I do it everyday, except on the days I don’t

Please accept this potentially abbreviated blog due to my irritating need for 8 hours of sleep coupled with evening reading past 10pm.

I’ve realized that I’m reading acres more prose than poetry, now that I’m not in the poetry program. Mostly because poetry is slower to read. You/I have to digest it in a different way than I typically dive-bomb through my reading. They ask more, in some ways – it’s just different. A different medium. Like a painting will ask more of your attention than a billboard. I was reading in Jeanette Winterson’s ART OBJECTS: Essays on ecstasy and effrontery how she was enchanted and bewitched by one painting that she sat in front of it for an hour almost daily. That this was the way the painting necessitated your attention.

So, as it’s time for me to leave, I’ll leave you with two poems from two of my favorite authors I was introduced to while in school. (My thanks to Truong Tran.) Granted, these poems are part of a larger collection/book of poems, and therefore don’t have the full sweep, like listening to track 7 off an album clearly meant to be experience from 1 – 12, but, here goes. (and I hope I don’t get pinged for copyright infringement – luckily, I don’t think my blog is that consequential.)

Sesshu Foster’s City Terrace Field Manual

I WAS the lion or you were the lion. Your hand bled and

mind held the blade or mine dripped, I stamped and

cursed, and you laughed. We stood on the grass after all

or we stood in the shade while our children played. And

our shadows either lengthened across the green or faded

from it, shadows covering us over. I knew or I did not

know that one of us was gonna make it. One of us, and

we held beer cans in our hands and watched the kids

play and talked about what it took to get this far, and

either we said enough or we did not say enough. Now

either the kids play up and down the street and across

the lawns or the lawns are empty of them, and that tree,

the one in front of your old house, it’s full of lemons.

**

I meant to include a 2^nd poem, by Roxanne Beth Johnson, from Jubilee, but I ran out of time. Enjoy your day, and the poem. It’s one of my favorites ever. M.