4 of mine to catch up
Oh how time flies. Whoops. 4 mixed-bag poems for April, very fragmentary.
_
Sleep is a bothersome lover,
woos me all day long,
kisses me under my covers,
shuts my troubles down,
and yet each morning sleep is gone
and I feel worse than before
sleep came, since all relief is done,
and I must still keep going on.
_
The fiery dart, the firework, the spark struck
boom! from nowhere, out of the grey and given day
this clarity, this you, this 'remember me'.
It stings. You meant it to, you meant it to burn.
You saw how I was in the world, then in the house,
and then the room, and now I am just in my head,
no-one can get in, except I forgot about you.
Look a little fire, you lit me, I am a spit of light.
_
On the outside of the circle is a trembling,
a circling of shuffling feet,
the eggs are harboured in their heat,
there they wait for the mothers and keep moving.
A moving, a constant moving, inward,
the family of penguins, related by death
and the life they huddle to protect
circling, joining, always going inward.
Somehow the return will come at exactly the right moment,
she will know, all of the mothers will,
and how?
A certain trembling in their soul, or their wings,
their flightless certainty,
and why?
The inward, the way they move for each other,
the harbouring, they know more than we, and we
do not know how to make that return, or that shuffled
dance
_
Follow through is the issue
Keeping the eye on the ball
Or even knowing where the ball is
What the ball is, before it has whipped
By and you are left with shame
At your back because that ball
Was your love of the game,
You let your love pass you
And you didn't even see it.
Follow through is the issue
That determines success in everything,
And the worst is to commit
To the shot, and then forget
That your commitment was the point
Not the shot. If you hit well
and good, so be it. If you hit
bad, for you it isn't the end,
The only thing to remember
Is to hit in the first place.
_
3. is based on a passage from Don Miller's discussion of the wonders of penguins in Blue Like Jazz, my latest book buy.
_
Sleep is a bothersome lover,
woos me all day long,
kisses me under my covers,
shuts my troubles down,
and yet each morning sleep is gone
and I feel worse than before
sleep came, since all relief is done,
and I must still keep going on.
_
The fiery dart, the firework, the spark struck
boom! from nowhere, out of the grey and given day
this clarity, this you, this 'remember me'.
It stings. You meant it to, you meant it to burn.
You saw how I was in the world, then in the house,
and then the room, and now I am just in my head,
no-one can get in, except I forgot about you.
Look a little fire, you lit me, I am a spit of light.
_
On the outside of the circle is a trembling,
a circling of shuffling feet,
the eggs are harboured in their heat,
there they wait for the mothers and keep moving.
A moving, a constant moving, inward,
the family of penguins, related by death
and the life they huddle to protect
circling, joining, always going inward.
Somehow the return will come at exactly the right moment,
she will know, all of the mothers will,
and how?
A certain trembling in their soul, or their wings,
their flightless certainty,
and why?
The inward, the way they move for each other,
the harbouring, they know more than we, and we
do not know how to make that return, or that shuffled
dance
_
Follow through is the issue
Keeping the eye on the ball
Or even knowing where the ball is
What the ball is, before it has whipped
By and you are left with shame
At your back because that ball
Was your love of the game,
You let your love pass you
And you didn't even see it.
Follow through is the issue
That determines success in everything,
And the worst is to commit
To the shot, and then forget
That your commitment was the point
Not the shot. If you hit well
and good, so be it. If you hit
bad, for you it isn't the end,
The only thing to remember
Is to hit in the first place.
_
3. is based on a passage from Don Miller's discussion of the wonders of penguins in Blue Like Jazz, my latest book buy.