Day 27 brings us a poem from Oregon poet Mark Thalman. “Moving Into Night” first appeared in Poetpourri, and later in Verse Daily. The poem also appears in Mark’s full-length collection, Catching the Limit (© 2009, Fairweather Press).


THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

As with yesterday’s poem from Celeste Thompson, Mark puts us in the water again. In this case, the reader, along with the narrator, merge with the calm, placid scene of pale stars that dot the lake, and shove off into the coming darkness.

Moving Into Night

After dinner dishes have been washed and put away,
I walk down to the dock.

Clouds hover against snow-capped peaks.
The sun, already below the horizon, turns glaciers pink.

Shadows stretch across the hills
like blankets being drawn up for the night.

Along the distant shore,
one last fisherman trolls for kokanee…

Below my feet, trout meander between pilings
glide over dappled stones.

The moon rises. On the water,
it is shattered by each wave.

With cupped hands, I scoop up a brilliant shard
and wash my face with wet light.

Soon, the wind dies, and the moon is again whole.
Pale stars, floating lanterns, dot the lake.

I untie my boat, shove off,
and lifting the oars, row across the heavens.

**
A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day 26 brings us Portland-area poet Celeste Thompson, with a poem entitled “Looking for Whales.”

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

After a day spent searching, the poem’s narrator settles back into evening only to spot what may or may not be a whale. It’s a question of faith, and Celeste brings us to the brink quite naturally.

Looking for Whales

On the troller Mr. Max, green swells
slap-fling us airborne for a split second.
Salt spray mists our lips, our hair,
and we grip the rails smiling,
searching. I scan the horizon for hours,
looking for the telltale spray
from the Gray Whale cow
and calf seen swimming in the area,
but we see nothing.
Later in our hotel room you ask for silence
while the cello plays Adagio in G Minor.
This is my favorite part.
Just then I look outside the window and see a spray,
or is it the surf hitting a rock?
I feel the warm thrill
of believing in something I can’t see below the surface.

**
A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day 24 brings us Oregon poet Heather Strang, with a poem entitled “Koloa Gardens.” The poem appears in her full-length collection, Anatomy of the Heart (© 2009, iUniverse).


THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

Heather provides a tongue-in-cheek look at “domestic bliss” between two souls who seem to have little in common until the spirits (in this case, rum and wine) bring them together every other night.

Koloa Gardens

Domestic bliss
came easy
the television on
soup cooking on the stove
two souls
circling one another like figure
eights
you yell at the game
I read poetry
and we are complete
it only took a good glass of
Chardonnay
and a rum and Coke
before we knew it we were
tangled up
in this
apartment in the tropics
a question mark for the future
sex every other night
like clock work.

uncle same would be so
proud.

**
A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day 22 brings us Oregon poet Scot Siegel, with a poem entitled “Autumn Turns Through Stratified Wars.” The poem previously appeared in The New Verse News, October, 2009, and will appear in Scot’s forthcoming collection, Skeleton Says (© 2010, Finishing Line Press).

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

Scot starts off with a musing that seems very tied to the moment and place, but by the fourth stanza, we sense that we are about to shoot off elsewhere. Soon all color is gone from the sky, and sounds that a moment ago arrived in a breeze seem to come in a rumble. The poem concludes with a reminder that we are all being summoned to the same end.

Autumn Turns Through Stratified Wars

A few little leaves alight on the sleeper wind
lemon, iron-orange, vermilion
but there’s no dive-swiping gnat-catching tonight

Some songbirds sense the slack-season upon us
stillness readies the river, trees glimmer
and we lean uneasily into the quiet . . .

Three warblers balance on one blackberry cane
not ordinary warblers, yellow-breasted chats
gone silent in the breeze––

There’s no yellow chip; no whistle, caw, nor rattle
just three imperceptible heartbeats screaming
through silver thorns & bramble––

                    *

Is their night not unlike our country?
Somewhere, a raptor hovers, drags her talons
over Arab neighborhoods, while we lie awake . . .

In my wife’s eyes a blue flame flickers
World News, a helicopter turns, delivering
or receiving the dead . . .

We hardly notice midnight passing over
as we tilt and spin on the dreadful wing of a hawk
Who says she loves us?

Crows on our tail, relentless––
I think I hear one say:

          Come home

**
A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day 18 brings us Nancy Flynn, a fellow product of Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley. Nancy was kind enough to share her poem, “Them Apples,” which first appeared in the collection, The Hours of Us (© 2007, Finishing Line Press).

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

In very tight and thoughtful language, Nancy brings us back around to some of the emotions Alison Apotheker shared on Day 7 — a mother’s love, worry, musings and memories. Nancy lulls us through a peaceful remembrance until the end of the fourth stanza, then jackknifes us into an intense moment of flesh and blood.

Them Apples

Before the rain, yellow and green leaves
teetered on the branch like nightingales and crows
balancing opposite ends of a clothesline.
All those years, you hated field trips;
I lied, promising you a ride in a car.

There were dozens of bushels and ladders,
obstacles in the Cornell Orchard where you,
an undeniably growing boy-child,
careened between other race-around kids.

Maybe I need to re-christen those days
Sunset rather than Gala, the defining cultivar
for my years of mothering alone.

It seems like no time
since the child-rearing manuals failed
even when I revisit that slow
shuffle-dance through triage, after the car hit you,
drunk on your bike, in the moment

you somersaulted over the windshield,
the down from your jacket liberated,
your back a drag strip road rash, and me,
in my white linen dress
bloodied where I gathered you up.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Nothing says taxes like long lines and drinking. With tax day in mind, it’s my pleasure to feature two poems from Carlos Reyes, “In the Line at the Post Office,” and “Shot Glass.” Both poems appear The Book of Shadows (© 2009, Lost Horse Press), his recent collection of new and selected poems.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEMS

The poems exemplify what Carlos does best — drill down to revelation through clean, thoughtful, and well-crafted language, while letting images carry and drive them forward. They remind me of Whitman’s adage that sometimes the power of a work has as much to do with what’s not being said as it does with what rests on the page.

In the Line at the Post Office


The man near
the head of the line

turns to face us
licks stamps

his tongue out
like someone

taking communion.
Up on the wall

Christ on the clock
arms outstretched

says quarter to three.
That his right hand tries

to raise itself, that
his left hand slumps

is an illusion.
The waterclock

has stopped, the
last seconds dry

on his pale wrists.

**

Shot Glass

With the bottom
of the thick glass

he works chancres
into the mahogany

the heel of his hand
rests on what

germs reside there
though the bar

is wiped clean
and shines in the

light of the afternoon
sun stabbing through

the smoky glass
The bar is filthy

half the lives
who come here

are lost in the
dirty wiping rag

the other half
in the porous wood

plank where they
have left

—scratched there
with coins’ serrated edges—

their scars

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day 14 brings us Oregon poet Mary Hope, and her poem, “Equinox.”

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

This poem feels like an abstract still-life — a series of tactile images covered in an extra layer of color and drip. Do we linger with the snow, follow the finch, or stay with the blind cat as he gazes into a world “which is now shadow”?

Equinox

And it is done. Snow this morning, Doak Mountain a promise.
A yellow finch topping the cup of snow on the monk pine
and the blind cat Kiki, making his way across the lawn
as slow as a diver. The great bell of his head lifted,
he guides by sound and temperature, his body forever
taking him east, he crosses into the aspen grove, pauses to pat
a rock, walks across three more and then finds the large volcanic
slab, snowless, out of the wind. There he sits, gazing
at the world which is now shadow; how much depth or light
I can only guess. Face into the sun, eyes slits, birds
slowly forgetting he is not statue.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day 13 brings us two poems from Oregon poet, John Morrison. The first, “Black Bead,” comes from his first full-length collection, Heaven of the Moment (© 2007, Fairweather Books); the second, “Your Dark,” is a new piece he graciously shared with us.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEMS

“Black Bead,” like Bruce Weigl’s poem, “Eddy,” takes us through the unspoken tenderness that exists between men. Here the narrator recaps an instance where his father relies on the tools he knows in order to relieve his son’s pain. “Your Dark,” meanwhile, harkens back to Peter Sears’ poem from Day 1, “We Can Help Each Other.” John addresses the questions posed in the other poem, and pushes readers forward into new considerations.

Black Bead


Hunched like a grey bear over
my ten-year-old hand, my father spun
in his knobby fingers a drill bit
thin as a toothpick on my bruised thumbnail.

In the solitary game where I slammed
grey rock against grey rock, the rock
all our dry acre had in abundance,
I missed on my way to open the color

inside: sunrise, ochre, rust, willow green.
Under my thumb’s clear, fine shell
a thundercloud appeared in the pink sky,
a cloud that brooded, brooded but wouldn’t

rain, only throbbed darker. He never
offered what he knew, not the science
of winds, not constellations, not the curve
of the earth, but he would go quiet, lean in,

and try to fix anything. Clumsy about gentleness,
silver flashed in his hand. He whispered,
How brave you are, as he churned, then coaxed
out the pinhole a first bead of black blood.

**

Your Dark

     with a nod to Peter Sears

Is your dark never silky

like old port or soft as the underside

of a calendula petal with your eyes

closed, but is your dark more like a knobby

patch of summer tar mounded in

a pothole, the same tar the dumb

kid would twist off in a wad

to chew like Black Jack gum? I mean,

without any of the warm light

in that memory, just the oily,

shiny, black and sticky, a syrup

down your throat and nose, in ears

and eyes until you’re full

or swallowed or is your dark

more like mine, a black gravel

with a few, flickering grey

pebbles sifted in, all in

motion like a slow storm, a fine

emery cloth on your skin, a grim

spa, rejuvenating, yes, but no doubt

grinding me down.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day 12 brings us Pamela Steele, and her poem, “To the Woman Single Again,” from the collection Paper Bird.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

Pamela leads us into the poem with a touch of dry, “Why me?” humor that punctuates a seemingly exhausting period of inquiry, bewilderment and self-doubt. From there, the poem takes us through a moment of reprieve and nighttime contemplation, then guides us into a morning filled with images, colors, and a sense of moving on.

To the Woman Single Again

Yesterday in the public library, a man stopped by the table
where you were reading Carolyn Forche, leaned down
and mumbled something with rubber band lips that you
asked him to repeat. A ribbon of drool fell from his mouth
as he said, Are you a boy or a girl? In your best library voice,
you whispered Girl, and he sidled away, leaving you distracted
and remembering how you complained to a friend about lesbians
in Kroger who stare at you and your butch hair
until she finally said, For God’s sake, put on some makeup
and earrings! Later, when you took off your coat in the diner,
a car salesman at the counter stared at your wild
breasts and you thought, I just can’t win.

Likely, there are nights when you fear you will always be alone,
wondering how you will manage the back stairs when you are old.
Tonight, put on some Dylan, maybe “Blood on the Tracks,” and pace
from the couch to the window and back again. Feel rough wood
beneath your feet. Forget about your hair and your father
who joked he’d need a whole wall in the family room
just for pictures of your husbands. Resist applying the Buddhist
principle of only so many breaths in a lifetime
to say, orgasms or the number of photos in which you are smiling.

In the morning, put on your coat, walk through the back door
and down the stairs. Follow the alley to the street where
a row of Victorians stand in scoured yards.
See past the littered hedges and ruined Christmas wreaths.
Find the purple crocuses floating on the dry grass.
Breathe. Wait. Breathe.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**

Day three brings us Joe Millar, with a poem entitled “Doorway” from his most recent full-length collection, Fortune (© 2007, Eastern Washington University Press).

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE POEM

This poem reminds me very much of yesterday’s selection from Penelope Schott. Here again we encounter ghostlike figures that pop up in our periphery, visitations that dredge strange memories in their wake. Joe’s work always begins with the earth and moves out from there, carrying silt and mud with it. In “Doorway,” he stop us on a trail and refocuses our eyes just off the path.

Doorway

      for my parents

They do not come back for long
from that far country,
appearing in momentary changing light
or walking in the forest after rain.
I follow deer tracks etched in the path
where the stream runs down
and shadows and the green ribs
of grassblades move.
My mother stops to rest
exactly here, leaning on his arm
still corded with muscle.
The war ended six months ago
and they think nobody else will die,
watching cattails brush the shore
talking in low tones by the water.

**

A Poet a Day is a month-long celebration of poets and poetry, in honor of National Poetry Month. Writers reserve all rights to their work, and all work appears with their permission.

**