vision

Photography of Iceland's volcanic rivers by Andre Ermolaev

I came across a photograph today,

aerial Iceland, ash, river, sea.
It took hold like images sometimes do.
Appearing on the dark inside
of my eyelids, a voice

familiar yet cool and wide,

drawing me to things cobalt or cream; 

flapping on the periphery:
a volcano, a road,
a slow s-curve. 

It partnered with Antartica
seen from space. 

Glowing in my mind
like a bulb I hadn't meant to look at directly

or for so long.

Antartica seen from space

My children are asleep, 

my husband also on the coral-colored couch. 

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July
and outside I hear explosions

I would otherwise think

was thunder. It could be thunder.

But without rain or electricity battering

the curtains, I remember tomorrow.

 This is Manhattan,
not some sleepy suburb with teenage boys

with illegal fireworks in the empty lot
along the river. 

Who here is already celebrating

without a host of police swooping in?

Rows of windows looking 

at nearly every space; nothing empty,

nothing left unseen. 

My son is restless
in his sleep, and calls words I cannot

make out. Like the blue shadows

of volcanoes or continents

surrounded by sea.
I close my eyes.

A bloodless hawk,

steely drone or satellite, shutter

snapping. I see the slow drift

of colors over land, soft

and warm, a shape

familiar.

[ F O R T H E S A K E O F A S I N G L E P O E M ]

   Ah, poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)—they are experiences. For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and knows the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn't pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else—); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet, restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along high overhead and went flying with all the stars,—and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves—only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

R A I N E R   M A R I A   R I L K E 
from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

{ p o e t r y   w e d n e s d a y }

photo friday: quiet

© 2012 Amber Schley Iragui

© 2011 Amber Schley Iragui

© 2012 Amber Schley Iragui

T H E   Y E L L O W   B O W L 

By Rachel Contreni Flynn

 

If light pours like water

into the kitchen where I sway

with my tired children,

if the rug beneath us

is woven with tough flowers,

and the yellow bowl on the table

rests with the sweet heft

of fruit, the sun-warmed plums,

if my body curves over the babies,

and if I am singing,

then loneliness has lost its shape,

and this quiet is only quiet.

Poem copyright ©2009 by Rachel Contreni Flynn 

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Please join us by submitting your link for Photo Friday below. Next week's Photo Friday theme is green.

sleep

It's mostly quiet
now, although occasional
moans and wails
pitch themselves down
the darkened hall
in my distinct direction.
The blue stars have turned
off. The window is open
to the cold winter night,
to wheels passing on
wet streets, a siren.
I am awake.

How doctrinaire you have become,
everything always leaning
into your lack. If only I could
orchestrate your soft rhythms:
mollify the monsters
and magnificent tantrums,
quell the voluminous time devoted
to your ripening.
Pacify the city night, ceilings
thin as wooden drums.
Sleep! Unfurl this rewinding mind,
lull the wakeful feet of
students' feet upstairs,
cradle my coughing baby,
my panicked little boy.