Sometimes - Mary Oliver

4.

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

#poetry #todaysPoem #poem

If you want #poetry in your timeline, this #FollowFriday is for you.

@bookgaga — Booklover contributing to #TodaysPoem

@brianbilston — Social media poet with six published collections

@Codgerverse — "Poet Laureate of the Eastview Cement Workers Union"

@joel — Artist, writer in the American Southwest

@TashPoetry — Poet, writer, martial artist

@UberZeitgeist — Trial lawyer who posts poems daily

@worded_art — Poet, author, lyricist Randy Gerritse

@wordswithnima — South-asian writer, poet

#todayspoem by Bruce Andrews

https://mailchi.mp/theparisreview.org/poem-143409?e=ff1248e9fa

I mother them
the way I do anyone I love

from "My Worries Have Worries" by Laura Villareal

https://onbeing.org/poetry/my-worries-have-worries/

#TodaysPoem #poetry #poem

A Small Needful Fact

Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
--Ross Gay from Split This Rock's 'The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database'

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Georges Seurat)

Gwendolyn MacEwen

#todayspoem

…break in the light
…take in the light
…
…rake in the light
…
…shake in the light
…
…wake in the light
…
…make in the light
…
…for God’s sake, in the light

-(remix of) John Drury

https://mailchi.mp/theparisreview.org/poem-143429?e=ff1248e9fa

#todayspoem

Flood

When all's said, and done,
if civilisation drowns
the last colour to go
will be gold -
the light on a glass,
the prow of a gondola,
the name of a rosewood piano
as silence engulfs it.

And first to return
to a waterlogged world,
the rivers slipping out to sea,
the cities steaming,
will be gold,
one dip from Bellini's brush,
feathers of angels, Cinquecente nativities,
and all that follows.
--Gillian Clarke

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Patricia Pinto)

This box is for a statement about the Poem.
Surely a poem is what remains unboxed.
And although the first sentence above may sound merely procedural,
yet you see its necessity for appreciating the second sentence.
On the untidy border between those two
lies everything you want the Day to give you.
I hope it does.

—Anne Carson

https://poets.org/poem/short-talk-pain

#todayspoem

Was going to grab a book of poetry off the shelf to jump around and find something expansive for #TodaysPoem, but glanced at my e-mail and found Beatrice Ravenel's "The Humming-bird" (1923) as today's Poem-A-Day.

https://poets.org/poem/humming-bird

"And a humming-bird darts head first, / Splitting the air, keen as a spurt of fire shot from the blow-pipe, / Cracking a star of rays; dives like a flash of fire, / Forked tail lancing the air, into the immobile trumpet; / Stands on the air, wings like a triple shadow / Whizzing around him."

That ticks the "expansive" box for me, perfection!

Because we used to have leaves
and on damp days
our muscles feel a tug,
painful now, from when roots
pulled us into the ground

and because our children believe
they can fly, an instinct retained
from when the bones in our arms
were shaped like zithers and broke
neatly under their feathers

from "Why We Tell Stories" by Lisel Mueller

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=33959

#poetry #poem #TodaysPoem

The Fall of Summer

pastel June roses
afternoon picnic baskets
hiking a mountain meadow
the wanderlust thirst
as open as the ocean
beneath a fair freckled sky

drunk on sunshine wine
sunburns and blistered noses sticky glazed humidity
crowds of rowdy kids
traffic congested beaches
August comes, longing for fall
--Michelle Faulkner

#verseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Jan Matson)

a song that goes
this is
home?
is this
home?
is this
a home?
this is
a home?
what home
is this?

- Shivram Gopinath

https://poets.org/poem/pottu-dot

#todayspoem

Lowkey feeling like I can’t tell the difference between chance and choice anymore.

- Poetry Trapper Keeper

https://www.poetrytrapperkeeper.com/p/transcript-from-the-dinner-party

#todayspoem

There is software throwing dice carved so the noise they make sounds like a voice and the avalanche of their binary faces looks like a human one.

…

Repeat. Throw binary dice and output them as words. Repeat.

-Marcelo Rinesi

https://adversarialmetanoia.substack.com/p/the-computational-complexity-of-love

#todayspoem

July

Reading days tatter down
to dust in the library,
summer heat writing itself
as beads of sweat across
your body, dampening
all you touch.
I soothe your bronzed back in the evening
with a cold shower,
my tongue a brush
on canvas, painting myself
onto your taut, muscular chest.
Writing you into a poem.
--András Gerevich (tr.Andrew Fentham)

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

(Art credit: Arthur Getz)

Christopher Patton, from "Dumuzi" (Gaspereau Press, 2020)

#poetry #todayspoem

#TodaysPoem is "Ginger" by Adrienne Su.

"We’ll affirm its arrival
when it’s not in the titles
of recipes in which it figures
quietly, as moderate slivers."

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/151481/ginger-5dc04e22270b5

Enjoyed for its play of humor and unease, each resonating with the other.

Assaulting
a formally dressed old woman
the wisteria

-Natsuishi

https://www.thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/items/show/61

#todayspoem #haiku

#TodaysPoem from Poem-A-Day is "Skull Song" by Genevieve Taggart -- and what an opening!

The skin of the sea was thick, to-night,
And the tone of the sea was dull;
When I found by the edge of the sullen sea
The half of a sea-god’s skull.

https://poets.org/poem/skull-song for the rest.

Mystery for days; imagery through sparseness. The repetition and cadence compel you from line to line so naturally. A delight!