Thursday, January 10, 2013

2 poems for thursday

I've been nourished by poetry these days. Sometimes it's just the perfect line. Sometimes it's the fragility of language and meaning itself. Sometimes it's a place I've been, while other times it's foreign but brings up empathy and compassion in me. The contradictions appeal: the simplicity and complexity of a few words strung together, somehow it really is a comfort.

A link to one: here.

And one typed out with intention - found scribbled with past intention in my journal - here:

Keys
by Nancy Henry

When things got hard
I used to drive and keep on driving -
once to North Carolina
once to Arizona -
I'm through with all that now, I hope.
The last time was years ago.

But oh, how I would drive
and keep on driving!
The universe around me
all well in my control;
anything I wanted on the radio,
the air blasting, hot or cold,
sobbing as loudly as I cared to sob,
screaming as loudly as I needed to scream.
I would live on apples and black coffee,
shower at truck stops,
sleep curled up
in the cozy back seat I loved.

The last time, I left at 3 a.m.
By New York State,
I stopped screaming;
by Tulsa
I stopped sobbing;
by the time I pulled into Flagstaff
I was thinking
about the Canyon,
I was so empty.
Thinking about the canyon
I was.

I sat on the rim at dawn,
let all the colors fill me.
It was cold. I saw my breath
like steam from a soup pot.
I saw small fossils in the gravel.
I saw how much world there was

how much darkness
could be swept out
by the sun.

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