Poetry for April 10

National Poetry Month

Poem of the Day

April 10. 2007

Ukiah Poet Laureate

David Smith-Ferri

Letter to Rachel

for my (then) seven-year-old daughter

Amara

July 25, 1999

We pass for pilgrims,

dusty, endangered, hangers on,

and a squint-eyed prick of light in the dark night of our minds

passes for a star.

Thus we enter a malnutrition ward of Amara General Hospital

with no gift to offer that gesture of hand cannot summon

or eye to eye bestow.

In this room: eight beds….eight mothers….

eight infants, a single mask of starvation.

***

Seekers, we are searched.

Every mother’s eye beholds us,

and every child’s face, Rachael,

is your face.

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day for April 10, 2007

THE WHEEL

Wendell Berry

At the first strokes of the fiddle bow

the dancers rise from their seats.

The dance begins to shape itself

in the crowd, as couples join,

and couples join couples, their movement

together lightening their feet.

They move in the ancient circle

of the dance. The dance and the song

call each other into being. Soon

they are one – rapt in a single

rapture, so that even the night

has its clarity, and time

is the wheel that brings it round.

In this rapture the dead return.

Sorrow is gone from them.

They are light. They step

into the steps of the living

and turn with them in the dance

in the sweet enclosure

of the song, and timeless

is the wheel that brings it round.