Poetry (@poetry) • Hey

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**Tree** by Jane Hirschfield It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books— Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life. #poetry
**Question** by May Swenson Body my house my horse my hound what will I do when you are fallen Where will I sleep How will I ride What will I hunt Where can I go without my mount all eager and quick How will I know in thicket ahead is danger or treasure when Body my good bright dog is dead How will it be to lie in the sky without roof or door and wind for an eye With cloud for shift how will I hide? #poetry #writing
"Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” Audre Lorde
“You cannot complete this assignment the day before.” by Jae Nichelle & why not? God took one day to create the earth & it was good
I will enjoy this life. I will open it like a peach in season, suck the juice from every finger, run my tongue over my chin. I will not worry about clichés or uninvited guests peering in my windows. I will love and be loved. Save and be saved a thousand times. I will let the want into **Idea by Kate Baer**
**Blk Girl Art by Jamila Woods, after Amiri Baraka** Poems are bullshit unless they are eyeglasses, honey tea with lemon, hot water bottles on tummies. I want poems my grandma wants to tell the ladies at church about. I want orange potato words soaking in the pot til their skins fall off, words you burn your tongue on, words on sale two for one, words that keep my feet dry. I want to hold a poem in my fist in the alley just in case. I want a poem for dude at the bus stop. Oh you can't talk ma? Words to make the body inside my body less invisible. Words to teach my sister how to brew remedies in her mouth. Words that grow mama's hair back. Words to detangle the kitchen. I won't write poems unless they are an instruction manual, a bus card, warm shea butter on elbows, water, a finger massage to the scalp, a broomstick sometimes used for cleaning and sometimes to soar.
Our Parents by Stephen Dunn Our parents died at least twice, the second time when we forgot their stories, or couldn’t imagine how often they craved love, or felt useless, or yearned for some justice in this world. In their graves, our parents’ need for us is pure, they’re lost without us. Their honeymoon in Havana does or does not exist. That late August in the Catskills— we can decide to make them happy. What is the past if not unfinished work, swampy, fecund, seductively revisable? One of us has spent his life developing respect for the weakness of words, the other for what must be held on to; there may be a chance for us. We try to say what happened in that first house where we were, like most children, the only needy people on earth. We remember what we were forbidden, who got the biggest slice. Our parents, meanwhile, must have wanted something back from us. We know what it is, don’t we? We’ve been alive long enough.
Trees by W.S. Merwin I am looking at trees they may be one of the things I will miss most from the earth though many of the ones I have seen already I cannot remember and though I seldom embrace the ones I see and have never been able to speak with one I listen to them tenderly their names have never touched them they have stood round my sleep and when it was forbidden to climb them they have carried me in their branches
Waiting for My Life by Linda Pastan I waited for my life to start for years, standing at bus stops looking into the curved distance thinking each bus was the wrong bus; or lost in books where I would travel without luggage from one page to another; where the only breeze was the rustle of pages turning, and lives rose and set in the violent colors of suns. Sometimes my life coughed and coughed: a stalled car about to catch, and I would hold someone in my arms, though it was always someone else I wanted. Or I would board any bus, jostled by thighs and elbows that knew where they were going; collecting scraps of talk, setting them down like birdsong in my notebook, where someday I would go prospecting for my life.
I HAD THOUGHT THINGS WERE GOING ALONG WELL But I was mistaken. By John Ashbery
Photograph by Andrea Gibson (excerpt) I wish you were here Autumn is the hardest season The leaves are all falling And they’re falling like they’re falling in love with the ground And the trees are naked and lonely I keep trying to tell them New leaves will come around in the spring But you can’t tell trees those things They’re like me, they just stand there And don’t listen I wish you were here I’ve been missing you like crazy I’ve been hazy eyed Staring at the bottom of my glass again Thinking of that time when it was so full It was like we were tapping the moon for moonshine Or sticking straws into the center of the sun And sipping like icarus would forever kiss The bullets from our guns Live performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZg0ZCYDnaY
Why Did I Dream of You Last Night? By Philip Larkin Why did I dream of you last night? Now morning is pushing back hair with grey light Memories strike home, like slaps in the face; Raised on elbow, I stare at the pale fog beyond the window. So many things I had thought forgotten Return to my mind with stranger pain: —Like letters that arrive addressed to someone Who left the house so many years ago.
Ars Poetica by Aracelis Girmay May the poems be the little snail's trail. Everywhere I go, every inch: quiet record of the foot’s silver prayer. I lived once. Thank you. It was here.