April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 18, 2008

“Scientists find universe awash in tiny diamonds”*

Pat Mayne Ellis

But haven’t we always known?

The shimmer of trees, the shaking of flames

every cloud lined with something

clean water sings

right to the belly

scouring us with its purity

it too is awash with diamonds

“so small that trillions could rest

on the head of a pin”

It is not unwise then to say

that the air is hung close with diamonds

that we breathe diamond

our lungs hoarding, exchanging

our blood sowing them rich and thick

along every course it takes

Does this explain

why some of us are so hard

why some of us shine

why we are all precious

that we are awash in creation

spumed with diamonds

shot through with beauty

that survived the deaths of stars

*quotations found in a newspaper clipping on the subject

Ukiah Library Poem of the Day for National Poetry Month – April 18, 2008

SONNET

Robert Haas

A man talking to his ex-wife on the phone.

He has loved her boice and listens with attention

to every modulation of its tone. Knowing

it intimately. Not knowing what he wants

from the sounds of it, from the tendered civility.

He studies, out the window, the seed shapes

Of the broken pods of ornamental trees.

The kind that grow in everyone’s garden, that no one

But horticulturists can name. Four arched chambers

of pale green, tiny vegetal proscenium arches,

a pair of black tapering seeds bedded in each chamber.

A wish geometry, miniature, Indian or Persian,

lovers or gods in their apartments. Outside, white,

patient animals, and tangled vines, and rain.