"A Purification" by Wendell Berry

As I’ve gathered and saved poems to someday tuck into the poetry box, I’ve noticed it may be spring that elicits the most poems, or at least the most poems that remind us to revel and praise. For the start of this Spring 2021, I turn to Wendell Berry. A friend told me about making a fire to burn the old as spring arrived. Berry offers the parallel option: to dig a trench. Either way, our gazes turn toward what’s new.

“And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body, I close the trench,
folding shut again the dark”

"Ode to Drinking Water from My Hands" by Ross Gay

Truly, I just love Ross Gay. I love his sense of celebration and wonder. I love his connection to the world of gardens. I love how accessible his poems are while also saying important things. I love how wholeheartedly he laughs in every interview I hear with him. If space allowed, I would post his odes, one by one, for everyone to read. I began with this one.

“drifting while I drink
and drink and
my grandfather waters the flowers”

"Coconut" by Paul Hostovsky

I came across this charming poem somewhere unexpected and put it in the poetry box to remind us of joy. And I forgot to take its picture. The keys are from Courtney, who often knows just what a poem needs to accompany it.

“and what on earth
and where on earth
and this was happiness”

"In Blackwater Woods" by Mary Oliver

To paraphrase a quote from elsewhere, Mary Oliver is always a good idea. As a difficult season moved toward its end, and I faced the ravaged remains of my garden after the freeze, I was drawn to this poem again. I read it at my father-in-law’s memorial service years ago, and I turn to it when I need to remember that letting things go is an essential part of being human.

“To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:”

"Shoulders" by Naomi Shihab Nye

The week that passed between Valentine’s Day and today was one of the more dramatic of my life, as Austin faced five back-to-back winter storms and the longest prolonged freeze in its history. There are many lessons from this time, but one of them is that we need each other. Neighbors, friends, strangers. The government may have failed us this week, but we didn’t fail each other. We held each other up. This poem entered the box with gratitude for my community, those on my street and those farther away.

“He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.”

"What I Didn't Know Before" by Ada Límon

A few years ago, my friend Zoë undertook a little guerrilla poetry project during National Poetry Month, leaving small copies of poems on tables and seats as she went about her day. This remarkable and surprising love poem by Ada Límon was one of them. I’ve held it to post on Valentine’s Day. Here in Austin we are amid the coldest cold snap in 30 years, the plants that were just starting to bloom bent and frozen, our yard a jumble of covers and blankets to try to salvage what we can. I thought perhaps I should make this week’s selection about winter instead of love, but I came back to this poem and placed it in the box edged with frost. Happy Valentine’s Day.

[Post updated 2/21 with extra pics of the poem in the weather. We are fine now. We are grateful.]

“A horse gives way
to another horse and suddenly there are
two horses, just like that.”

"Small Kindnesses" by Danusha Laméris

I don’t know much of Danusha Laméris’s work, but this poem keeps appearing along my path and I love it more each time I encounter it. It’s a poem so filled with pre-pandemic images that speaks so beautifully to what we need—and miss—in these pandemic times. Copies of it disappeared from the box quickly.

“We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back.”

Side note: I like how the poem ends with, “I like your hat” and the photo captured me in my red hat reflected in the box’s plexiglass.

"You Reading This, Be Ready" by William Stafford

This is the poem I read at the start of things and at the end of things. I first encountered it when I friend sent it to me as a postcard when Stafford’s collected poems, The Way It Is, was published. I still have the postcard, but I’ve now dropped the poem into syllabi and read it at the close of a yoga class. When a new Free Minds group gathered this January, the first free write I gave them for my creative writing unit began with the prompt, “Starting here, what do you want to remember?”

“Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect you carry
wherever you go, right now?”

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

Imagine my dismay when I went to catch up on the blog and realized I let an entire week go by with Robert Hayden in the poetry box without taking a picture of it. And when I love “Those Winter Sundays” perhaps more than any other poem. I never skip it when I teach poetry. Its music is always with me. And the same week that I chose to put it in the poetry box, Theater of War offered an event focused on the poem, including a reading by then President-elect Joe Biden. I missed it. Alas. January was full of missed opportunities, but even still we are moving toward the light.

“What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?”

"The Hill We Climb" by Amanda Gorman

What can I say that hasn’t been said? She was glorious. She brought youthfulness and lyricism and musicality to the inauguration. She made people fall in love with poetry. We’ve waited a long time for her. And knowing she was coming, I held off until Wednesday with a new poem, and she delivered.

“For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

"Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski

It is the week after the attack at the U.S. Capitol, and many of us left 2020 hoping for better only to discover that 2021 had its own challenges in store. This poem, illustrated by Courtney Tucker, came to mind.

“Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.”

"Eating Together" by Li-Young Lee

There is such a gentleness and quiet in this poem, one that I have always loved. For some reason, it felt like the mood I wanted to strike as we entered 2021. While our first week has been anything but gentle and quiet, we can still wish for togetherness, shared meals, and the kindness of spirit evoked in this poem.

“Then he lay down
to sleep like a snow-covered road”

"Burning the Old Year" by Naomi Shihab Nye

Getting to work with Naomi Shihab Nye was one of the great gifts of my time at the Michener Center, and she had a large influence on me and my desire to work in community settings. In this poem she invites us to leave the old year behind, something most of us are anxious to do in 2020.

“So much of any year is flammable”

"A Small-Sized Mystery" by Jane Hirshfield

What would this time of pandemic and quarantine be without our animals? Our two cats cajole, demand, burrow in, disappear, yowl in circles around our legs while we’re on Zoom, and take their places on the couch—and our laps—when we settle in for the evening. They structure our days. They offer their particular comfort. All around us, other cats are doing the same in other homes.

Jane Hirshfield, long among my very favorite poets, captures this in “A Small-Sized Mystery.”

“In this world where much is missing,
a cat fills only a cat-sized hole.”

"A Quiet Joy" by Yehuda Amichai

My first year in graduate school I was fortunate enough to see the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai read at the University of Cincinnati. I don’t think I understood at that moment just what a gift that was, but when his poems cross my days I always think that I was lucky indeed to get to experience him in person in the final years of his life. This poem is one for aging, and for memory, and perhaps for the possibility of a late discovery in the hard year that was 2020.

“But the world is beautifully made for doing good
and for resting, like a park bench.”

Artwork by Courtney Tucker, poetry collaborator extraordinaire

"Oranges" by Gary Soto

“Oranges” is perhaps my favorite poem to teach, a poem that captures the hearts of all, no matter their age or background. And as an instructor it never fails to make its point: We can relate an experience rich in emotion and resonance without ever telling our reader what to think. We just have to evoke it through detail and description. A boy who watches the front porch light, a face bright with rouge, the jingle of the bell in a drugstore, an orange on the counter. We understand it all.

A neighbor from a few blocks over emailed me when this appeared in the poetry box. “Thank you for the beautiful poem,” she said. It is beautiful. It is a marvel.

“When I looked up,
The lady’s eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.
”

"The Poet's Occasional Alternative" by Grace Paley

Simply put, this poem makes me laugh. It’s been a long year, and we could all use some laughter as we enter December. Grace Paley’s work always holds the rare balance of glancing wryly at the absurdities of the world while maintaining a fierce commitment to making it better. This, too, is something we could all use right now.

“I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead”

"Some Days" by Philip Terman

I discovered Philip Terman’s poetry at the Chautauqua Institution, where he read one summer afternoon on the wide front porch of the literary arts building alongside my friend Maureen Ryan Griffin. I appreciate the soul woven through his poems, and I particularly thought this one was appropriate for a long holiday weekend when many of us will find family gatherings replaced by swaths of time.

“...Some days
you have to unplug the phone and step
out to the porch and rock all afternoon...”

"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith

Though I encountered it earlier, this poem has been making the rounds during this election season (though making the rounds is all relative, isn’t it?). It’s no wonder. This year, this season, we have been dealt so many reminders that the world can be a terrible place. That the awfulness is always with us. Is this nihilistic? Maybe, but maybe not, when we come back to hope, as this poem does in the end.

“This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.”

This Week in the Poetry Box

In September 2020 I installed a poetry box in front of my house, and every Sunday I update it with a new poem that those who walk past can read on display or by taking a copy. My hope is to share some beauty and hope and my lifelong love of poetry. Thanks for wandering by.