"Gathering" by Nina Bagley

I chose this poem as a tip of the hat to the time of year when there tend to be more things coming in than going out. Accumulate can be such an uncomfortable word, whereas gather has such grace. To gather in this poem is to move through the world with a kind of reverence. I found the poem in the book The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal, but I quickly discovered that it is posted many places on the internet where artists are given to collecting—to create something new and to hold onto our days, which pass so quickly.

Speaking of which, there will be one more poem before 2023 is behind us. Thanks for joining me on this ride through the poems that shaped my year.

“bits of shells not whole but lovely
in their brokenness”

"The Lesson of the Falling Leaves" by Lucille Clifton

This week’s selection is a tiny, gentle poem by the ever-masterful Lucille Clifton. (If I could only put one poet in the poetry box going forward, Lucille Clifton would be high on my list.) I like sliding small poems in the box, as they are so friendly to a brief pause while walking by.

Here in Central Texas, this poem is timely. While other places get their first snows, we finally have crisp blue days and bits of color in the trees. My front yard is strewn with elm leaves. Things shift. I find myself wanting to offer a prompt to go with this gem of a poem: Write about a time when letting go was love.

Happy Late Autumn to you.

“the leaves believe
such letting go is love”

"Between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, Today" by Emily Jungmin Yoon

So we find ourselves in that suspended time between fall and winter, technically still in autumn, but with the days shortening and the weather getting colder. Over the weekend we sang songs around a firepit with friends, saw pics of another friend’s dog romping in her town’s first snow. In the U.S., one big holiday is behind us and the next ones line up before us.

On Saturday a group of Free Minds writers and I used Emily Jungmin Yoon’s poem as a way of writing our way into the present moment, hanging on her litany of “today” and “today.” We are neither back in September nor ahead in December, but here, now, in whatever todays we make in the in-between.

“Today my heart wears you like curtains. Today
it fills with you. ”

"Rosalynn" by Jimmy Carter

After the news of Rosalynn Carter’s death yesterday, my friend Christine posted on Facebook this poem of Jimmy Carter’s from his 2005 book, Always a Reckoning and Other Poems. Christine was lucky enough to meet the Carters at a friend’s wedding in Plains, Georgia, years ago.

We could have a nice conversation about a former president who writes poems, but this posting is for Rosalynn, who was an advocate for women’s rights, for mental health, and for creating what she called “a more caring society.” In her 77-year marriage there is much to be learned about partnership and what it means to live a good life.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate.

“I’d glow when her diminished voice would clear
my muddled thoughts...”

"In November" by Lisel Mueller

I spent last weekend in a narrative medicine workshop in New York City. One of the poems we discussed there was by Lisel Mueller, a poet I love but don’t spend enough time with. In that poem, the artist Monet refuses an operation to change his eyesight. In this poem, one that seems perfect for this season and this moment, a speaker who is not so famous or celebrated wonders about what makes her life unfold in one way while others’ lives unfold in different ways. The wind isn’t howling here in Austin, but some of the questions remain the same.

“Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.”

"Adrift" by Mark Nepo

One of the things I’ve noted over these years of sharing poetry is that so many poems wrestle with the same themes, especially this: how to honor and celebrate the world while also being conscious and attentive to pain and suffering. In his poem “Adrift,” spiritual teacher Mark Nepo names this paradox directly. This October, with its terrible news and bright autumn color, has been beauty and sadness, sadness and beauty, all the way through.

“This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. ”

"The Night Migrations" by Louise Glück

When Louise Glück was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2020, I was so excited to share one of her poems in the poetry box. I love her poetry, but the more I looked at her dark and elliptical work, the further it seemed from something I’d post on the curb. I think she’d appreciate that, actually. Even her response to winning the prize was a kind of complaint.

But when she died last week at the age of 80, I tried again. And here is “The Night Migrations.” These are dark days, and Louise Gluck deserves the floor.

“these things we depend on,
they disappear”

"First Fall" by Maggie Smith

It was the weekend when the heat finally released us in Austin and people opened windows and flooded the garden stores. It was the weekend when war erupted in Israel and the photos of the missing filled our computer screens. To try to hold all of that at once, plus all of the other things happening in our lives, seems to me the trick of being human.

This morning I put this poem by Maggie Smith in the poetry box, a sort of companion piece to her well-known poem “Good Bones,” which offers us a difficult world that just possibly might be made better. In this poem I feel the complexity of this ever-shifting world and the tenderness of loving and teaching each other through it all.

“The first time you see
something die, you won’t know it might
come back.”

"Plenty" by Kevin Connolly (an excerpt)

A neighbor invited us over tonight for a celebration of Sukkot, the Jewish holiday after Yom Kippur that marks a time to “rejoice in God’s bounty.” The neighbors’ children love to come up our street to check out the poetry box, so I thought I’d bring a poem along with our potluck side dish.

I turned to my friend Adam, who has the dual credentials of being both a poet and the husband of a rabbi. “Plenty” is the first poem that came to mind for him, and it’s just right. It can feel hard to find beauty at the tail end of a hot, dry, difficult summer in Austin, but this poem argues that beauty is all around us even so. Happy Sukkot to those who are celebrating.

Behind the sky there’s a storm

on the way, which, with your luck,

will be a beautiful storm

"September" by Linda Pastan

Because I was traveling, it feels like I’ve lived several versions of September already: a September of misty green hillsides, a September of shaping my mouth around the sounds of Spanish, a September of crowded airports, a September where we’re grateful that the highs in Austin are less than 100 at last, though Chris still looked at me today and said, “I am ready for this summer to be over.”

This gentle little poem from Linda Pastan’s series titled “The Months” captures the in-betweenness of September, the not-quite summer, not-quite fall feeling of suspension that finds us waiting—and wishing—for what comes next.

“the way the green
leaves cling
to their trees
in the strange heat”

"The Laughing Heart" by Charles Bukowski

We installed the poetry box three years ago this September, and it’s offered such a rich form of connection and also plenty of surprises – a car coming up the street to idle in front while someone grabbed a poem, the way e.e. cummings spoke to a neighbor, a front porch visit from the poetry box maker himself. 

This week’s surprise is Charles Bukowski, whom I would have never expected to find his way into the box with all his boozy combativeness. Also a surprise: I found the poem through the newsletter for an heirloom bean company that I love (and am ever an evangelist for). I’m going to be away for a few weeks and don’t have poems ready to go while I’m gone. So it'll be Bukowski seeing us through.

“you can’t beat death
but you can beat death in life, sometimes.”

"Cherries" by Danusha Laméris

Years ago, my husband and I took a vacation to the Columbia River Gorge to escape the Austin heat. Cherries were everywhere. We drank cherry stout at the brew pub and ate cherry pie at a diner. Walking in the town of Hood River, we came across a table along the sidewalk with a big bowl and a sign that said, “Free Cherries. Please help yourself!” It felt like a bit of magic.

This is a very different summer. No long sleeves, no wide bodies of water, no walking around in this heat. (Few people stopping by to see the poetry box either – it’s just too hot for pausing on the pavement!) But there are still cherries. And a poem that celebrates them.

“I looked down at the dark red fruit, each cherry
good in its own, particular way
the way breasts are good or birds or stars.”

"Zen of Tipping" and "Splitting an Order"

Like many things this summer, it’s been a slow time in the poetry box. Our housesitter posted the delightful “Zen of Tipping” weeks ago and I’m only today sending it out and swapping in a new poem, the also delightful “Splitting an Order.” Given the heat, not many people are out walking in Austin anyway. 

Jan Beatty’s poem feels like one of those stories we all love to tell about the quirky, endearing things people in our lives do. And Ted Kooser’s poem, an old favorite, offers its own snapshot of an action in the world, this one infused with the regularity of a long relationship and the tenderness that grows from it. I’m glad that both of these poems exist to help carry us through a long, hot season.

“...he’d go up,
pull out a dollar and say,
Here’s a tip for you.
I think you’re doing a really
good job today.”

— Jan Beatty, "Zen of Tipping"

"New Rooms" by Kay Ryan (and a Texas garden poem)

Greetings from New Mexico! We’ve been traveling, and setting up in new places for five days or eight days or in a chain hotel overnight stay always comes with a touch of disorientation. So I chose this poem for our housesitters (also in new rooms) to place in the box this week. It’s the first time I’ve featured former Poet Laureate Kay Ryan in the box.

Also posted, but not sent out, was Carol Coffee Riposa’s “Vegetable Love in Texas,” a bit of irony, as this summer’s intense heat has meant almost no veggies for harvesting in my own garden beds. But one can always dream of tomatoes.

Stay cool!

“The mind must
set itself up
wherever it goes”

Tankas for What Comes Together" by Tamiko Beyer

Happy Summer! I heard this poem at one of Firefly Creative Writing’s morning coffee sessions, the facilitator sending us into the day with this little gem. I immediately formatted it for the poetry box, and waited until this afternoon to pop it in.

Here in Texas the only waves worth mentioning are heat waves, but perhaps those too “gather us all in the rise.” Stay cool out there.

“I do not believe in the failure of caring
for each other. ”

"Broken" by Alberto Ríos

Last week I visited the class of a friend and colleague and shared with the group an Alberto Ríos poem. I was reminded again how much I love his work. There is both an accessibility and a generosity that I am drawn to, and he deftly says big things in small, precise ways.

This poem was originally published in a journal of the Yale Divinity School, and its theme, that things are forever falling apart and being put back together, is one of both body and spirit. The issue it was in was titled, Spirit and Politics: Finding Our Way, and was published in Fall 2016, so there is, as ever, more that it wants to say.

“Something is always broken
But the world endures the break”

"Full-time Driver" by Marcus Jackson

Everywhere I turn, the kids are finishing up school, donning caps and gowns, looking toward summer. So it seems the perfect time to share this poem by Marcus Jackson that celebrates summer and youthful jobs and the stories we make of them.

I was talking recently about the summer I worked at a clothing store in the mall and my boss sent me to stand in line to buy her Pink Floyd tickets at the record store a few doors down. I didn’t know that I’d look back on those times with affection. At the time I was fixated on how icky it felt to foist an extra belt on someone who just came to browse. Thirty-five years later, I remember the surprise of being near the front of the ticket line as the fans poured in, holding my boss’s cash in my hands.

Of note: A few years ago I posted another summer poem from Jackson, “Ode to Kool-Aid,” and my neighbors snatched every last copy within days. I declared it the most popular poem of the season.

“The richest part was when business
would ebb, and I’d coast the summer streets.”

"Still" (excerpt) by David Cooke

Last month I had the delightful surprise of an email from David Cooke, founder of Poetry Boxes. He built the first poetry box back in 1985 and now his work—and idea—can be found across the country, including on our front curb. 

He was in Austin and wanted to visit my poetry box. An hour later we were having a drink on my front porch and swapping stories. What a treat.

Also a treat is sharing David’s poem this week, which captures some of the mystery of interacting with words tucked in a box in the midst of what might have been an ordinary walk, if there ever is such a thing. Enjoy!

“But this
this is the walk you’ve taken.
It untangles you.”

For two weeks before this, the box held “I have learned to live simply, wisely” by the Russian/Ukranian poet Anna Akhmatova. I never got that one posted, but it’s a wonderful poem.

"Letter from Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz on Seeing His Photograph of Her Hands" by Barbara Rockman

This poem came to me this week through a New Mexico friend, and I loved it immediately. When we visited O’Keeffe’s house in Abiquiú a few years ago, I was struck by the ordinary work of her life – the large vegetable garden, the kitchen stocked with ingredients and cookware. She was both extraordinary and a “plain woman.”

We just came off a weekend of allowing our house to be used for a location for a film crew shooting a commercial, and whatever else that endeavor is, it is the work of hands. Carrying, prepping, decorating, shifting lights and angles, signaling “quiet on the set” after saying it. Setting up and breaking down. There is the thing being made and then the regular, physical labor of making it.

“These are hands that mix paint,
decipher sky. With these hands
I scratch my head at the improbable.”

"Eagle Poem" and "The Man Who Swallowed a Bird"

We spent Easter Sunday in Florida with my mom, donning the festive headpieces she’d made for the occasion and sharing chocolate mousse and apple and berry crumble for dessert. Back home, our pet sitter put Joy Harjo’s “Eagle Poem” into the box, a poem a chosen for a moment when Passover, Ramadan, and Easter coincided. The following weekend a friend shared this strange and charming David Young poem and I immediately prepared it for posting.

 Birds and birds. Playfulness and holiness. Happy Spring to you.

“To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;”

— Joy Harjo, "Eagle Poem"