Please enjoy today’s selection: “Forms of Grief” by Diane Averill, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon: Poems from the Garden:

Forms of Grief

This rock wall contains no mortar.
At the bottom, a long, sedimentary
slab, darkened with soil and moss.
It was lively with tears when I first
laid it there for Lyle, who took his
own life in a little room on Castro Street
at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.
His closest friend, he told
his young daughter to call me fi rst.
Next, a row of sculpted stones to represent
the dogs who were my wordless companions.
Some are broken by the weight
of that above.
A large piece of petrified driftwood
for my memory of the boy
who died building a sand cave.
I remember when he and his
brother jumped on seaweed, popping it
and try not to think of lungs under
that weight of sand and his family’s
terrible grief. I wedge two whole
sand dollars between the driftwood,
and the magazine above it,
which is wrapped against the weather for my buddy, Joel,
the editor who died in Mexico. Broken
Mexican pottery instead of rocks for him.
He knew Spanish and his young lover’s kiss: two tongues.

Into the hardened ash from Mt. Saint Helen’s
eruption, I carve the words
mentor and ash for a poet-teacher I loved.
Little purple sedum brightens
in spring between some of the cracks
for the cousin who died young
of a birth defect. Laura could laugh,
love, and was loved, but was never
able to sit up or grow past the age of two.
Her name goes on in my daughter.
The heaviest rock of all I call Father,
who lived only to his late sixties
before suddenly collapsing
of a brain aneurism. A glass purple heart
goes next to his, one he received for
flying his glider onto French soil during the
Normandy invasion. The wounds he
would never talk about were shrapnel
in all of our lives. My little sister and I
slept in the same bed the night after he died.
Two small candy stripe flowers grow there.
Now I am past the age when my father died,
and I see signs of coming death in myself
and in those around me. In certain lights, those
in their late eighties turn into grey dust motes.
Aging is brutal, says Claire. One of my soul-sisters,
Pam, died of cancer. Too soon! Molly and I cried.
We were three, so I plant a trillium for us.
Wild sage I found slides into her river rock,
for her Portuguese hair,
green glass all around for her love of nature.

My arms are shaky, almost too old to place
my mother’s igneous rock on top.
She was a drama who loved the sea. A conch goes by her,
before a sudden force I didn’t know I had
pushes the whole wall over. Now I have a rock garden,
all the memories tangled together, whispering
among themselves. I mix ash into the soil so everything
grows well. Now there is room for poppies, spreading
vine-like flowers, foxglove, lupine, iris, tulips.

I throw delirious wildflower seeds everywhere
for new births. The ubiquitous they say I am losing
my memories, but I have so much more of them
than they could ever imagine.

The post Poem of the Day (04-29-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Blaze” by Annie Lighthart, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon: Poems from the Garden:

Blaze

Suddenly the peonies are too much for themselves — heavy-headed,
huge and falling — not spent, but wildly spending
utter color, unfurling perfume, sure and reckless lavish.
May I come through like this someday,
come through to a vastness on my feet and running,
the old cart of thought abandoned on the road,
and love — the heat, the secret way across the border — laying me bare.

The post Poem of the Day (04-24-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Today I Will Only Attend to the Small Things” by Viola Weinberg, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon: Poems from the Garden:

Today I Will Only Attend to the Small Things

The tiny basil flowers, for instance
that I will pinch back for the sake of the plant
The little carrots deliciously ready, but very short
The one beet that stands alone in its bed
bursting from the soil, red and bleeding
The last French radish, which has gotten
rather large, but can still be sliced
in two and set in a water bath to crisp
or the dead heads of carnations on a plant

that once looked like an explosion of red paint
My plans involve the garden shears and clippers
grown gamy now from pruning sappy limbs
or watching the little dog, who lies in the sun, still
as the sleeping Buddha or the pea shoots
trying to latch on the old willow teepee
or the little figlets still shapeless and vague —
but surely ready to be counted, their perfume
preceding their womanly bodies, their forming seed
I will rediscover the lost glove with a patch
and measure the cucumbers just set in a row

I will not think about things so big they are unimaginable:
Death, dearth, why some are loved and some are not
I will continue my subtle movements, small and tender
As if they were cilia in the ear of a thirsty honey bee
In this small world, I shall gather, cut, water and harvest
Entire life cycles of their little universe of mulch and dirt
I will hum a modest tune and clip the ragged thyme
No one will be saved; there is no winner’s bell to ring —
just the soft breeze with an insinuation of the ocean
a small planet of things to tend, one sleepy clover at a time

The post Poem of the Day (04-15-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Fertilized by Mark Strand” by Ada Jill Schneider, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon: Poems from the Garden:

Fertilized by Mark Strand

  “I have been eating poetry.”

Sun sweat drips into my eyes,
sonnets bounce in the rain;
in a garden patch mulched with feelings
I have been planting poetry.

The earth is mealy, rich with fragrant
lavender, scented geraniums. I tousle each
fl ower, mot juste; prune, lop and top
till my face is red as rhubarb.

I want to spray cool water over my head
till puddles form in my yellow Jollys,
trickle into rivulets circling pale sage,
licorice tarragon, lickable, palpable

poetry I cultivate. My roots dig deep
into time, reaching Rachel’s tomb.
Lush psalms spill out of my basket
and I swear I attract hummingbirds.

The post Poem of the Day (04-09-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.