Mr. Write's Page

More poetry that isn’t pretentious and a waste of time.

———

What the Living Do

By Marie Howe

Marie Howe (B. 1950)

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of. It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off. For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless: I am living. I remember you.

———

The Eagle

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson, 1st baron Tennyson (1809-1892)

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

———

I Remember

By Anne Sexton

Anne Gray Harvey Sexton (1928-1974)

By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color — no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.

———

Cherries

By Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962)

A handful of cherries
She gave me in passing,
The wizened old woman,
And wished me good luck —
And again I was dreaming,
A boy in the sunshine,
And life but an orchard
Of cherries to pluck.

———

On a Young Lady’s Sixth Anniversary

By Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Murry (1888-1923)

Baby Babbles — only one,
Now to sit up has begun.

Little Babbles quite turned two
Walks as well as I and you.

And Miss Babbles one, two, three,
Has a teaspoon at her tea.

But her Highness at four
Learns to open the front door.

And her Majesty — now six,
Can her shoestrings neatly fix.

Babbles, Babbles, have a care,
You will soon put up your hair!