by Kat | 23 hours ago | General, Poetry
Welcome to my favorite day of National Poetry Month — Poem In Your Pocket Day!
Every April I like to add a new book to my Poetry Library… and this year, dear Ada Limón had the perfect collection with perfect timing! You Are Here Poetry in the Natural World was published April 2! I have been reading through it with delight! It is full of beautiful poems!
The poem I have selected for you to tuck away in your pocket is one written by Ilya Kaminsky, a Ukrainian-American poet. The poem might change the way you look at rain… it certainly did for me! (And I needed a bit of a rain-itude adjustment with the wet April we have had!)
Letters
by Ilya Kaminsky
Rain has eaten 1/4 of me
yet I believe
against all evidence
these raindrops
are my letters of recommendation
here is a man worth falling on.
Letters by Ilya Kaminsky, published in You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World © Milkweed Editions and the Library of Congress © 2024.
Stop and see what Kym, Bonny, and Sarah have for your pocket today! I am heading off to Erie in 3, 2…
See you all back here in May!
by Kat | Apr 27, 2023 | General, Poetry
It is my favorite day… in my favorite month. The idea that you can carry poems with you… what a delightful thing! Today we are all sharing some poems for your pockets…
Today, I am sharing one for all of us for whom sleep is, at times, elusive. Apparently, dear Billy Collins is also similarly afflicted and he has some wisdom wit for us. I have memorized this bit of wit and contemplate it all too frequently… but at least I know I am in good company!
3:00 AM
by Billy Collins
Only my hand
is asleep,
but it’s a start.
3:00 AM from Musical Tables © Billy Collins, Random House New York, 2022.
If you want to know more about the delightful Billy Collins, you will find find information here, and here at his website.
Please make sure you stop and see what Kym, Bonny, and Sarah have for your pockets today!
Thank you so much for reading along with us this month!
by Kat | Apr 28, 2022 | General, Poetry
Today is one of my favorite days…it’s Poem In Your Pocket Day!
It’s a day to carry a poem with you… and perhaps you will even then invite poetry into the remaining days of the year.
I debated about what poem should I share this month. I contemplated Joyce Kilmer’s Tree’s or Carl Sandburg’s Fog… poems that my grandfather loved deeply. I also considered one of the many poems by Derek Walcott. So many choices. Really. There are literally hundreds of poems one could pick to put in your pocket today and not one a bad choice!
But earlier this month I heard a poem by Jane Kenyon and it has stayed with me. I have thought about her words almost daily, and have since printed it out and put in my journal. I have contemplated the words as I began my April chores in the garden – and especially when I saw those rhubarb leaves as they thought their way up through the soil… a certain sign of spring.
I think this poem will fit well in your pocket… enjoy!
April Chores
by Jane Kenyon
When I take the chilly tools
from the shed’s darkness, I come
out to a world made new
by heat and light.
The snake basks and dozes
on a large flat stone.
It reared and scolded me
for raking too close to its hole.
Like a mad red brain
the involute rhubarb leaf
thinks its way up
through loam.
Jane Kenyon, “April Chores” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by The Estate of Jane Kenyon.
Please make sure you stop and visit Kym, Bonny, and Sarah today to see what they have for you to tuck into your pocket as well. I cannot thing of a better thing to fill your pockets with than a handful of poems!
Thank you all so much for reading along with this month… and especially I’d like to thank Kym for including me!
See you all here tomorrow!
by Kat | Apr 30, 2020 | General, In This Moment
It’s Poem in your Pocket Day and this poem is going in my pocket. I will carry it with me during the day. I will be thinking of the “heavy threads” of the day and hope that I will be stitched “into a useful garment”.
And yet, there is comfort in knowing the day “will do nothing of the kind”. Because even that is a blessing.
Heavy Threads
by Hazel Hall
When the dawn unfolds like a bolt of ribbon
Thrown through my window,
I know that hours of light
Are about to thrust themselves into me
Like omnivorous needles into listless cloth,
Threaded with the heavy colours of the sun.
They seem altogether too eager,
To embroider this thing of mine,
My Day,
Into the strict patterns of an altar cloth;
Or at least to stitch it into a useful garment.
But I know they will do nothing of the kind.
They will prick away,
And when they are through with it
It will look like the patch quilt my grandmother made
When she was learning to sew.
I hope you find a poem to carry with you today, one that will make you stop and think, one that will give you respite, one that will bring you joy.
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels
by Kat | Apr 18, 2019 | Uncategorized
I wept with the world at the tragedy that happened to Notre Dame on Monday. I had been thinking and thinking about what poem I might post for today, and I wondered if there were any poems written to that magnificent cathedral.
There are!
I considered this poem on Monday night. But, the loss of the stained glass – especially that glorious rose window – made Kerrie O’Brien’s words almost painful to read.
Then I considered Edmund Kemper Broadus poem about a gargoyle. But, the fate of those gargoyles is yet uncertain.
Finally, I stumbled across this poem, written on Monday by Mary Angela Douglas and I knew that this is the poem I will carry with me today:
Beauty Itself Is Burning Down
by Mary Angela Douglas
beauty itself is burning down
a newsman cried
with Notre Dame lit like a torch
against the sunset sky
what can we say
from faraway
will the rose windows melt inside
I wondered, can it be so many saints have died
and now their images too their agonies renewed
for another contract, lease
is the name for Paris, rue,
not rosemary, please forget me
what I knew of thought I knew of
Hugo, I thought ramdomly
cathedrals burning in a green April
april, the cruelest
does the world skip a beat in an afternoon
of eight centuries
the world within the world
we never see
not being visionary
the cathedral erupting into great roses
in a penultimate Spring
the cathedral a great green candle
consumed for the Lord
as if by example, we should be shorn
of our somnambulance
in the lily of this hour
with the traffic no longer surging, transfixed
in the rose of its crumbling
singing, singing singing
the bell into the tower
the tower withstanding
the bell in the tower
the bell in the tower
beyond all wars and scars
the little mockeries in peace time
and yet, crowds grew
and thronged the singeing avenues
willing the walls to stay
for hours and hours
the spire of Notre Dame
our lady’s arrow-sorrow
lit in a golden flame, flickered, floated sideways
what next? The flaking, flinging down of stars. the moon falls into the earth, a mirror no longer
ashes for beauty?
time itself collapsed in a deep black hole
remnants of a single spring twilight
our souls in the rubble still singing.
will not cease, will not leave it this way
on this, no calendar’s day.
Photo by Adrienn from Pexels
