–Poem by Kelly Palmer
NOTE: In honor of National Poetry Month, each day a person’s birthday will be celebrated with a poem about or by him/her. The poems come from all over the place.
Tag: love
April 11 Birthday: Mark Strand
Futility in Key West
I was stretched out on the couch, about to doze off, when I imagined a small figure asleep on a couch identical to mine. “Wake up, little man, wake up,” I cried. “The one you’re waiting for is rising from the sea, wrapped in spume, and soon will come ashore. Beneath her feet the melancholy garden will turn bright green and the breezes will be light as babies’ breath. Wake up, before this creature of the deep is gone and everything goes blank as sleep.” How hard I try to wake the little man, how hard he sleeps. And the one who rose from the sea, her moment gone, how hard she has become—how hard those burning eyes, that burning hair.
–Mark Strand
NOTE: In honor of National Poetry Month, each day a person’s birthday will be celebrated with a poem about or by him/her. The poems come from all over the place.
January
Shower the world with crackling leaves,
Dead and limp before but now firm
From frozen dew, this ground your signal
To the creatures you watch in the night.
Shower the broken places with jangles
Of icy prairie grass and let the spring thaw
Spark life never imagined, never believed
In the time of winter’s locked prison.
Shower me with kisses melting hours
Apart, reclaiming late winter sun
When we walked along a silent river
And I saw how you had changed my life.
for Ken
–Shaun Perkins
After October Rain
You lie on the naked bed, the sheets
Finishing the spin cycle, the trailer walls
Shuddering slightly with the motion.
One cat is at your feet, the others
Line the rooms like Egyptian statues
On guard for a dropped piece of cheese. Continue reading “After October Rain”
Crestview Trailer Park, Stillwater OK, 1981
And what I remember
is the traffic of trucks,
the smell of chlorine sharp
as overripe melons
busted open in dead grass
late summer,
the heat of the west-facing metal door
in the afternoon Continue reading “Crestview Trailer Park, Stillwater OK, 1981”
The Bright Crest
You are the surf that rises
to the bright crest of the day,
the shell road at low tide
and the moon above the bay. Continue reading “The Bright Crest”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 