Dying is a different way

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U n h a n d   M e

Cave Hill Cemetery

Louisville, Kentucky

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'Tis not that Dying hurts us so --

'Tis living -- hurts us more --

But Dying -- is a different way --

A Kind behind the Door --

The Southern Custom -- of the Bird --

That ere the Frosts are due --

Accepts a better Latitude --

We -- are the Birds -- that stay.

The Shiverers round Farmers' doors --

For whose reluctant Crumb --

We stipulate -- till pitying Snows

Persuade our Feathers Home.

= Emily Dickinson =

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Happy Saturday

The talking engines of our day

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W a t e r i n g   H o l e

Crown Fountain :: Millennium Park

Chicago, Illinois

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Alone with our madness and favorite flower
We see that there really is nothing left to write about.
Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things
In the same way, repeating the same things over and over
For love to continue and be gradually different.

Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally
And the color of the day put in
Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter
For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic
Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting.

Only then can the chronic inattention
Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory
And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows
That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge
Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day.

= John Ashbery =

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Happy Friday

Down the long shadows

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A   W a t c h   I   K e e p

Kimball Monument :: Graceland Cemetery

Chicago, Illinois

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Come then to prayers
And kneel upon the stone,
For we have tried
All courages on these despairs,
And are required lastly to give up pride,
And the last difficult pride in being humble.

Draw down the window-frame
That we may be unparted from the darkness
Inviting to the house
Air from a field, air from a salt grave,
That questions if we have
Concealed no flaw in this confessional,
And, being satisfied,
Lingers, and troubles, and is lightless,
And so grows darker, as if clapped on a flame,
Whose great extinguishing still makes it tremble.

Only our hearts go beating towards the east.
Out of this darkness, let the unmeasured sword
Rising from sleep to execute our crown
Rest on our shoulders, as we then can rest
On the outdistancing, all-capable flood
Whose brim touches the morning. Down
The long shadows where undriven the dawn
Hunts light into nobility, arouse us noble.

= Philip Larkin =

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in loving memory of my father

Blanchard Guy McManus

1930-1968

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Happy Thursday

Or are you June

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R u n   F o r   C o v e r

Wrigley Field

Chicago, Illinois

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February on another coast is April
here. Astrology is months:
you are February, or are you
June, and who is
December? Who is books
read in spring, wingspan
between midnight
and mourning

Another starry tree, coastal
counterpoint where magnolia is
a brighter season
peach and pear
are grafted onto the same tree
fear and fat stick
to the same sprained bone
For this adolescent reprise
recycle everything trivial
but this time bring
the eye into sight:
make sight superior
to what is seen

A decade is to look at June
and see April
to look at April
and see February
Relief of repetition
seasons mean again,
one flowering branch suspended
in the half-light of spring
We sat on steps
beneath a tree
No: I walked by
The tree bloomed
and I looked up

= Jennifer Hayashida =

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Happy Wednesday

O dream how sweet

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R e p o s e

Eastern Cemetery

Louisville, Kentucky

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Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!

= Christina Rossetti =

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Happy Tuesday