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

April is National Poetry Month

Happy Birthday
William Shakespeare

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day

April 23, 2008

52

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key

Can bring him to his sweet up-lockèd treasure,

The which he will not ev’ry hour survey,

For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.

Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,

Since seldom coming in the long year set,

Like stones of worth they thinly placèd are,

Or captain jewels in the carconet*.

So is the time that keeps you as my chest,

Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,

To make some special instant special blest,

By new unfolding his imprison’d pride.

Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,

Being had to triumph, being lacked to hope.

William Shakespeare

1609

April 23 is celebrated as Shakespeare’s birthday.

If alive, he would be 444 years old today.

He died on April 23, 1616.

* A carconet was a style of necklace with a

large jewel at the bottom center, other

smaller jewels in the rest of the necklace.

Ukiah Library Poem of the Day for National Poetry Month
April 23, 2008

Sonnet 54

O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem

For that sweet odour which doth in it lye

The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye

As the perfumed tincture of the roses,

Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly

When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses:

But, for their vitue only is their show

They live unwoo’d, and unrespected fade;

Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;

Of their sweet death are sweetest odours made:

And so of you, beauetous and lovely youth,

When that shall fade, by verse distils your truth

April is National Poetry Month

Ukiah Library Poem of the Day for National Library Month
April 22, 2008

WANTING MORE AND MORE

TO LIVE UNOBSERVED, UNOBSERVING

Jane Hirshfield

Wanting more and more to live unobserved,

unobserving,

like a dog who takes the bone and goes to another room

where it just fits under the low-legged table or couch.

In the farthest depths, no sunlight reaches.

Yet certain fish, now eyeless streak with luminescence

when excited;

a lowered bathyspere turns on a floodlight

and is mobbed, the strange-formed bodies drawing in for miles.

No one was ever meant to see this.

Certainly not the fish, who see nothing, whose

tentacles travel the cold light, and no one know how or why.

Like human beings to a mystery

They imagine feels some passion for their fate.

And the dog? Fallen into the marrow-pleasure completely.

Willits Library National Library Month Poem of the Day April 22, 2008

Special Earth Day Poem

Philip Appleman

Last-Minute Message for a Time Capsule

I have to tell you this, whoever you are:

that on one summer morning here, the ocean

pounded in on tumbledown breakers,

a south wind, bustling along the shore,

whipped the froth into little rainbows,

and a reckless gull swept down the beach

as if to fly were everything it needed.

I thought of your hovering saucers,

looking for clues, and I wanted to write this down,

so it wouldn’t be lost forever –

that once upon a time we had

meadows here, and astonishing things,

swans and frogs and luna moths

and blue skies that could stagger your heart.

We could have had them still,

and welcomed you to earth, but

we also had the righteous ones

who worshipped the True Faith, and Holy War.

When you go home to your shining galaxy,

say that what you learned

from this dead and barren place is

to beware the righteous ones.

April is National Poetry Month

Ukiah Library Poem of the Day for National Poetry Month

April 19, 2008

Just As You Said Love

It’s A Death

‘runners using the heart to span the brink of disaster’

Mary Norbert Korte

mark this night carved upon the breast carved

deep into the skin as the scars of some

mediaeval mystic everyone left alone

mark this down into the belly where it

disappears under the shadow that shadow inside

where love dries stiff clotted dries where

madrone blossoms sit like virgins burning

inside a remembering dark this night

carved upon the breast carved

upon the nipples lifed like amaranth

it is the tough the touch that scores

the skin this blossomed flesh the moss rose

lips lying the tongue at those petals

the light dimmed by the body the learning

the night this marked night carved upon the breath

carved into the hollow space where passion sits

thingking with branches growing from it

growing branches that bargain for some light

where the only light is stubs in flames that lick

the air slowly of its breath its breath

carved into thighs the strong swelling

the proud the pulse the seed the great

thrust leaping in the hands into a vortex a vortex of

bent trees ghost cries amaranth moss rose amaranth

just so love it’s a death a drawing out of life

fine as silt through spread hands fine as fire

this cold spring dried fine and rooted with pain

a world gathered against the skin a world

heaving and backing about the breast covered

with moss rose with coral root with amaranth amaranth

the breast all covered and carved with holy saving this night

set rivers in stone tumbling and pushing to the sea

Sanctuary Station

28 May 1977

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 19, 2008

Poem for the 1^st Passover Seder

MARGE PIERCY

Matzoh

Flat you are as a door mat

and as homely.

No crust, no glaze, you lack

a cosmetic glow.

You break with a snap.

You are dry as a twig

split from an oak

in midwinter.

You are bumpy as a mud basin

in a drought.

Square as a slab of pavement,

you have no inside

to hide raisins or seeds.

You are pale as the full moon

pocked with craters.

What we see is what we get,

honest, plain, dry

shining with nostalgia

as if baked with light

instead of heat.

The bread of flight and haste

in the mouth you

promise, home

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.

April is National Poetry Month

Ukiah Library Poem of the Day for National Poetry Month – April 17, 2008

"The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty."
( On the edifice of the Boston Public Library

In honor of National Library Week)

Spring

Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

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

Hope

Lisel Mueller

It hovers in dark corners

before the lights are turned on,

it shakes sleep from its eyes

and drops from mushroom gills,

it explodes in the starry heads

of dandelions turned sages,

it sticks to the wings of green angels

that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye

of the many-eyed potato,

it lives in each earthworm segment

surviving cruelty,

it is the motion that runs

from the eyes to the tail of a dog,

it is the mouth that inflates the lungs

of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift

we cannot destroy in ourselves,

the argument that refutes death,

the genius that invents the future,

all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear

not to betray one another,

it is in this poem, trying to speak.

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.

April is National Poetry Month

Ukiah Library Poem of the Day for National Poetry Month
April 15, 2008

The Song of Wandering Aengus

W. B. Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood.

Because a fire was in my head.

And cut and peeled a hazel wand;

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire aflame.

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass;

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

“The Commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty"

(In honor of National Library Week)

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 15, 2008

Wilfred Owen

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

(1921)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime. –

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes wilting in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs

Bitten as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori*.

*Translation from Horace, Odes iii.2.13 “It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.”

April is National Poetry Month

Poetry for April 9, 2008

In Memory of Dori Anderson

1938-2008

Ukiah Library National Poetry Month

Poem of the Day April 9, 2008

The Lovers and the Love Letter

A certain man, when his beloved allowed him to sit beside her, produced a letter and read it to her. In the letter were verses and praise and glory and lamentations, wretched feelings and humble entreaties.

The beloved said to him,

If your’re reading this for me at this time while we both sit together, then you’re wasting my life. I’m here beside you and you read a letter.”

And so the man replied,

“You’re beside me, but I don’t feel that I am really getting closer to you. Last year I felt something different, which I don’t feel know, though I am still close to you.”

I have drunk cool water from the fountain.

I have refreshed eye and heart with this flow.

In you I still see the fountain, but now no water flows, stolen by a thief.

So she replied to him:

Then I am not your beloved.

For I am somewhere else

And the object of your desire departed.

You’re in love with love.

And love is not in your control.

So I am not the whole you seek,

But on part right now.

The temple of love is not love itself.

True love is the treasure,

not the walls about it.

Do not admire the decoration,

but involve yourself in the essence.

The perfume that invades and touches you—the beginning

and the apparent and the unknowable.

Here is the master of all emotions,

independent, time and space are slaves to this presence.

This god, king of all surveys, even death itself.

Thorns and stings become narcissus and wild roses.

He who depends on the state remains human,

for the state comes and goes, good and bad.

You’re in love with your state, not me.

And only He directs it, not you.

Your love for me gives hope for greater things,

And this does nothing but stink,

And he who stinks will bob and drown,

Not the true beloved, who’neither fire nor flow.

He may be the mansion of the moon,

But not the moon herself.

He may be the picture of adoration,

but not the presence.

Go seek a love like this, if you truly live,

Or else remain the slave to time.

And whatever state you seek,

Your lips so dry, must always drink,

Drink up and up and up.

Till dry-lipped you reach the source.

For all your skills have given wealth.

Your quests, your handicrafts and works.

Don’t they begin in thought,

Begin beside the river?

Rumi

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 9, 2008

“Good poetry makes the universe reveal a secret” – Hafiz

Hafiz

With That Moon Language

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye

that is always saying,

with that sweet moon language,

what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?

April is National Poetry Month--Poems for April 8, 2008

In Memory of Dori Anderson
1938-2008

Ukiah Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 8, 2008

How to Change a Frog into a Prince

Anna Denise

Start with the underwear. Sit him down.

Hopping on one leg may stir unpleasant memories.

If he gets his tights on, even backwards, praise him.

Fingers, formerly webbed, struggle over buttons.

Arms and legs, lengthened out of proportion, wait,

as you do, for the rest of him to catch up.

This body, so recently reformed, reclaimed,

still carries the marks of its time as a frog. Be gentle.

Avoid the words awkward and gawky.

Do not use tadpole as a term of endearment.

His body, like his clothing, may seem one size too big.

Relax. There’s time enough for crowns. He’ll grow into it.

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 8, 2008

Naomi Shihab Nye

STAYING CLOSE

On your tree surprised lemons

wore small caps of snow.

The bowl of steaming lentils

opened its wide mouth as we sat and sat,

stitching the seam of talk,

till the man with the rug from Baghdad arrived

rolling out its long length inside your door.

It was orange. It looked happy.

He had just come overland with a bundle of rugs.

When you kissed him good-bye on both cheeks

I wanted to kiss him too,

not for our offhand greeting,

or his deep eyes like furry animals

curled into lairs for the winter,

but for each doorway in Baghdad

with a rug in front of it

and humans moving in and out.

April is National Poetry Month

In Memory of Dori Anderson
1938-2008

Ukiah Library: Poem of the Day for National Poetry Month

April 5, 2008

The Blue Bowl

Jane Kenyon

Like primitives we buried the cat
with his bowl. Bare-handed
we scraped sand and gravel
back into the hole.
They fell with a hiss
and thud on his side,
on his long red fur, the white feathers
between his toes, and his
long, not to say aquiline, nose.

We stood and brushed each other off.
There are sorrows keener than these.

Silent the rest of the day, we worked,
ate, stared, and slept. It stormed
all night; now it clears, and a robin
burbles from a dripping bush
like the neighbor who means well
but always says the wrong thing.

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 5, 2008

William Wordsworth( born April 7)

THE TABLES TURNED

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;

Or surely you’ll grow double:

Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;

Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain’s head,

A freshening lustre mellow

Through all the long green fields has spread,

His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! ‘tis a dull and endless strife:

Come, hear the woodland linnet,

How sweet his music! on my life,

There’s more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!

He, too, is no mean preacher:

Come forth into the light of things,

Let Nature be your Teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,

Our minds and hearts to bless –

Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,

Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood

May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good,

Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: -

We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up those barren leaves;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives.

ukiaHaiku Festival

ukiaHaiku Frestival
Deadline for entries: Sat, March 15, 2008
Check out their website for categories and entry forms
or pick up forms at the Grace Hudson Museum or the
Ukiah Library