More like a vault -- you pull the handle out
and on the shelves: not a lot,
and what there is (a boiled potato
in a bag, a chicken carcass
under foil) looking dispirited,
drained, mugged. This is not
a place to go in hope or hunger.
But, just to the right of the middle
of the middle door shelf, on fire, a lit-from-within red,
heart red, sexual red, wet neon red,
shining red in their liquid, exotic,
aloof, slumming
in such company: a jar
of maraschino cherries. Three-quarters
full, fiery globes, like strippers
at a church social. Maraschino cherries, maraschino,
the only foreign word I knew. Not once
did I see these cherries employed: not
in a drink, nor on top
of a glob of ice cream,
or just pop one in your mouth. Not once.
The same jar there through an entire
childhood of dull dinners -- bald meat,
pocked peas and, see above,
boiled potatoes. Maybe
they came over from the old country,
family heirlooms, or were status symbols
bought with a piece of the first paycheck
from a sweatshop,
which beat the pig farm in Bohemia,
handed down from my grandparents
to my parents
to be someday mine,
then my child's?
They were beautiful
and, if I never ate one,
it was because I knew it might be missed
or because I knew it would not be replaced
and because you do not eat
that which rips your heart with joy.
Right now there are Tibetan Buddhist monks in a temple in the Himalayas
endlessly reciting mantras for the cessation of your suffering and for the
flourishing of your happiness.
Someone you haven’t met yet is already dreaming of adoring you.
Someone is writing a book that you will read in the next two years that will
change how you look at life.
Nuns in the Alps are in endless vigil, praying for the Holy Spirit to alight
the hearts of all of God’s children.
A farmer is looking at his organic crops and whispering, “nourish them.”
Someone wants to kiss you, to hold you, to make tea for you.
Someone is willing to lend you money, wants to know what your favorite food
is, and treat you to a movie.
Someone in your orbit has something immensely valuable to give you — for free.
Something is being invented this year that will change how your generation
lives, communicates, heals and passes on.
The next great song is being rehearsed.
Thousands of people are in yoga classes right now intentionally sending
light out from their heart chakras and wrapping it around the earth.
Millions of children are assuming that everything is amazing and will always
be that way.
Someone is in profound pain, and a few months from now, they’ll be thriving
like never before. From where they are, they just can’t see it .
Someone who is craving to be partnered, to be acknowledged, to arrive, will
get precisely what they want — and even more. And because that gift will be so
fantastical in it’s reach and sweetness, it will quite magically alter their
memory of angsty longing and render it all “So worth the wait.”
Someone has recently cracked open their joyous, genuine nature because they
did the hard work of hauling years of oppression off of their psyche — this
luminous juju is floating in the ether, and is accessible to you.
Someone just this second wished for world peace, in earnest.
Some civil servant is making sure that you get your mail, and your garbage
is picked up, that the trains are running on time, and that you are generally
safe.
Someone is dedicating their days to protecting your civil liberties and
clean drinking water.
Someone is regaining their sanity.
Someone is coming back from the dead.
Someone is genuinely forgiving the seemingly unforgivable.
Someone is curing the incurable.
Our Purpose in Poetry: Or, Earthrise Dedicated to Al Gore and The Climate Reality Project
On Christmas Eve, 1968, astronaut Bill Anders Snapped a photo of the earth As Apollo 8 orbited the moon.
Those three guys Were surprised To see from their eyes Our planet looked like an earthrise A blue orb hovering over the moon’s gray horizon, with deep oceans and silver skies.
It was our world’s first glance at itself Our first chance to see a shared reality, A declared stance and a commonality;
A glimpse into our planet’s mirror, And as threats drew nearer, Our own urgency became clearer, As we realize that we hold nothing dearer than this floating body we all call home.
We’ve known That we’re caught in the throes Of climactic changes some say Will just go away, While some simply pray To survive another day; For it is the obscure, the oppressed, the poor, Who when the disaster Is declared done, Still suffer more than anyone.
Climate change is the single greatest challenge of our time,
Of this, you’re certainly aware. It’s saddening, but I cannot spare you From knowing an inconvenient fact, because It’s getting the facts straight that gets us to act and not to wait.
So I tell you this not to scare you, But to prepare you, to dare you To dream a different reality,
Where despite disparities We all care to protect this world, This riddled blue marble, this little true marvel To muster the verve and the nerve To see how we can serve Our planet. You don’t need to be a politician To make it your mission to conserve, to protect, To preserve that one and only home That is ours, To use your unique power To give next generations the planet they deserve.
We are demonstrating, creating, advocating
We heed this inconvenient truth, because we need to be anything but lenient With the future of our youth.
And while this is a training, in sustaining the future of our planet, There is no rehearsal. The time is Now Now Now, Because the reversal of harm, And protection of a future so universal Should be anything but controversial.
So, earth, pale blue dot We will fail you not.
Just as we chose to go to the moon We know it’s never too soon To choose hope. We choose to do more than cope With climate change We choose to end it— We refuse to lose. Together we do this and more Not because it’s very easy or nice But because it is necessary, Because with every dawn we carry the weight of the fate of this celestial body orbiting a star. And as heavy as that weight sounded, it doesn’t hold us down, But it keeps us grounded, steady, ready, Because an environmental movement of this size Is simply another form of an earthrise.
To see it, close your eyes. Visualize that all of us leaders in this room and outside of these walls or in the halls, all of us changemakers are in a spacecraft, Floating like a silver raft in space, and we see the face of our planet anew. We relish the view; We witness its round green and brilliant blue, Which inspires us to ask deeply, wholly: What can we do? Open your eyes. Know that the future of this wise planet Lies right in sight: Right in all of us. Trust this earth uprising. All of us bring light to exciting solutions never tried before For it is our hope that implores us, at our uncompromising core, To keep rising up for an earth more than worth fighting for.
Full of rebellion, I would die,
Or fight, or travell, or denie
That thou hast ought to do with me.
O tame my heart;
It is thy highest art
To captivate strong holds to thee.
If thou shalt let this venome lurk,
And in suggestions fume and work,
My soul will turn to bubbles straight,
And thence by kinde
Vanish into a winde,
Making thy workmanship deceit.
O smooth my rugged heart, and there
Engrave thy rev’rend law and fear;
Or make a new one, since the old
Is saplesse grown,
And a much fitter stone
To hide my dust, then thee to hold.
Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star's stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. Remember sundown and the giving away to night. Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life, and her mother's, and hers. Remember your father. He is your life, also. Remember the earth whose skin you are: red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth brown earth, we are earth. Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have
their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to
them, listen to them. They are alive poems. Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the origin of this universe. Remember you are all people and all people are you. Remember you are this universe and this universe is you. Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you. Remember language comes from this. Remember the dance language is, that life is. Remember.
There’s a poem in this place— in the footfalls in the halls in the quiet beat of the seats. It is here, at the curtain of day, where America writes a lyric you must whisper to say.
There’s a poem in this place— in the heavy grace, the lined face of this noble building, collections burned and reborn twice.
There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square where protest chants tear through the air like sheets of rain, where love of the many swallows hatred of the few.
There’s a poem in Charlottesville where tiki torches string a ring of flame tight round the wrist of night where men so white they gleam blue— seem like statues where men heap that long wax burning ever higher where Heather Heyer blooms forever in a meadow of resistance.
There’s a poem in the great sleeping giant of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising its big blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago— a poem begun long ago, blazed into frozen soil, strutting upward and aglow.
There’s a poem in Florida, in East Texas where streets swell into a nexus of rivers, cows afloat like mottled buoys in the brown, where courage is now so common that 23-year-old Jesus Contreras rescues people from
floodwaters.
There’s a poem in Los Angeles yawning wide as the Pacific tide where a single mother swelters in a windowless classroom, teaching black and brown students in Watts to spell out their thoughts so her daughter might write this poem for
you.
There's a lyric in California where thousands of students march for blocks, undocumented and unafraid; where my friend Rosa finds the power to blossom in deadlock, her spirit the bedrock of her community. She knows hope is like a stubborn ship gripping a dock, a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer or knock down a dream.
How could this not be her city su nación our country our America, our American lyric to write— a poem by the people, the poor, the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew, the native, the immigrant, the black, the brown, the blind, the brave, the undocumented and undeterred, the woman, the man, the nonbinary, the white, the trans, the ally to all of the above and more?
Tyrants fear the poet. Now that we know it we can’t blow it. We owe it to show it not slow it although it hurts to sew it when the world skirts below
it.
Hope— we must bestow it like a wick in the poet so it can grow, lit, bringing with it stories to rewrite— the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated a history written that need not be repeated a nation composed but not yet completed.
There’s a poem in this place— a poem in America a poet in every American who rewrites this nation, who tells a story worthy of being told on this minnow of an earth to breathe hope into a palimpsest of time— a poet in every American who sees that our poem penned doesn’t mean our poem’s end.
There’s a place where this poem dwells— it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of
dawn’s bell where we write an American lyric we are just beginning to tell.
Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?
Just once I knew what life was for.
In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood;
walked there along the Charles River,
watched the lights copying themselves,
all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening
their mouths as wide as opera singers;
counted the stars, my little campaigners,
my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love
on the night green side of it and cried
my heart to the eastbound cars and cried
my heart to the westbound cars and took
my truth across a small humped bridge
and hurried my truth, the charm of it, home
and hoarded these constants into morning
only to find them gone.
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records…
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.
When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One or two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine.
