Saturday Morning

Saturday Morning

A cacophony of alarm clocks in each room
Buzzing or beeping met with outstretched arms
Blind-slapping "off" buttons.

Sounds of morning life are slowly crescendoing to pleasant pitch.
Chickens are clucking in the yard, clamoring to be uncooped.
The house dog’s tail wags a rhythmic thumping of the hard-wood floors,
      Slowly picking up tempo as dawn’s dimmer switch rises brighter.
The house joists themselves creak awake as they expand with the
      Temperatures of the solar appearance.

But the beds stay filled with the slowed breathing of
Still slumbering bodies,
Blankets nudging up necks,
Heads burrowing deeper under blankets,
Stealing minutes more of sleep,
A few more minutes.
Eyes closed, but pupils still adjusting dilation
Under their lids to the emerging daylight.
Just a few more minutes, please.
Please.

Today this house will not wake early.
It’s Saturday.

Poem: "11th Birthday"

11^th Birthday

Today a birthday, ably made and quite happy, indeed.

This flushed, pink perennial rising lightly from her tousled bed,
Hair in right angles crossing in wispy strands,
Angled dandelion petals poised for flight at the
Hint of the breathy disturbance of morning’s call.

How she floats dreamily to the breakfast table, unperturbed!
Her line of approach a bit akilter, though she
Alights unfailingly on her proper perch, and settles
Softly in nourishment’s nest, eyes still squinting, half-closed.

As for me, a kind of birdwatcher I become,
Observing this wondrous peregrination from
Behind my binoculars, with breath caught,
Held for as long as possible, to prolong the moment
Before she catches my scent and, with a sly eye,
Spies me watching.

Our eyes locked, her slender neck slightly tilted in my direction,
My heartbeat suspended, she
Leans forward
And effortlessly, easily, unhesitatingly, even brazenly
Blows out the birthday candle.

Poem of the Day: Gerard Manley Hopkins - "Brothers"

The following poem by the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins has always been a favorite of mine since my first exposure to it in high school. I don't think I've ever encountered a poet whose language usage is so rich and densely packed with meaning, with an unrivaled beauty of rhythm. Here it is:

Brothers
How lovely the elder brother’s
Life all laced in the other’s,
Lóve-laced!—what once I well
Witnessed; so fortune fell.
When Shrovetide, two years gone,
Our boys’ plays brought on
Part was picked for John,
Young Jóhn: then fear, then joy
Ran revel in the elder boy.
Their night was come now; all
Our company thronged the hall;
Henry, by the wall,
Beckoned me beside him:
I came where called, and eyed him
By meanwhiles; making my play
Turn most on tender byplay.
For, wrung all on love’s rack,
My lad, and lost in Jack,
Smiled, blushed, and bit his lip;
Or drove, with a diver’s dip,
Clutched hands down through clasped knees—
Truth’s tokens tricks like these,
Old telltales, with what stress
He hung on the imp’s success.
Now the other was bráss-bóld:
Hé had no work to hold
His heart up at the strain;
Nay, roguish ran the vein.
Two tedious acts were past;
Jack’s call and cue at last;
When Henry, heart-forsook,
Dropped eyes and dared not look.
Eh, how áll rúng!
Young dog, he did give tongue!
But Harry—in his hands he has flung
His tear-tricked cheeks of flame
For fond love and for shame.
Ah Nature, framed in fault,
There’s comfort then, there’s salt;
Nature, bad, base, and blind,
Dearly thou canst be kind;
There dearly thén, deárly,
I’ll cry thou canst be kind.

Poem of the Day

by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

THOU art not lovelier than lilacs,—no,
Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair
Than small white single poppies,—I can bear
Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though
From left to right, not knowing where to go,
I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there
Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear
So has it been with mist,—with moonlight so.

Like him who day by day unto his draught
Of delicate poison adds him one drop more
Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten,
Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed
Each hour more deeply than the hour before,
I drink—and live—what has destroyed some men.

Poem of the Day: The Emperor of Ice Cream

by Wallace Stevens

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Poem of the Day: (Carrion Comfort)

I am heartsick at how much my family has been consumed by a deep and profound pain of spirit that has been visited upon us by and within what should be a comforting sanctuary. Not by any one particular person or group of people, but simply by unfortunate circumstance. Why? Where is God in all of this? I don't require God to exercise power, to heal, and to make things right. I don't require God to actively do anything. I just want God simply to be present. But I don't feel that presence. Kierkegaard was so right about that "sickness unto death." I don't want to despair, especially to despair of faith and despair of God; and I hate that despair can't be helped; and, worse, that despair recreates itself and feeds itself. And so I've been turning not to Nietzsche who believed a will to power could subdue despair (how wrong he is!), but rather to that Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose poetry embraces despair at the same time that his gorgeous words and imagery beautify it: a recognition that despair cannot be conquered but that it can be adorned. A bit of hope within the hopelessness. This particular poem has been a comfort to me recently:

(Carrion Comfort)

NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

Cicero's Father Eulogizes

Behold a tattered toga
Ripped asunder by this display of
Bald treachery: Your lifeless
Head and hand tacked unceremoniously
(A wordless bulletin!)
To the site of your silver-tongued triumphs.

My liver is a Pompeiic eruption of
Paternal devastation.

I suffered you once proudly past me, my son.
It was a painful passing of the torch.

You always had the brilliant last word,
The perfect argument.
I could never contest.

Your famous fiery rhetoric is but
A fading whisper,
A muffled sob, a cooling ember.
As am I.
The words have flown with you and
Escape me.
There is nothing more to say.