Category: Uncategorized

I just learned that Mary Oliver has died. She is one of my favorite poets, and one who inspired me with her plain language and sensitive observations. The world is lonelier without her.

When Death Comes

When death comes
like a hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom; taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

– Mary Oliver
From New and Selected Poems

In this beautiful poem by Rajani Radhakrishnan, a city becomes a woman.

Late afternoon in the valley, the trees
wear halos. Then twilight steals the sun,
kitchen lights blink on like stars,
and coming home is a sigh
and the smile of someone waiting.
Your day is told in half sentences
and nods and questions answered —
nothing new, but new enough to tell again.
After supper, after gin rummy and pages
turning and the rhythmic click of a sweater
growing row by row, bed greets you
like a childhood friend, and sleep
keeps company with the blue black sky
and the owl’s whispered flight.

– Sarah Russell
First published by Your Daily Poem

Another beautiful poem from Rajani Radhakrishnan. Her lyricism and imagery are outstanding.

We make love like jackals at a kill;
fall back empty of each other,
of ourselves.

  –Sarah Russell
 First published in one-sentence poems
 

I am thrilled to have my poem “A Gospel of Birds” featured with the work of Rajani Radhakrishnan and Carrie Van Horn at Poets United today. Thanks Sherry Marr and all of the folks who commented on our work.

http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/2018/06/poems-of-week-by-rajani-sarah-and-carrie.html

Strength and sadness and anger in Rajani Radhakrishnan‘s words.