"First Blues" by Saundra Rose Maley

I’ve been learning how to play Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” on ukulele, which is probably not the opening sentence you expected today. It begins, “On a warm summer evening.” And this poem, which went into the box on Monday, begins, “That summer night / was hot.” It’s the season for simmering evenings, tales about trains, and poems about backporch sitting. I think we can agree that this blazing summer can only be made better by savoring some music and “listening like a fool.”

“That summer night
Was hot
Steaming like a crab”

"How to Triumph Like a Girl" by Ada Limón

Last week the fabulous poet Ada Limón was named the 24th U.S. Poet Laureate, to which I say Brava! Brava! A perfect choice. Do you know her podcast “The Slowdown,” where she shares a poem and a story each day? It’s so good!

This isn’t the first Ada Limón poem I’ve put in the poetry box. I love her work. Her “Instructions on Not Giving Up” and “What I Didn’t Know Before” went in that first year, and some of her selections from “The Slowdown” have been there too. But this poem seemed a sweet way to celebrate her new role, one in which she is sure to triumph.

“...somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.”

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats

Most everyone I know in Austin is dreaming of escape from the hottest summer in Texas history. This Yeats poem remains one of my favorite poems about the sweet pull of elsewhere. That lake water lapping and bee-loud glade and the music of these stanzas may be the big exhale we need right now.

“I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore”

"The Sabbath of Mutual Respect" by Marge Piercy

In the wake of the heartbreak and outrage of last week’s Supreme Court decision, I have seen numerous references to the poet Marge Piercy, who is often called “the feminist poet Marge Piercy” as if she is alone in that category. She is not. I’ve chosen this short excerpt from “The Sabbath of Mutual Respect” for the box this week in praise of choices and a breadth of imagination that acknowledges the many lives that might have been ours.

I paired Piercy with RBG for good measure and to tip my hat to the neighbor who is once again flying her DISSENT flag from its second-story pole.

“Praise all our choices. Praise any woman
who chooses, and make safe her choice.”

Three Haiku by Basho

Last night we saw a staged reading of four works by Ukrainian playwrights at Austin’s Hyde Park Theatre. That tiny, scruffy performance space with its worn chairs and simple sets was the site of so many creative experiences during my early years in Austin. Stepping into it was like stepping into the past, an Austin I so rarely encounter now. As we walked to the car after the show, we passed the familiar sign of the Bookcase Store, now shuttered after 32 years. The ache of nostalgia for my younger self and younger city brought to mind this haiku by the Japanese master, Basho.

“Even in Kyoto
hearing the cuckoo’s cry —
I long for Kyoto”

This morning I put it in the box along with two of his poems for summer and asking the question, “What were the ancient warriors’ dreams?”

You can learn about the Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings here.

"Heat" by H.D.

The weather map is daunting with its palette of orange, red, and purple. If you’ve found yourself someplace temperate, count yourself lucky. Here in Austin we are burning up and a glimpse across the globe tells me we’re not alone. So I knew heat would be the theme for the poetry box this week, though only the hardiest of dog walkers may pass by in person. Here’s a little plea for a breeze from H.D.

“Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air—”

"Let Me Begin Again" by Major Jackson

Oh, transitions. In my life people are leaving jobs, selling houses, moving to new places, following up on diagnoses, completing degrees, starting new careers, having babies, testing the word retirement in their mouths. So much change is underway, and I was delighted to discover this poem by Major Jackson in my in-box this morning, care of the marvelous Chris at Firefly Creative Writing. Wishing you blessings on whatever journey you’ve undertaken. There are “no more dress rehearsals / to attend.”

“This time, let me circle
the island of my fears only once then
live like a raging waterfall and grow
a magnificent mustache.”

"Questions Before Dark" by Jeanne Lohmann

It is a new month, a new season – summer is already pummeling us in Texas, and the kids are out of school. Even small transitions can make me reflective, and the news from Uvalde and Ukraine and elsewhere has me asking again how it is we are supposed to live our lives. This poem, which I first encountered through the wonderful Parker Palmer, offers ways of reflecting beyond the big transitions. How did we live our day? 

Here is some of what we know about how the poet, Jeanne Lohmann, lived her days: She continued to mentor poets in her community into her 90s, opened her home as a gathering place for writers, and her poems can be found in the woods and walkways at Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, WA. Her obituary opens, “She was a mother, sister, wife, poet, lover of literature, social justice, beauty and cooking!”

“What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again?”

"Dawn Revisited" by Rita Dove

And suddenly I missed a week in the poetry box, unsure what words were right for the moment, or the many moments happening right now. Then today, I offered it some Rita Dove. This is a poem that says, “Chin up. Hop to it, now.” And so we will, amid spring gardens and war and hard news and graduation joys. Amid all of it.

Plus, who doesn’t love a poem with fried eggs in it?

“The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open
to a blank page. ”

"why i feed the birds" by Richard Vargas

We are home from nearly three weeks of meandering through Southern Spain (glorious!). As we step back into our lives at home, we face again the realities of our responsibilities. Some of them we want to turn away from—the leak from the washing machine, the mountains of email. And some of them draw us forward. I’m happy to water the garden, to try the new chicken and rice recipe, to refill the bird feeder. As I got ready to do the latter, I came across this small poem. It reminds me again that while the domestic life may lack sweeping landscapes, it is also where we often find the holy.

he jumped into her hand
began to eat
she smiled

"Instructions for the Journey" by Pat Schneider

This poem by Pat Schneider, founder of Amherst Writers & Artists and its teaching method, often appears in collections of spiritual poetry. The journey here is metaphorical, and one we all take at different times in our lives. One that sometimes takes us far away and sometimes leads us right back home.

“The world, too, sheds its skin:
politicians, cataclysms, ordinary days.”

"cutting greens" by Lucille Clifton

It’s prime garden time here in Austin, one of those rare moments of lushness in our often scruffy, prickly environment. The greens in my veggie beds are insistent in their brightness, and they brought me to this little domestic scene from Lucille Clifton. In this reading, she said, “Greens aren’t funny. Greens are good.” Greens are good.

(Also wonderful is poet Terrance Haye’s more recent reading of this poem.)

“i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.”

"So?" by Leonard Nathan

I listened (again) last week to Krista Tippett’s interview with poet Mary Oliver, and Oliver talked about how as she got older, her poems got shorter. “But if you can say it in a few lines, you’re just decorating for the rest of it,” she said.  

Seeking poems for the poetry box has made me aware of how rare and powerful a tiny poem can be. I need something short enough to be read during a pause in a walk, short enough to be printed in a font that can be read from the curb. The search is training my eye differently. 

This poem by Leonard Nathan is 14 lines like a sonnet. It’s one of those I come across every few years, and reading it now, it seems to align well with Oliver’s famous lines, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”

“You’ve been given just the one life
in this world that matters”

"The Diameter of the Bomb" by Yehuda Amichai

This elegant poem by the late Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai captures the way that violence reverberates, the way that we are all contained within the circle of “pain and time.” It is a poem of war that reminds us that its real impact is found not in the logistics or big news stories, but in the small losses that echo outward. It’s a poem I always return to when the world erupts, here and elsewhere.

“...the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.”

"The Thing Is" by Ellen Bass

The William Stafford poem I last put in the box got such a response that I left it up an extra week, letting its nine short lines have their say a little longer. I took it down about an hour before a series of tornadoes ripped through Central Texas, overturning semis and tearing roofs off houses. Given that Stafford places a tornado at the end of his first line, perhaps he should have been afforded a few more hours

But Ellen Bass picks up Stafford’s theme in “The Thing Is,” a poem that acknowledges all the dark and hard things central to our human experience and still urges that ultimately, we must come back to love. I think Stafford would agree

“Then you hold life like a face
between your palms”

"Yes" by William Stafford

I appreciate how this poem by the much-beloved William Stafford grapples with the complexities we are ever grappling with — the way that life at any time is both beautiful and terrible, uncertain and fully realized in the moment. It is not a poem about how a war carries on in Ukraine while the redbuds begin their springtime display of fuchsia. But it very well could be.

“That’s why we wake
and look out — no guarantees
in this life.”

"The Moon Over Kyiv" by Gianni Rodari

One of the things I’ve noticed as we’ve followed the news from Eastern Europe these past days has been how clearly people recognize their connection to the people of Ukraine, whether that connection is personal or universal. This poem by the Italian poet Gianni Rodari captures that spirit. When our friend Virginia Jewiss posted her translation this weekend, I knew I wanted to share it more widely.

“As I journey up here,
I make light for all”

The Moon Over Kyiv

I wonder if the moon

over Kyiv

is as beautiful

as the moon over Rome,

I wonder if it’s the same moon

or merely her sister…

“Of course I’m the same!”

-the moon exclaims-

“Not some nightcap

for your head only!

As I journey up here,

I make light for all,

from India to Peru,

from the Tiber to the Dead Sea,

and my beams travel

without a passport.”

Gianni Rodari

translated from the Italian

by Virginia Jewiss

Spelling of Kyiv/Kiev updated

"Crossing the Line" by E. Ethelbert Miller

Continuing the theme of love poems, on this cold morning I slipped into the box this bit of warmth from E. Ethelbert Miller. It was one of the Poem-a-Day selections for Valentine’s Day this year, and I appreciate that it is actually a poem of friendship, which is always a form of love.

Here’s what Miller says of the poem: “The poem focuses on the commitment required to maintain a friendship over decades. It’s about aging and acknowledging another person’s beauty and how it changes, but is forever eternal. What holds the poem together is the ritual of sharing food and the understanding of how friendship can cross the border into love.”

“You break a cookie in half like bread
and this sharing is what we both now need.”

"San Antonio" by Naomi Shihab Nye

Last year’s Valentine’s poem—Ada Limón’s “What I Didn’t Know Before”—was so perfect, I didn’t know what I’d choose this year. 

What I can tell you after my searching is that the world is full of wonderful love poems. Some are too long for the box. Some remain in the head as a few lines only. Some include the tenderest of details. And so many are their own version of perfect. 

Thus, I’m going to post several weeks of love poems, beginning with this from Naomi Shihab Nye, whose theme will have resonance for my Texas neighbors. Love well!

“I stood by your bed
and watched the sheets rise gently.”

"February" by Linda Pastan

Ah, February, February. Snow, ice, rain, and then suddenly the sky so deeply and confidently blue. As Linda Pastan puts it in her sweet and tiny rendering, “Abbreviated month. / Every kind of weather.”

“Outside, snow
melts midair
to rain”