Poetry Night

Tonight I picked up my Sara Teasdale book of love poems to re-read one of my favorites. And you know, one thing led to another and I read the whole book. It's amazing how the same literature can have such a different impact on you from one phase of life to the next. My favorites were no longer my favorites and some new lines stood out to me this time. And one thing led to another and I was reading Billy Collins' Sailing Alone Around the Room and laughing at his little jokes and enjoying him so much more than I did in college.

The other day I found a poem in my documents that I started a year ago. So I finished it (or I guess just worked on it, since poems never seem to be totally finished for me). Here it is.

Summer Baby

Your breath

sweet like grass

warms my cheek,

your cheek—

skin smooth and

ripe like a plum

—is cool and

damp

Wet rose

petal lips,

as narrow as your nose,

pursed

Searching for me,

inquisitive pools

like blue marbles

rimmed with feathery lashes

You curl your toes

stinky baby feet

Your pointer finger

traces my mouth,

pushes past to

teeth. I taste,

close my teeth on it,

your smile

a whole-face smile

brightens

like sun in summer.

Like I said, not finished, but it's on paper (figuratively). I never feel like I can catch those exquisite moments in words. It's impossible, but I guess it's fun to try. At least those who know Rose well would understand this poem. 

Here's a piece of Books by Collins that I really loved:

From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus

I can hear the library humming in the night,

a choir of authors murmuring inside their books

along the unlit, alphabetical shelves,

Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son,

each one stitched into his own private coat,

together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

Perfect, right? The poem goes on, but that first segment really excited me. I loved my BYU library. It felt like a magical place at night. Maybe I resented the space unknowingly when I had to tie myself to one of the desks to finish a paper. But I loved it too. In fact, I wish I could walk into it right now, my student ID in hand, and choose from millions of books and fall into a chair to read.

So tonight has become a poetry night. Maybe next I'll pick up Natasha Saje's Red Under the Skin. There are so many lines in her poems that make me think, "Yes, exactly!" Isn't that what makes poems so great? When they can say exactly what we think and feel in a beautiful or interesting or just unique way? Okay, you know what... I'm just going to go ahead and post one her poems right now. Hang on till the end. It's my favorite part.

Appetites

Dien Zug kenne keinen Bahnhof,

my mother would tell me,

astonished at how much

I could consume of whatever

pleased me: ice cream or chocolates,

and later, smoked salmon, Westphalian ham.

Your train knows no station. 

Now that I'm an adult, my train knows 

several stations, though sometimes

it's a greed express, ripping through

an entire apple tart,

a quart of blueberries,

a pound of Camembert.

All children are greedy 

until they learn to curb unattractive habits,

like chewing fingernails or picking noses.

From Old English, graedig:  Beowulf didn't worry

about how he looked chowing down

a leg of ox or a few pheasants, whole.

A friend taps his wife's frail wrist: honey,

wouldn't sorbet be better than ice cream?

Some trains idle and weeds then grow between their tracks.

Once for two weeks I ate nothing,

drinking only mineral water.

I imagined myself light as an airmail letter;

a man's hands could encircle my waist.

I climbed flights of stairs one at a time,

panting. The memory makes me see myself 

stare at the shape of a woman 

who swims in my pool: her thighs

have the heft of a good dictionary.

She's never sick,

she can lift a lawn mower over the hedge,

she's the only conductor on her train,

and she knows which stations

are worth stopping for.