Photobooth Wedding

My friends Matt & Lee got married! I had the honor of being asked to marry them, and I tried my darndest. They rented a photobooth which was, as you can imagine, a dream come true.

Windows for the Room

If I were ever to publish my manuscript, I wish I could have photos next to some of the poems, as if the poems were the room or the atmosphere in the room, and the photos were the windows letting you look out. I often don't know what to say on this blog, so I'll put up some windows.

Four windows for now:

Summer

It's the 4th of July and there's an ice cream truck playing its music outside. Everything feels quite perfect, except that I wonder where Summer is. Stanley Kunitz seems to have wondered the same...


Touch Me
Stanley Kunitz

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

A Fine Offering

For Whom The Bells Tolls
John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

This Is a Pantoum, Daniel

I sent my friend Daniel a poem and he asked its form. About a month ago I couldn't stop reading this poem below which we published in Agni. I based my poem heavily upon this one. It's in the form of a Pantoum.


Pantoum: But You Are Gone
Richard Hoffman

i.m. RJH 1950 –1972

I thought for a long time
if I was very quiet
for a long time
I might recall your voice.

If I was very quiet
I might long for you so long
I might recall your voice
as if my ear could sift the wind.

I might long for you so long,
for words you had spoken,
as if my ear could sift the wind
for things you said,

for words you had spoken,
that if I searched my memory
for things you said,
I might find you again;

that if I searched my memory
for a long time,
I might find you again
I thought for a long time.

Weekend America, Love

Love, Poetry, America, 8 minutes.

http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/programs/2007/02/10/roses_are_red.html

It's Really Snowing, and I Wish I Was Still in Bed

Instead work is good, as is rediscovering and honoring things I love.

***

i love you much(most beautiful darling)
ee cummings

i love you much(most beautiful darling)

more than anyone on the earth and i
like you better than everything in the sky

-sunlight and singing welcome your coming

although winter may be everywhere
with such a silence and such a darkness
noone can quite begin to guess

(except my life)the true time of year-

and if what calls itself a world should have
the luck to hear such singing(or glimpse such
sunlight as will leap higher than high
through gayer than gayest someone's heart at your each

nearness)everyone certainly would(my
most beautiful darling)believe in nothing but love