Fun New Names for the Days of the Week

 

Someday

Mumday

Tubesday

Wormsday

Thrusty

Friedegg

Samurai

The Bard

 

“There’s a divinity with a shapely end. Rough-hewn. Her name is May. She’s from Providence. Her best friend is a sparrow.”

-William Shakespeare

Source

 

I wish I could remember where I first heard the term “source amnesia”…

Coffee

 

I like my coffee like I like my women, and I refuse to elaborate.

The Builder

 

I have built

Cathedrals of hope

And watched them shatter

In a breath of wind.

 

Even as they tumbled,

They were beautiful –

A million shards

Catching a sunset light.

 

And you asked me,

What was the purpose?

But all I could do was smile –

 

And watch the shower, and begin again

In the freshness of new morning,

With only a humble brick of glass,

A fragile mortar,

And a joyful heart.

 

Cloudburst

 

Once again the heat broke with the rain,

And the sun came out as soon as it stopped,

With hours left to shine before nightfall,

And the world was clean, as clean as a new soul.

Seneca Creek

 

A sunbeam looked solid

In the corner of my eye

As if the turbid water

Had frozen it amber-wise,

 

Or time itself had stopped,

With only me still moving,

Slipping down the river

Like a summer ghost.

 

The Source

 

It’s attention that makes magic.

A very simple thing.

At a glance, a green blotch of woods

Lies limp on a dull horizon,

Yielding nothing of especial interest;

 

But closer up, it grows leaves and flowers,

And the shade takes a certain form,

Minutely shifting

With the tremble of the wind

In a baroque pattern

That never repeats.

 

Closer still, a darting hummingbird

Flashes into existence,

All blurred wings and gaudy colors,

On a fervent mission

To pollinate the world;

 

On his back is one white feather

For no particular reason,

And one edge of that feather

Is gently frayed,

But only because

You troubled to look.

The Kings of Bacon and Eggs

 

The dignity of breakfast 

Belongs to all men -

All equal in the morning,

Bleary and hungry,

Still chewing on a dream

That seemed like someone else’s,

And gazing blankly

At the horizon of a day

That stretches ahead 

Like unfamiliar country 

Where shadows change 

And men speak other tongues.

 

What then? Bacon and eggs.

And buttered toast and coffee dark as pain.

For some people, inexplicably,

A grapefruit; for others, pancakes,

And the sweet nectar of Vermont.

 

We are all the same at breakfast –

Kings enough to eat what we desire –

And wise enough to linger 

Over a final sip of coffee 

Before the day’s vicissitudes 

Divide us into havers, havers-not,

And dreamers-of-having,

Who are perhaps luckiest of all,

Surveying a kingdom of hope every morning 

And living all day in that kingdom 

Till night takes the reins again.

Note

 

This is just a note

To remind you that somewhere,

Across indifferent miles,

A man is thinking of you –

 

Not with the glowing fondness 

Of long and rooted friendship 

But with the uncertain smile

Of one who has seen enough –

 

Enough to wish to see more,

And maybe just enough 

To hope that you may be tempted

To see more of him too.

Worship

 

Every woman’s an altar,

But most altars leave me cold –

Too meager and ascetic, or else

Grown overrich on indulgences;

 

Too ancient, perhaps – too dark-ancestral;

Or newfangled, cultish, coltish, untried;

Too redolent of foreign mysteries –

Or blandly secular, as dry as fact.

 

Yet here you are, fresh as the new-born dawn,

And timeless as the timeless, anxious hope

That wells in me when I again behold

Those pureblue eyes, those winedark dusky brows –

 

And I am suddenly, fervently, religious –

Ready to kneel, to mumble, to adore –

To alter everything for a single glimpse

Of the sacred mystery at the center of you.

Poem in a Bottle

 

If we make it all the way 

I will show you this poem

And we’ll laugh at the fool’s hope 

That somehow came true.

 

For now I’m polite 

And playing it cool 

Burning in secret,

Making conversation 

 

Nursing a hope

Little better than a dream 

And falling in love 

With a version of you 

 

That I half invented,

Half glimpsed on a screen -

All dream, half woman,

As perfect as a lie.

Maryland Summer

 

The heat has fingers.

It takes you by the throat.

It shakes you like a dog

Worrying a rat,

And leaves you broken, gasping,

In the puddle of yourself.

 

But there are ways out.

Water is a great savior.

So, of course, is air conditioning,

In a restaurant or a movie theater,

Though inexplicably, some people’s houses

Are simply surrendered to the heat.

 

And then there’s night,

The refuge of the watchful,

When time slows, the air cools, and light

Is scattered into a million pinpricks,

Each one as bright

As a miniature sun.

Good Company

 

The dead are good company.

They have the best stories.

They never have moods

Or awkward silences;

They are always a shining

Summation of themselves,

Instead of the cracked, unsteady,

Blowing-in-the-wind creatures

The living are. They take things easily.

 

They can’t hold your hand, of course,

Or drive you to the airport,

But they laugh readily,

More readily than we do,

Because they do not grieve;

They are past all grief.

They are always smiling -

We remember them smiling - 

And they are never impatient;

They have nothing but time.

 

But at night,

In the lonely hours,

They have a way

Of vanishing again,

Leaving us alone

In the ocean of a bed,

Wracked with new grief,

As if on the very first day.

 

The only thing better 

Than remembering you, my darling,

Would be to have you back.

Would be to have you back.

Home

 

The old, good smell

Of three-hundred-year floorboards 

Greets me like a mutt

The moment I walk in.

 

The house is quiet,

But a light is burning,

And a note on the chalkboard 

Welcomes me home.

 

There are places and places.

Most of them just flow by.

A few linger like incense - 

And some lodge deep in flesh,

 

Resisting entropy,

The normal wear of time,

And all other claimants 

To the wandering, homesick heart.

Word

 

The naming is all.

Naming masters a thing.

Every city

Was first a dream,

And between the dreaming

And the building-up,

There was a word -

A thousand words -

Invocations, plans, commands -

A babble of practical abstraction -

Until the city stood,

Stark, inarguable,

Washed in a silence

Only now possible -

Afloat in the dawn

Of a future now begun.

Hearth

 

The wind is at the door,

Knocking on the house,

Brushing the bare floor,

Frightening the mouse;

 

The log is on the fire,

Although the house is poor

And the banshees wail in choir

And the wind is at the door.

Dusk After a Storm

 

Rain-washed, cloud-laden, the sky

Fades in delicate pinks and blues,

And God is beauty, too big for the heart,

Stabbing home fiercely, paling all else,

Cleansing the mind of even its joys,

Till the soul, transparent,

Is part of the blazing sky,

The darkening earth, the rising song

Of crickets in the meadow,

Who sing of the fall of night.

Apology for Dancing

 

We had to dance,

Because there was music,

Because the sun was low

And the air was getting cool;

 

We had to dance,

Because we were celebrating

The union of two hearts,

And also life itself.

 

We had to dance,

In spite of your absence,

Or even because of it -

Because you would have danced, too.

 

We had to dance,

Because we still can,

Because time is precious,

And always slipping away.

 

We had to dance,

Because we are all that’s left of you,

And if we are not dancing,

Then who under heaven will?

One More Evening

 

One more evening –

God, give me one more evening,

With a sun somewhere

Below the horizon

And the final clouds

Dying in pastels,

 

And a moon waxing

(Or waning, either will do),

And – if it’s not too much –

A parade of fireflies,

Sewn at random

Across the meadow

Like Will o’ the Wisp.

 

Just one more evening –

And after that, just one more;

And after that, one further evening,

And one to follow,

And on and on.

God, please –

Give me just a million evenings,

And when those are passed

I will say goodnight –

 

But not with gratitude –

No, never with gratitude –

Because that is akin to resignation,

And I would not have a soul –

Not one worthy of the name –

If I did not always want

One more, one more, one more.

Overnight

 

Tomorrow would come

With its burden of disappointment,

Its petty tragedies

And goads of grief,

 

But for tonight,

The horses, in the moonlight,

Were cropping peacefully,

And in the shade,

 

A lone man walked,

For the moment unburdened,

Forgetting to doubt and hate

As he knew he ought to

 

And letting the sinful night

Wash his angry little soul

In the blessing of darkness

And the gratefulness of sleep.

 

Ten Years

 

Ten years went by

Without much fanfare,

Full of the usual heartaches and joys -

Weddings and picnics,

And three grandchildren

That you’ll never get to meet.

 

The river ran,

Unstirred by your paddle,

And books lingered on shelves,

Unread.

A million incidents

Awaited your comment,

Which never came,

And the silence keened.

 

Right now, on Interstate 81,

The sun is carving out patches of light

Below the bellies of bluegray clouds

From which white wavering tendrils hang –

 

And all that’s missing is your secret smile,

As if the whole show were just for you -

A private celebration of a life

Spent savoring the particular essence of now.

 

I am one of the things you left behind,

But unlike the books, or the heedless river,

I carry that smile inside of me,

In the deepest of places, where you still live;

 

And as long as the sun lights up the clouds,

Your face is there, etched in the burning light.

Buckley Hall

 

Well, we may as well sing

As the night is beckoning

And the old, pure heart

Remembers everything;

 

And we may as well pray

To the bright-dying day

That the ones the night has lost

Will somehow find their way;

 

For the night is very long,

And we only have a song

In the corner of the heart

Where the light is clear and strong.

 

There is pain in everything

That the speeding days will bring,

But the battle is not lost,

So we may as well sing.

The Ordinary Magic

 

His particular magic 

Would not set the sky ablaze,

Or heal the sick, or part the sea,

Or do anything much with snakes;

 

It was not given him

To divine the source of water,

See God in the entrails of a pigeon,

Summon rain to a dry land;

 

In fact, his magic 

Was not his at all,

But the common property 

Of common men:

 

The word,

As pure and elemental 

As fire and sea,

As the breath of God,

 

And which, laid into a certain sequence,

Could fire the mind, which is the only sky.

The First of May

 

Funny how dull fruition is. 

Summer is a drone, a lullaby, 

While spring is glory, overwhelming reason, 

Stirring the blood, sparking the heart’s cold fire.

 

The becoming, I think, is everything;

Being is hardly worth the time

When birth, after all, is the only life,

And death is a dream

Out of which flowers wake,

Blinking in the newborn, mid-May sun

And smiling on the living-dying world.

The Only Thing

 

To live, and simply live,

And maybe at the most

Say something worth hearing

About what it was like to be

In a particular place and body

At a particular time,

Which maybe, if you say it well,

Means something to other people,

In their own times and bodies,

And with their own petty concerns,

Who catch a glimpse of something immortal

Gleaming just out of view,

And always disappearing over the horizon,

Leaving the soul in material night,

With only the memory of the warm sun –

But memory is the same as light,

Because after all, there is only the mind,

Watching a shadow on the wall of a cave,

And finding joy in the dancing shadow

For as long as light and memory last.

 

Eclipse

 

In the superstitious past,

This would have been an omen –

A harbinger of blight,

A warning of leaner times.

 

Today, it’s a party,

An excuse to travel,

To wear funny glasses

Or wave the colander around.

 

We’re hard up for wonders,

But we love an occasion –

And to that degree, at least,

We haven’t changed at all;

 

We’ll take any pretext

To don strange attire,

Concoct a new ritual,

And bask in the chosen day.

The Old Campus

 

In the shadow of ancient buildings,

We lead our little lives –

Petty, provincial, groundlessly proud –

Warm, delicate, flitting creatures,

Flowing between the titans

Of Gothic, indifferent stone.

 

Yet who built the titans?

People as small as we.

Smaller, in fact, as well as fewer,

And with the clumsier tools at hand.

They were not angels, built out of holy fire,

But only flesh, craving and craven,

As prone to doubt and failure

As any of your drinking-pals.

History makes them loom colossal,

But they were the same ungainly things,

On a brief vacation from nothingness,

Made for the dust, making the noble world.

Easter

 

We could all use a little resurrection –

Especially now, with winter hanging on, 

Still biting the air in the early morning,

Chilling the wind, even threatening frost.

 

Gods, men, and daisies – all are prone to die,

And crave rebirth, and bloom in the new sun,

Stretching their infant bodies to the sky

Where summer blue has tremblingly begun.