Ukiah Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day
April 30, 2008

All the True Vows

David Whyte

All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.

There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don't turn your face away.

Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.

Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen

nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.

By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.

Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,

it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.

Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you

and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,

that way you'll find
what is real and what is not.

I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.

Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years

in my own voice,

before it was too late
to turn my face again.

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 29, 2008

Katha Pollit

SMALL COMFORT

Coffee and cigarettes in a clean café,

forsythia lit like a damp match against

a thundery sky drunk on its own ozone,

the laundry cool and crisp and folded away

again in the lavender closet --- too late to find

comfort enough in such small daily moments

of beauty, renewal, calm, too late to imagine

people would rather be happy than suffering

and inflicting suffering. We’re near the end,

but oh, before the end, as the sparrows wing

each night to their secret nests in the elm’s green dome,

oh, let the last bus bring

lover to lover, let the starveling

dog turn the corner and lope suddenly,

miraculously, down its own street, home.

S