"Fox Trot Fridays" by Rita Dove

Of all the things to miss during this seemingly endless pandemic, dancing alongside other dancers is high on my list. Rita Dove offers a glimpse of that in this week’s poem. I remember reading about how after their house burned down, when they were literally combing through the ashes of their former life, she and her husband went out and danced. This poem offers dance as a reprieve from grief to which I’d add, right now, grief personal and grief communal.

Here’s a delightful video of Rita Dove and her husband dancing.

“one man and
one woman,

rib to rib,
with no heartbreak in sight”

"Coming Home at Twilight in Late Summer" by Jane Kenyon

We were gone for the month of August, off to someplace cooler where we ate our breakfasts beside windows that looked out on hollyhocks and mountains and held our Zoom meetings from a table on the back porch. I asked our house sitter to put up this poem for the week we returned, not knowing what surprises would await us on return (the politics of Texas being one of them) but also knowing we would be grateful to be home.

“We turned into the drive
and gravel flew up from the tires
like sparks from a fire. So much
to be done —”

"Fragment at the Beginning of Something" by David Watts

I discovered this poem on the lovely A Year of Being Here blog, a great source of mindful poetry that seeks to do much of what I hope to do with the poetry box — invite a pause, invite a reflection. I don’t know David Watts’ poetry, but I know that he is a doctor alongside being a poet, and I know that the intimacy that exists or can exist between patient and physician—and here between father and son—is central to his work.

Stars care of Courtney. Posting care of Meredith. Abundance of green and flowers care of the surprise of summer rains in Texas.

“...how lovely it is to be with each other
in the long, resilient mornings.”

"Walking Meditation" by Thich Nhat Hanh

I don’t think of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh as a poet, but it turns out he is. I do think of him as a voice for mindfulness, for meditation, for finding happiness in the simplicity of washing dishes or taking a walk. The poetry box sits on the curb, so most of those who interact with it do so while walking. May our walks be peace walks, May our walks be happiness walks.

“We walk for ourselves.
We walk for everyone
always hand in hand.”

Thanks to Meredith for posting this while we were off on our own walking adventures.

"For What Binds Us" by Jane Hirshfield

This poem reaches back to a time when I thought a lot about relationship endings and what holds us—and doesn’t hold us—together. It takes on a new meaning 18 months into a pandemic that has both bound and divided us.

“And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;”

Artwork by Courtney Tucker

"I thank you God for most this amazing" by e.e. cummings

Some poems are just made for celebrating, and this poem went into the poetry box without me knowing that on our street it was a time for celebrating. A neighbor emailed me to say how much the poem “hit the spot.” He and his partner brought home their first baby and he found cummings saying, “this is the birth /
day of life and of love and wings.”

Another reason to feel glad? The poetry box has letters now, designed by the talented Elena Eidelberg. There is no doubting what sits behind that plexiglass display.

“i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky”

"Barton Springs" by Tony Hoagland

All these years, I didn’t know that Tony Hoagland had written a poem about Barton Springs, and I discovered it the same weekend I went to the springs for the first time in years, still using the paper swim pass a friend gave me in 2002 when he moved away from Austin. I went with out-of-town friends, after a hike on the hot and dusty greenbelt, and I agree that it is a marvel. So is this poem. Truly, I hope Tony Hoagland found his way to the water many times before he died.

“Now, because all things are joyful by water,
there just might be time to catch up on praise.”

"Ode to Kool-Aid" by Marcus Jackson

What fun, what summer fun, this poem! And to affirm this, when I went to change out the poem at the end of the week, every single copy had been taken.

“When toddlers swallow you,
their top lips mustache in color
as if they’ve kissed paint.”

"Sweetness" by Stephen Dunn

When I threw myself into poetry as a young adult, I threw myself into Stephen Dunn. His poems were plain spoken and sometimes witty and incredibly honest. I carried his poem “A Secret Life” around in my day planner as I went to work and went about sifting through my lists and responsibilities. It ends by affirming what I suspected: “A secret life is that important.” When I learned Dunn had died, I wanted to give him a space on the curb. “Sweetness” seemed the right poem for celebrating his life and his voice.

“ Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive”

"The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus

Few poems have been as impactful as Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus,” something I didn’t know until this year, when a colleague and I taught a unit on ekphrastic poetry, poems written in response to works of art. She provided an art historian’s perspective on the Statue of Liberty. I brought in Lazarus’s poem, with its famous lines now written on a plaque on the sculpture’s base.

Lazarus wrote the poem as a donation to an effort to fund the statue, somewhat begrudgingly. She died in 1887, a year after the statue was dedicated. More than 15 years later, the once-forgotten poem found its home on the plaque through Lazarus’s friends, who wanted to give her a fitting memorial. But ultimately, the poem changed how people the world over view the Statue of Liberty. What was intended as a monument of “republican ideals” and the friendship between the U.S. and France became instead an international symbol of hope, of welcome, of the country’s open arms toward immigrants and refugees. And thus it remains.

Lesson over.

This is what poetry can do.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

"From Blossoms" by Li-Young Lee

How much do I love this poem? So much that I asked a friend to read it at my wedding reception, sometime after dinner and before dessert. At another friend’s wedding, I read it to the friends and family gathered around a Texas Hill Country swimming pool, not far from where farmers set out tables along the road to sell baskets of peaches. I read it to my classmates when I graduated from yoga teacher training and to my students just out of love and joy and in the spirit of sharing. And I knew it needed to go in the Poetry Box in the summer, peach season, which just happened to be the very weeks that we were out of town. It’s the first poem put up and taken down by someone else while we were gone. I wanted to share it at just the right time. I hope someone discovered it while ripe fruit waiting on the kitchen counter.

“O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days...”

"How Things Work" by Gary Soto

One of the delights of the Poetry Box is discovering other people who post poems each day or week, mostly on blogs and journals they keep sometimes for years. And thus, the delight of discovering poems I might not have found otherwise. Gary Soto’s poem “Oranges” is among my favorites and I never teach a poetry workshop without including it. But I didn’t know “How Things Work” before now, and now its quirky fun conversationalist lines will forever be part of me.

“If we buy a goldfish, someone tries on a hat.
If we buy crayons, someone walks home with a broom.”

"The Children" by Mark Jarman

In my experience, stories of summer are always stories of childhood. This poem captures that beautifully with its raspberries and hiding and soft fruit in the mouth. Mark Jarman was my professor in college, when I knew I loved poetry but didn’t know how to express that love. Thus, putting his work in the Poetry Box is a lovely coming full circle.

“We lie in bed at night, thinking about
The future, always the future...”

"Let the Day Go" by Grace Paley

It’s a time of peppers and basil and zinnias here, the rain departing and the heat arriving as we always knew it would. I didn’t expect to add another Grace Paley to the box so soon, but her matter-of-fact voice seemed right for this moment. In only days the leaves of the vegetables will start to crisp and the electric utilities will tell us to back off the a/c because the system can’t handle it.

“I had another day in mind
something like this one”

"To Be of Use" by Marge Piercy

This is one of those old classics, a poem that I have heard read aloud at gatherings, a poem I have been moved to have given to me by a colleague. After we rest, we get up again. We dive in again. We return to the work of the world.

“But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.”

"Coping" by Audre Lorde

It rained and rained and rained. And I chose this poem to capture it and for the little boys wondering at all the water.

“A young boy
in my garden
is bailing out water
from his flower patch”

— Quote Source

"Da Capo" by Jane Hirshfield

There comes a time at the end of every academic year when the body and spirit are spent and it is time to begin again. And to make soup. That time for me was this week, and this is the poem I turned to.

“Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery.
Glaze them in oil before adding
the lentils, water, and herbs.”

"To Paula in Late Spring" by W.S. Merwin

Does it get any more beautiful than this?

“Let me imagine that we will come again
when we want to and it will be spring”

"The Good Life" by Tracy K. Smith

It was the week we had our first dinner guests, the world slowly opening up post vaccination. They were the same friends we had our final dinner party with just before the pandemic lockdown. A coming full circle. A version of the good life. And it made me think of another, earlier good life, one like the one described in this poem.

“...and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread
Hungry all the time”

— Quote Source

"I Stop Writing the Poem" by Tess Gallagher

A postcard with this poem on it has been tacked above. my spice shelf for more years than I can count. I love it for its simplicity and for its quiet celebration of womanhood and for how gently it contains deep loss. I came to know Tess Gallagher’s work through my love of her husband Raymond Carver’s work. When I was 26 years old I sent Gallagher a postcard expressing my love for Carver’s work and how it encouraged me to be a writer. And to my amazement, she wrote back. Among what she said was “Brava.”

“Nothing can stop
our tenderness”