My Poetry Education

My poetry education begins
with paper and pen and a promise
that I’ll allow myself time.

Time enough to grow and get it wrong.
Time enough to fumble and flail
and float….

back flat
against the water
breaking surface tension.
I crack open corseted words
wrapt up tight; taut as taught.
My words drift…

Lit offerings on the Ganges,
orange points defying the dark.
.-= amypalko´s last post … Moving Towards Independence =-.

A GLOSA FOR TONI ON HER SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY

“Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring….” –Rainer Maria Rilke

After years of inspecting teeth,
gums’ erosions, molar’s chips,
the unflossed places where the floss Nazi
never comes, something inside you
turned, not knowing why, to another
profession, another form of attention. Like a jar
the hold of your spacious mind
cupped all manner of folk, like us
who sought the pivot of your steady star,
quiet friend, who has come so far.

So you listened, making room for all sorts
of ragtag tales, sitting with fresh green grief
and loss, that dragonish weight, and darkness
of the body shedding time; then,
Eureka! Ecology and psychology wed
and you brought many to aurora-borealis dew
on wet cedars, opening the coffins of moths
spilling perfume of broken wings.
You taught them on island retreats to
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

It’s never simple venturing into the world.
Yet causes collected you, who served them well.
This one and that, Mary and Martha twirled,
and all became another offered cup,
until the rhythm in and out compelled
you to return to yourself some latent power,
the mystic life, a hidden poem rising
from fertile dark, the sweet transforming the sour:
Let this darkness be a bell tower.

Now on this fete-day of your sixtieth year,
we gather here to celebrate your being,
past, present, future, a unified display,
gentle original face within your faces.
A singer wants a partner, you with yours,
a sweet duet; add more to that— more sing.
Call it a quartet; it morphs into a choir;
a grand concerto plays in a grand hall.
Where voices dim and flare, you are the music’s wing,
and you the bell. As you ring….
.-= Hiro Boga´s last post … Sunday Poem #5 =-.