulin 

FOUND POEM - NASA Describes Saturn

Surely one of the most
gorgeous sights
the solar system has to offer,
Saturn sits enveloped
by the full
splendor
of
its
stately
rings...

...Between the blinding
light of day
and the dark of night,
there is a strip
of twilight
on the globe where
colorful
details
in the atmosphere can be seen.
Bright clouds dot
the bluish-grey
northern polar region here.
In the south,
the planet's night side
glows golden in
reflected light
from
the
rings'
sunlit
face.

Saturn's shadow stretches completely across the rings in this view, taken on Jan. 19, 2007, in contrast to what Cassini saw when it arrived in 2004 (see PIA05429) Courtesy of NASA / JPL / Cassini Telescope-Camera