"Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo

My family will be coming to our house for Thanksgiving this week, including our adolescent niece and nephew. When they were here for Easter, the poetry boxy held Ada Limón’s glorious ode to spring, “Instructions on Not Giving Up.” My niece, then 10, declared, “But there are no instructions in it.” Fair point.

I wanted this holiday poem to be as available to middle schoolers as retirees. And I’m glad to include a poem from Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate and member of the Muscogee Nation, and to celebrate the glory of gathering around a table, as we couldn’t for so long. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

“The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what,
we must eat to live.”

"Insha'Allah" by Danusha Lameris

I discovered this poem while preparing to facilitate a monthly gathering of Free Minds writers on Saturday, and it hasn’t left me since. So it became an unplanned addition to the poetry box. And I offer with it the prompt I gave the writers as we wrapped up our time together: What hopes are you carrying from one day to the next?

“So many plans I’ve laid have unraveled
easily as braids beneath my mother’s quick fingers.”

It is neither the first nor the last time that Danusha Lameris has appeared in the poetry box. Her mindful and accessible poems always resonate.

"Abide" by Jake Adam York

“Abide” is such a beautiful word, and so mysterious. How to define it? I feel the same about this poem by Jake Adam York, which is beautiful and mysterious and infused with the sense of autumn mingled with the last bits of summer. It’s the title poem of York’s posthumous book, Abide, which elegizes martyrs of the Civil Rights Movement. To spend more time with it, watch this choral performance of music Dan Forrest composed for the poem.

“...forgive me the few
syllables of the autumn crickets,
the year’s last firefly winking
like a penny in the shoulder’s weeds
”

"Often I Imagine the Earth" by Dan Gerber

I’ve been thinking about community, after a Halloween that included a potluck meet-and-greet party on our street, the first in the 17-ish years we’ve lived here. Turns out that Copper Canyon Press put together a beautiful anthology of poems of connection early in the pandemic, and I discovered this Dan Gerber poem there. Through the poem I also discovered the myth of the Jian bird, which is born with just one wing and one eye and thus must lean against another bird and act as one in order to fly. It’s an ancient myth, which is to say as true as ever.

“no me, no you, no opinions,
no beginning, no middle, no end
”

"An Old Story" by Tracy K. Smith

This poem is darker than I usually put in the box, and perhaps more mythic. I spent the weekend in a Narrative Medicine workshop and in one of our small group sessions, we spent more than an hour with this poem. As we talked about it, pulled out lines that stood out for us, and wrote to the prompt, “Write about a different manner of weather,” it kept opening up and opening up. Each person saw it in a different way. And so I finished the weekend with this poem on my mind and the sense that it might have something—many things—to offer this week.

“....something
Large and old awoke. And then our singing
Brought on a different manner of weather. ”

"Midway" by Chaun Ballard

How often we talk of aging—significant birthdays, life shifts, bodily ailments, reflections on shrinking (or expanding) horizons. I like this poem by Chaun Ballard for the way the speaker laughs at himself and his midlife restraints while also capturing the poignancy of being the one still living. I discovered it while meandering around the poetry selections in the New York Times Magazine, a fine place to encounter new and familiar voices.

“...I’m
my father in that faded polaroid
taken somewhere in California.”

"Late Fragment" by Raymond Carver

I’ve long loved this nugget of verse, the smallest poem I’ve put in the box so far. I chose it this week because I asked a friend to read it at our wedding 13 years ago today. When I shared it with her, I apologized for giving her something so short, and she laughed and said she’d read whatever I wanted. And this was it.

“And did you get
what you wanted from this life, even so?”

"Dust" by Dorianne Laux

This is not the only poem titled “Dust” that I have in line for the poetry box. But this is the one that speaks to this tired moment where many of us find ourselves, where we might find wonder or vision or inspiration, but lack what it takes to rise to it. Thus, Dorianne Laux unwittingly gave us a poem for pandemic, year two.

“Now, I remember only the flavor —
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.”

"Como Tú" by Roque Dalton

I don’t remember where I discovered this poem by Roque Dalton, as he wasn’t a poet I was aware of until recently. But I love its theme of shared experience, shared humanity. And I too believe that poetry is for everyone, and that those of us who love it should also do our best to share it.

“I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone

Creo que el mundo es bello
que el poesía es como el pan, de todos”

"The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver

I read this poem for every Free Minds orientation for years, and its final lines show up repeatedly as inspiration and reminder. I posted this on the final week of summer, a blazing hot afternoon where we felt ready to give up, the sun so oppressive. But I wanted to squeeze this into the season. And I wanted to return to Mary Oliver at the one-year anniversary of the poetry box. Maybe it’ll be a tradition.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

"Tuesday, 9/11/01" by Lucille Clifton

In September 2001 Lucille Clifton sent the Academy of American Poets a short manuscript titled “September Suite.” The poems responded to the world in that moment. It is 20 years later.

“thunder and lightning and our world
is another place”

"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”