Illuminate

17.02.17

I have lost myself
In everyone
Absorbing
What you could not
I have died
with your shadows
Dispersed inside me

I consumed the poison
Before remembering
How to access the source
Who draws out
the toxins
[without receiving
or deflecting them]
To transform
Black that even night
Refuses --
To light
Embracing darkness
Day knows only as
Separate from itself,
Shade and hiding
Places for secrets

I go now
Not to hide
But to unbury,
Unveil my
Self
Before the stone
Has been set upon
the grave
Containing my body
Decomposing
All but entirely
Covered with dirt

I am no longer
Able to accommodate
Death as a companion
Denying
The Source

I run from
the grave
Gravity not heavy
Lifts me

Is this Resurrection?
Maybe --
This is more
than runner's high --
to Know
Where I go
without having to know

I check my compass
Only to make certain
that I am 
Directed
To and not away from
the One who can
Hold the Many
Shadows and still
Remain brilliant

I run away
To run
To life

We will
Know each other
Again

-- Mary Anne Stewart, completed
Feb. 22, 2017

One More from Carl S.

I can't resist this one . . . 

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967).  Smoke and Steel. 1922.

V. Mist Forms

33. Wind Song

LONG ago I learned how to sleep,
In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away,
In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all,
In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, “Who, who are you?”
I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer afternoon and there I took a sleep lesson.	5
There I went away saying: I know why they sleep, I know how they trap the tricky winds.
Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind and how to forget and how to hear the deep whine,
Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night stars:
Who, who are you?
Who can ever forget	10
listening to the wind go by
counting its money
and throwing it away?

Carl Sandburg Tuesday: How Yesterday Looked

*I dedicate this post to the seemingly endless wind in Salt Lake City that kept me up for nights and finally had some tears to show today, for all its moaning.*

How Yesterday Looked

THE HIGH horses of the sea broke their white riders
On the walls that held and counted the hours
The wind lasted.

Two landbirds looked on and the north and the east
Looked on and the wind poured cups of foam
And the evening began.

The old men in the shanties looked on and lit their
Pipes and the young men spoke of the girls
For a wild night like this.

The south and the west looked on and the moon came
When the wind went down and the sea was sorry
And the singing slow.

Ask how the sunset looked between the wind going
Down and the moon coming up and I would struggle
To tell the how of it.

I give you fire here, I give you water, I give you
The wind that blew them across and across,
The scooping, mixing wind.

Carl Sandburg

Sleeping Awake

what PTSD sometimes feels like

17.02.07 

Strange stillness
I can't tell if my heart
Beats fast or stops
What time it is
What is time
An alarm rings
Over and over
Then snoozes
The wind is tired
From howling
Moans a low
Almost whisper
Almost a chorus
Harmonizing
Agony, almost a
Whisper slowly
Dying or being
Absorbed into --
What is this?
Strange silence
Alarm still not
Waking or
receiving the
Alert to join
The frantic calm
That i have known
In other times
of Purposeful
Ability to be
Still as stone
But also ready
to pounce into
What? I listen
for that alarm
Remain Paralyzed
Until it screams
its demands
To wake
and pretend the night
does not exist

Carl Sandburg Tuesday

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967).  Chicago Poems.  1916.

108. Last Answers

I WROTE a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color.     I answered:         5 The whole world was mist once long ago and some day it will all go back to mist, Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers Go running back to dust and mist.

Remembering Wisława Szymborska, 1923–2012

Wisława Szymborska died five years ago today -- on Feb. 1, 2012. 

I have only known of her since December 24, 2016, and she has already changed my life in significant ways. 

This poem is dedicated to a poet friend who introduced me to this Polish poet (via Map). I specifically chose Clare Cavanagh's translation, knowing she is a valid scholar, authorized to translate Wislawa's poetry.

Sources: 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/48271

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/translator-notes/detail/48271

Consolation

Related Poem Content Details

BY WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

TRANSLATED BY CLARE CAVANAGH

Darwin. 

They say he read novels to relax, 

But only certain kinds: 

nothing that ended unhappily. 

If anything like that turned up, 

enraged, he flung the book into the fire. 

True or not, 

I’m ready to believe it. 

Scanning in his mind so many times and places, 

he’d had enough of dying species, 

the triumphs of the strong over the weak, 

the endless struggles to survive, 

all doomed sooner or later. 

He’d earned the right to happy endings, 

at least in fiction 

with its diminutions. 

Hence the indispensable 

silver lining, 

the lovers reunited, the families reconciled, 

the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded, 

fortunes regained, treasures uncovered, 

stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways, 

good names restored, greed daunted, 

old maids married off to worthy parsons, 

troublemakers banished to other hemispheres, 

forgers of documents tossed down the stairs, 

seducers scurrying to the altar, 

orphans sheltered, widows comforted, 

pride humbled, wounds healed over, 

prodigal sons summoned home, 

cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean, 

hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation, 

general merriment and celebration, 

and the dog Fido, 

gone astray in the first chapter, 

turns up barking gladly 

in the last.

Source: Poetry (April 2006)

Can I Call You Liberty?

​
American Robin,
perched above our garage at noon
I have never felt so welcomed
Home as when I saw you there
Today, alive with stillness
Not concerned with winter
  or the greed of people
Visible in the air 

                  You breathed
as you began to sing.

I am not proud of much
   called American,
   but I am proud of you,
True to your name --
Flying when you must go,
Knowing earth and woods
   when you stay.

Thank you for honoring
 Red, White, and Blue
   this first day of cold,
   not frozen --
Sky with color,
   not January
Thank you for being there
      in the center,
   of my sight and of this day
Red-breasted and content
   to pause -- 

     without thought
   of losing your freedom
I witnessed, Joined
     without thought
   of wondering if

You called me
   to notice you there --
Just before you took flight.

Can I call you Liberty?

Your presence,
   a sigh of relief in my heart

Unfamiliar and certain

Even if it was only 

   a moment where 

I forgot to be sad,
I will carry your song,

  hold it for later forgetting --

the brief anticipation of
Spring's arrival.