Wolf Moon 

Hold on, they said, but she was tiny and let
the kite go flying above tears and treetops.
The kite had a will of its own, and its will
was wind which carried it the way love carries
surrender and forgiveness. I was right behind
and watched until hope was a speck and gone.
I’d have let it swoop me up the way a bird
of prey lifts a rabbit or a mouse, not afraid
to rub my nose in sky and roll about in deep
fields of snow far above cirrostratus.
Not afraid to let bliss devour me whole.
Or grief, if I must live my forever in orbit
with the Wolf Moon as it prowls night
after night howling for the wilderness we lost.

Susan Mitchell

Sunrise

You can

die for it–

an idea,

or the world. People

have done so,

brilliantly,

letting

their small bodies be bound

to the stake,

creating

an unforgettable

fury of light. But

this morning,

climbing the familiar hills

in the familiar

fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,

and India

and Europe, and I thought

how the sun

blazes

for everyone just

so joyfully

as it rises

under the lashes

of my own eyes, and I thought

I am so many!

What is my name?

What is the name

of the deep breath I would take

over and over

for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is

happiness, it is another one

of the ways to enter

fire.

Mary Oliver

 

Wounds

I have been wounded so often and so painfully,

dragging my way home at the merest crawl,

impaled not only by malicious tongues—

one can be wounded even by a petal.

And I myself have wounded—quite unwittingly—

with casual tenderness while passing by,

and later someone felt the pain,

it was like walking barefoot over the ice.

So why do I step upon the ruins

of those most near and dear to me,

I, who can be so simply and so sharply wounded

and can wound others with such deadly ease?

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Translated by Arthur Boyars and Simon Franklin

I want to live the rest of my life, 

however long or short, 

with as much sweetness 

as I can decently manage, 

loving all the people I love, 

and doing as much as I can 

of the work I still have to do. 

I am going to write fire 

until it comes out of my ears, 

my eyes, my noseholes--everywhere. 

Until it's every breath I breathe. 

I'm going to go out like a fucking meteor!

Audre Lorde

Document

The day is winter bright. I blink against it.

Each time the sun glints in my eyes,

each time I close my lids & let them go

orange & freckled with light,

my mind files it into a folder

that contains every other time

it’s happened before: folders nested

inside folders going back, I imagine,

to one morning standing in my crib,

waiting for my mother to reach down

& lift me out, the sun keeping me

company until her arms appeared.

In the file: sun, sun_2, sun_3,

sun_75, sun_700. Each a document

I can return to & open, even revising

old experience with new thinking.

As if the eye has its own memory—

not the mind’s eye but the eye’s mind—

cataloging material it claims as its own.

Cataloging as long as I live. Sun_7000,

sun_final, sun_final_revised, sun_final_final. 

Maggie Smith

An Old Story

We were made to understand it would be

Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge,

Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. 

 

Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful 

Dream. The worst in us having taken over 

And broken the rest utterly down. 

 

                                                                 A long age 

Passed. When at last we knew how little 

Would survive us—how little we had mended 

 

Or built that was not now lost—something 

Large and old awoke. And then our singing 

Brought on a different manner of weather. 

 

Then animals long believed gone crept down 

From trees. We took new stock of one another. 

We wept to be reminded of such color. 

 

Tracy K. Smith