April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 16, 2008

Chogyam Trungpa

Meteoric iron mountain

Meteoric iron mountain piercing to the sky,

With lightning and hailstorm clouds round about it.

There is so much energy where I live

Which feeds me.

There is no romantic mystique,

There is just a village boy

On a cold wet morning

Going to the farm

Fetching milk for the family.

Foolishness and wisdom

Grandeur and simplicity

Are all the same

Because they live on what they are.

There is no application for exotic wisdom,

Wisdom must communicate

To the men of now.

Dharma is the study of what is

And fulfills the understanding of what is here right now.

The ripple expands when you throw the pebble:

It is true, a fact.

That is the point of faith,

Of full conviction,

Which no one can defeat or challenge.

Please, readers,

Read it slowly

So you can feel

That depth of calmness as you read.

Love to you.

I am the Bodhisattva who will not abandon you,

In accordance with my vow.

Compassion to all.

17 December 1969

Ukiah Library Poem of the Day for National Poetry Week
April 16, 2008

My Mother’s Pansies

Sharon Olds

And all that time, in back of the house,

there were pansies growing, some silt blue,

some silt yellow, most of them sable

red or purplish sable, heavy

as velvet curtains, so soft they seemed wet but were

dry as powder on a luna’s wing,

dust on an alluvial path, in a drought

summer. And they were open like lips,

and pouted like lips and had a tiny fur-gold

v, which made bees not be able

to not want. And so, although women, in our

lobes and sepals, our corollas and spurs, seemed

despised spathe, style-arm, standard,

crest, and fall,

still there were those plush entries,

night mouth, pillow mouth,

anyone might want to push

their pinky, or anything, into such velveteen

chambers, such throats, each midnight-velvet

petal saying touch-touch-touch, please-touch, please-touch

each sex like a spirit—shy, flushed, praying.