Writing the Life Poetic

Nagoone Berries

By Sage Cohen

The thornbush holds her secrets
low to the ground.
In the privacy of rain
we kneel together,
heads bent to the berries.
Lush with leaf and hush
our voices settle like fog
among the unspoken
as we stain and bruise ourselves
with the fruit's surrender.
The earth drinks and drinks
until it spills open and raw
like a prayerbook saturated
with God's desire for humanity.
We are a rhythm of choosing, crawling
along the bloated field through
necklaces of vine. The berries fall
wide-eyed into our collecting cup.
You carry that tender burden
of severed fruit home.
You stand over the stove,
cooking sacrifice
down to sugar.

HOW TO LIVE, by Charles Harper Webb

 "I don't know how to live." –Sharon Olds

Eat lots of steak and salmon and Thai curry and mu shu
pork and fresh green beans and baked potatoes
and fresh strawberries with vanilla ice cream.
Kick-box three days a week. Stay strong and lean.
Go fly-fishing every chance you get, with friends

who'll teach you secrets of the stream. Play guitar
in a rock band. Read Dostoyevsky, Whitman, Kafka,
Shakespeare, Twain. Collect Uncle Scrooge comics.
See Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, and everything Monty Python made.
Love freely. Treat ex-partners as kindly

as you can. Wish them as well as you're able.
Snorkel with moray eels and yellow tangs. Watch
spinner dolphins earn their name as your panga slam-
bams over glittering seas. Try not to lie; it sours
the soul. But being a patsy sours it too. If you cause

a car wreck, and aren't hurt, but someone is, apologize
silently. Learn from your mistake. Walk gratefully
away. Let your insurance handle it. Never drive drunk.
Don't be a drunk, or any kind of "aholic." It's bad
English, and bad news. Don't berate yourself. If you lose

a game or prize you've earned, remember the winners
history forgets. Remember them if you do win. Enjoy s
uccess. Have kids if you want and can afford them,
but don't make them your reason-to-be. Spare them that
misery. Take them to the beach. Mail order sea

monkeys once in your life. Give someone the full-on
ass-kicking he (or she) has earned. Keep a box turtle
in good heath for twenty years. If you get sick, don't thrive
on suffering. There's nothing noble about pain. Die
if you need to, the best way you can. (You define best.)

Go to church if it helps you. Grow tomatoes to put store-
bought in perspective. Listen to Elvis and Bach. Unless
you're tone deaf, own Perlman's "Meditation from Thais."
Don't look for hidden meanings in a cardinal's song.
Don't think TV characters talk to you; that's crazy.

Don't be too sane. Work hard. Loaf easily. Have good
friends, and be good to them. Be immoderate
in moderation. Spend little time anesthetized. Dive
the Great Barrier Reef. Don't touch the coral. Watch
for sea snakes. Smile for the camera. Don't say "Cheese."

* * * * *

(Thanks to Mari L'Esperance for sending this poem to me!)

Touch Me

Thank you, Mari, for sending me this link to Stanley Kunitz reading one of my very favorite poems of all time!

Fifteen years ago, I memorized "Touch Me" in graduate school. When I recite them, Kunitz's words come through me as if born of my body. As precious as my own past, the poem lives alongside those moments I hold onto and pours out in a sweet mix of grief and tenderness when I am moved to speak of love--as I was at the dinner preceding Mari's wedding.

What a thrill to hear for the first time Kunitz speaking his own poem...I hope you will listen and let me know what you think!

Crowning: a poem by Kevin Young

In celebration of my son Theo's five-month birthday, and with thanks to Erika Dreifus for sending me here, I share with you Kevin Young's poem Crowning from the New Yorker. There's nothing like a soul-expanding birth poem to trigger the tear floodgates in a sleep-deprived new mom! I hope all of you out there who may be better rested than I find it equally moving and beautiful. Happy birthday, Theo, purplest flower of my heart.

William Stafford Says to His Son

By Sage Cohen

The perfect green parrot lives
in a blind corner of recognition.
There will always be pilgrimages.
Delphinium calls its own
name into the field as columns
rise from ruin. We arrive simply
into the invocation as water
is carried downhill.
Good. Wild. Sacred.
What kind of man
have you come here to be?
Let this be the one
poem I’ll never finish.

* * * * *

A little tribute to the William Stafford birthday celebration reading series.

Balance

By Dan Raphael

My son, who lived in this house 26 years
went to new zealand 3 weeks ago and
“met more awesome people than I thought possible.”

My cat of 7 years was used in a tug of war
by two pit bulls, still alive with open abdomen
had to be separated from her pain

Where is my synthesis
the middle is whetstone, the edges connect the stars in untranslatable ways
Whaze
amazed, bemused, commuted, demoted

My cat in new zealand
my son racing ferraris
the dog I never had cant text with his nose
Alaska thinks california moved to oregon so im being kamchatkaed by wind from the wrong direction
as if the ocean wasn’t between us, the bering zipper closing unexpectedly
the ring of fire now underwater borealii—
 This isnt about heat but electromagnetism
not about too much trying to occupy the same space
but learning how we hold together where everywhere is open, anyone can get credit,
if I like the way you walk you can represent me in congress
if you see the mountain smile prepare for hot and heavy

I understand “before” and “hour” but what do you mean by “darkest” and “dawn”

[approaching winter solstice, 2008]

dan raphael performs his poetry throughout the northwest (including January 15th @ Powell's on Hawthorne.) His 1985 book, Bop Grit Storm Cafe, had just been re-issued. Recent poems of his can be found in Portland Review, Knock Journal, Otoliths, Unlikely Stories and the Writer's Dojo.

[Reprinted with permission of the poet.]