I memorized this during National Poetry Month, May 2025; the poem was shared over the course of a week in the New York Times, and now I recite this to my chickens in the morning when it’s feeding time, and to anyone who will sit still for a minute or two.
Recuerdo, by Edna St. Vincent Millay
We were very tired, we were very merry--
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable--
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hilltop underneath the moon;
And the whistle kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry,
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear
from a dozen of each we had bought somewhere.
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry.
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head
And bought a morning paper which neither of us read.
Ahd she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
Assignment, by Alexandra Fletcher
"Describe a color," she said.
"Use a thesaurus," she said.
"Do it twice."
Obedient student,
I choose orange,
my daughter's first favorite,
"onch," she'd say.
(Rhymes with "conch.")
"What's your favorite color, honey?"
"Onch! Onch!"
I open the online word tool and
see that most
orange synonyms are edible
(the orange, of course. Goes without saying.)
cantelope, apricot,
tangerine, cutie,
salmon,
Catalina garibaldi.
orange is fish and fruit,
a color we eat.
richer/deeper than its father yellow
softer/friendlier than its mother red,
orange light
orange sunrise, sunset wild painted desert sky
orange is red that has licked enough yellow
orange is yellow that's been kissed by red
orange is all the hot sexy fun
with none of the certain pain
that shoots through red
orange is a reef
orange is a flower
orange is a tiger
orange is an ape
orange
the colors of the
delicate impossible jelly
of the eyes,
a color we dream, imagine,
brightly see with eyes tightly closed
face pointed to the sun,
seeing light
eating warmth.
Two about Prayer
Mary Oliver was sent by the Hackett family, and Galway Kinnell, I found
Praying, Mary Oliver It doesn't have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don't try to make them elaborate, this isn't a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another may speak.
Prayer, Galway Kinnell Whatever happens. Whatever what is is is what I want. Only that. But that.
My mom used to joke about death in her later years. I used to glower at her — it made me uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to think about losing her — but I get it now. she was coaching herself. I think about death all of the time, and it’s perfectly okay.
Poem 102: When Death Comes, by Mary Oliver When death comes like the hungry bears 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 of 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.
Anxiety about Dying by Alicia Ostriker It isn’t any worse than what I discover in the dentist’s chair under the nitrous oxide. The whole jaw is going, I complain, the gums, the bone, two enormous fillings lost. What do I need? Maybe a guillotine? says my dentist, the joker. The only thing I have to fear is fear itself, I tell him. You believe that bullshit? he says setting to work on my rotting bicuspid. Now comes the good part. Breathing the happy gas. I get answers to all the questions I had about death but was afraid to ask. Will there be pain? Yes. Will my desires still be unsatisfied? Yes. My human potential remain unrealized? Yes. Can a person stop minding about that? Certainly. Can I commend my spirit to the seventeen angels whistling outside the dentist’s window? Of course. How nice the happy gas. What a good friend. I unclench my sweaty little hand. I wave goodbye to my teeth. It seems they are leaving by train for a vacation. I’ll meet them in the country when I can.
Many great spiritual teachers recommend a daily meditation on death. It serves to wake us up to the day around us — a day nobody promised us we would have.
I had the idea I was going to write more haiku
january 7 2022 bring yoga into it the day wakes in your hips sunlight in the bones
the body may ache but it can do everything it needs to do and for that I am grateful
When Rasmi discovered this one, he sent it right away
Poem #133: the Summer Day, by Mary Oliver Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean-- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she shifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, now to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I've been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
