Tommie's Reads

TommieBoy

Conamara Blues by John O'Donohue

Anchor’
For Laurie

Everything
Depends
On the fall
Being utterly
Helpless
A meteor shaft
Of dead weight
Slicing through
Dreaming water
Aiming straight
At weakness
Underneath
In the stone
Destination
To vent
A wound
Desperate enough
To grip and hold
The strain
Of a pilgrim vessel
Swaying in the dark
On a surface
Where storms sleep
Lightly.

TommieBoy

Against Love Poetry by Eavan Boland

Quarantine

In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking – they were both walking – north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

TommieBoy

The Complete Poems of Robert Frost

The Impulse

It was too lonely for her there,
And too wild,
And since there were but two of them,
And no child,

And work was little in the house,
She was free,
And followed where he furrowed field,
Or felled tree.

She rested on a log and tossed
The fresh chips,
With a song only to herself
On her lips.

And once she went to break a bough
Of black alder.
She strayed so far she scarcely heard
When he called her--

And didn't answer--didn't speak--
Or return.
She stood, and then she ran and hid
In the fern.

He never found her, though he looked
Everywhere,
And he asked at her mother's house
Was she there.

Sudden and swift and light as that
The ties gave,
And he learned of finalities
Besides the grave.

TommieBoy

Alone Amid All This Noise
a collection of women's poetry selected by Ann Reit

Narrative
translated by Elisabeth Eybers

A woman grew, with waiting, over-quiet.
The earth along its spiralled path was spun
through many a day and night, now green, now dun;
at times she laughed, and then, at times, she cried.

The years went by. By turns she woke and slept
through the long hours of night, but every day
she went, as women go, her casual way,
and no one knew what patient tryst she kept.

Hope and despair tread their alternate round
and merge into acceptance, till at length
the years have only quietness in store.

And so at last the narrative has found
in her its happy end; this tranquil strength
is better than the thing she's waiting for.

TommieBoy

The Rest of Love by Carl Phillips

White Dog

First snow—I release her into it—
I know, released, she won't come back.
This is different from letting what,

already, we count as lost go. It is nothing
like that. Also, it is not like wanting to learn what
losing a thing we love feels like. Oh yes:

I love her.
Released, she seems for a moment as if
some part of me that, almost,

I wouldn't mind
understanding better, is that
not love? She seems a part of me,

and then she seems entirely like what she is:
a white dog,
less white suddenly, against the snow,

who won't come back. I know that; and, knowing it,
I release her. It's as if I release her
because I know.

TommieBoy

Becoming by Julia Butterfly Hill

For Mallarie

Intermission... the point between what is now known and possibly understood
and the infinite knowledge still waiting to be discovered.
The Pause... peering over the edge before diving into the abyss of discovery.
The Brief Moment... when inhale becomes exhale
and life turns to death turns to rebirth.
The Pause... of catching one's breath before regaining strength and running
headfirst again, arms outstretched to embrace our fate.
Intermission... the point where the sun meets horizon...

Finding Clarity

In the depths of my uncertainty and confused chaos lies the cleansing waters of my soul.
It is into this I dive, immersing myself in the desire for purity...of thought, word and action.
When clarity seems distorted, I learn the lesson....of being still.

You Are Part of Me

You are a part of me... and I am a part of you.
When one reaches out to another... then one transforms the two.
But two is never separate... from the one that was before.
If anything, two is the possibility... of one becoming more.
And if there were no counting... no numbers to create a wall,
when we looked in the face of one... we would see the face of all.

...I like this book very much

TommieBoy

What Narcissism Means To Me Poems by Tony Hoagland

excerpts from
How It Adds Up

There was the morning I was born,
and year I was a loser,
and the night I was the winner of the prize
for which the audience applauded.
Then there was someone else I met,
whose face and voice I can't forget,
and the momory of her
is like a jail I'm trapped his inside,
or maybe she is something I just use
to hold my real life at a distance...
.

TommieBoy

The Unicorn & Other Poems by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Presentiment

I am still as an autumn tree
In which there is no wind,
No breath of movement – yet
There on a top branch,
For no cause I can see,
A single leaf oscillates
Violently.

To what thin melody
Does it dance?
What lost note
Vibrates in me?
From the past or the future?
Memory
Or Presentiment?

TommieBoy

On Chesil Beach by Ian Mcewan

This is how the entire course of a life can be changed —by doing nothing. On Chesil Beach he could have called out to Florence, he could have gone after her. He did not know, or would not have cared to know, that as she ran away from him, certain in her distress that she was about to lose him, she had never loved him more, or more hopelessly, and that the sound of his voice would have been a deliverance, and she would have turned back. Instead, he stood in cold and righteous silence in the summer's dusk, watching her hurry along the shore, the sound of her difficult progress lost to the breaking of small waves, until she was a blurred, receding point...

...terrible read

paglynncashel

good stuff, the Robert frost poem was great

TommieBoy

Things Are Disappearing Now by Kate Northrup

Lines

The unluckiest among us fall in love
                  with such a thing as a line,
 
and from the beginning, it goes badly.
 
You can bring a line into your home
                  but your gestures so alarm it
it breaks into two, four,
 
                  sixteen lines and they keep
breeding, breeding. There’s no
 
maneuvering them. One line
                  escapes you
 
and appears years later
aimless in the garden. If you had been wise,
 
you would not have fallen for a nature
so given to infidelity:
 
Lines always go in two directions.
 
I myself was in love with a line.
                  I took it to a field
And lay down next to it
 
Whispering Relax, we’re alone
but the line would have none of it.
 
                  Soon night had fallen
and rising over the hill came cars, stories,
 
came windows through which I saw
                  everything as it must remain:
 
singular, burning, private.

TommieBoy

Photographing Eden by Jason Gray

Sciomancy

It is the shape you make, the kind of sun
You dont let fall that tells me what I need.
You see, the ground is scorched with emptiness.

You will be the subject of the wind. The earth
Will never have you. You lingered here. Your lover
Will leave you once you are nothing but apple core.

It's gotten so no longer do I need
The shadow. I can read its former place,
As if you sat in grass and left just moments

Ago. You want to know the future, tell
The past. It is the trace you left on time,
The way shadows are our temporary stain

On the world. See how even in your sways,
Your slightest twitches, you have heralded
The long road of all your misdecisions, the loss

Of all better possibilities.
It is a bottomless box. Stare if you like.
But you, who think that God has fled our side,

Bent double as you are, won't find him in
The dirt. this, I know more than most -
You cannot find the absent in the absence.

TommieBoy

Imperfect Thirst by Galway Kinnell

excerpts from
Driving West

Oil is a form of waiting...
Airplanes rise through the downpour and throw us through the blue sky.
The idea of the airplane subverts earthly life...
A lightning bolt is made entirely of error...
The windshield wipers wipe, homesickness one way, wanderlust the other, back and forth...
This happened to your father and to you, Galway – sick to stay, longing to come up against the ends of the earth,
and climb over...

TommieBoy

In Someone's Shadow by Rod McKuen, 1969

April 6
I have learned no new alphabet this week. No new yardstick different from the last time out. The old language has had to do too long a time.
I use the past arithmetic to make the present work. Yet even going from room to room I walk with arms outstretched.

January 11
Mr. Kelly barks at shadows now; that’s a habit he will have to break.
For shadows offer all the safety left in life.
I dare not think we might replace the shadows that I’ve had to learn to love,
but I stand ready one more time to learn a new geography
if that becomes a necessary thing to do.
Meanwhile there’s a certain sureness in the dark parts of the house,
for you’re still hiding there.

April 5
Life goes slow without love. It moves along unhurried.
The sun rises. The sun goes down.
There are those who pass by changing the life-cycle
if you’re willing to wait.
I am always shy with these journeymen at first
and by the time I get to know them
they’ve gone away.

TommieBoy

Double Shadow by Carl Phillips

excerpts from
On Horseback

More and more, I agree: a forced decision
is not a true one...
The nights are long, here.
Nowhere a torch.
No beacons, either.
Distortion works the only way it can.
At once both a thing that blinds and a form of blindness.

TommieBoy

Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor by Lisa Kleypas



...a light read ...for the season

For the first time in his life he knew what it felt like to have his heart broken…not broken in a sad or romantic sense, but broken open.
He had never known this before, the desire to surround another human being with perfect happiness.
He would find a mother for Holly, the perfect mother. He would build a circle of people for her.
Usually a child was the result of a family. In this case, however, a family was going to be the result of a child.

Mark stared at her in fascination. She had a quality of uncalculated niceness that was as seductive as it was endearing.
She wore the look of a woman who was meant to be happy, who loved generously, who would care for a dog that no one else wanted.
He remembered Maggie telling him that after what she’d gone through with her husband’s death, she had nothing left to give. But the truth was, she had too much to give.

As Mark walked outside with Maggie, he was filled with desire and liking and sympathy, all bound with a thread of frustration.
He understood the conflict within her, probably better than she would have believed.
And he found himself in the position of having to push her, carefully, into something she was determined never to be ready for.
If it were merely a question of being patient, he would have given her all the patience in the world. But that wouldn’t be enough to get her past her fears.

TommieBoy

Rainshadow Road by Lisa Kleypas


...the author shares some interesting passages and insights

The realization was so simple that many people would dismiss it as being beneath more sophisticated minds. Only those with some remnant potential for wonder would understand. Love was the secret behind everything... love was what made vineyards grow and filled the spaces between the stars, and fixed the ground beneath his feet. It didn't matter if you acknowledged it or not. You couldn't stop the motion of the earth or hold back the ocean tides, or break the pull of the moon. You couldn't stop the rain or pull a shade over the sun. And one human heart was no less a force than any of the rest.

The past had surrounded him like the bars of a prison cell, and he’d never understood that he’d had the power to walk out at any time. He’d not only suffered the consequences of his parents’ sins, he had voluntarily carried them with him. But why should he spend the rest of his life being weighted down by fears, hurts, secrets, when if he just let go, he would be free to reach for what he wanted most… All he had to do was hold his breath and take the leap.

TommieBoy

Space, in Chains by Laura Kasischke

Briefly

Here and there some scrap of beauty gets snatched from this or that:
One child’s voice rising above the children’s choir.
A few wild notes of laughter passing through the open window of a passing car.
That pink handkerchief waved at the parade.
The tiny Nile-blue tile broken at the edge of the mosaic —all shining accident

And this... last second or two of dreaming
in which your face returns to me completely.
Not even needing to be, being so alive again to me.

TommieBoy

Pieces of Air in the Epic by Brenda Hillman

Statueless Architecture

I passed through nature into the next.
Children running in unsupervised shadows.
Last century’s fountains learning not to lie.
Risk to identify with only one element since one
will die but in the summer air around
each thought, something is built and avoided.
You go through an arch... and aren’t the arch,
just infinity of form, curve’s curve of becoming,
a phrase tracking it to future’s celadon relief.
As others dressed as others we were supposed to meet.
Citizens walked here without disappointment,
seeing no statue or palace with eleven axes,
patient in the mindless heat

TommieBoy

Heartwishes by Jude Deveraux

As Gemma thought of all she'd seen of this town, of this man, his family and now of his house, she couldn't help a feeling of longing.
Since her father had died, she hadn't felt truly at home anywhere. To belong somewhere and to someone was Gemma's deepest desire.
What would it be like to grow up in a town where people knew your name? she wondered. More than that, knew you as a person?
As for Gemma... her life had been transient...

It was a ridiculous thought. No one owned anyone else. She'd certainly never beofre felt that she possessed another person.
No, Gemma had always been independent, the master of her own fate, the owner of little except what she carried in her mind.
She sat down on a kitchen stool. The truth was that since her father died, she'd "belonged" to no one.

TommieBoy

She Walks in Beauty by Caroline Kennedy

Courage by Anne Sexton

It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step, as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien, you drank their acid and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone, getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart, then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow, you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers and stride out.

TommieBoy

Fragile Interludes by Jon Francis

We'll Meet Again

I've never kissed you or even held your hand. We've only been together a few times.
But even that, I know I could love you, and I know that you could love me.

But places call you and another lies deep in your heart.
And others, and places, call me.
I won't kiss you tonight and I won't hold your hand. Nor will you - I.
We both understand.

Someday we'll meet again,if not you, another you; if not I, another I.
Perhaps someday we'll meet again, when hearts are freer, when minds are clearer.

TommieBoy

True Love by Robert Fulghum

Who does not have a secret love? Like the man who loves the flower market lady or the woman who still remembers the flashing smile? Me too – and may those minor romances of my secret life never cease. Oh to be hit by that kind of electricity!

TommieBoy

There's a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery by Portia Nelson

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.

walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

I walk down another street.

TommieBoy

The World Will Follow by Alice Walker

Hope to Sin Only in the Service of Waking Up

Hope never to believe it is your duty or right to harm another simply because you mistakenly believe they are not you.
Hope to understand suffering as the hard assignment even in school you wished to avoid. But could not.
Hope to be imperfect in all the ways that keep you growing.
Hope never to see another not even a blade of grass that is beyond your joy.
Hope not to be a snob the very day Love shows up in love’s work clothes.
Hope to see your own skin in the wood grains of your house.
Hope to talk to trees & at last tell them everything you’ve always thought.
Hope at the end to enter the Unknown knowing yourself. Forgetting yourself also.
Hope to be consumed to disappear into your own Love.
Hope to know where you are –Paradise–if nobody else does.
Hope that every failure is an arrow pointing toward enlightenment.
Hope to sin only in the service of waking up.

TommieBoy

Emerson

The Day's Ration

When I was born,
From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice,
Saying, This be thy portion, child; this chalice,
Less than a lily's, thou shalt daily draw
From my great arteries; nor less, nor more.
All substances the cunning chemist Time
Melts down into that liquor of my life,
Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty, and disgust,
And whether I am angry or content,
Indebted or insulted, loved or hurt,
All he distils into sidereal wine,
And brims my little cup; heedless, alas!
Of all he sheds how little it will hold,
How much runs over on the desert sands.
If a new muse draw me with splendid ray,
And I uplift myself into her heaven,
The needs of the first sight absorb my blood,
And all the following hours of the day
Drag a ridiculous age.
To-day, when friends approach, and every hour
Brings book or starbright scroll of genius,
The tiny cup will hold not a bead more,
And all the costly liquor runs to waste,
Nor gives the jealous time one diamond drop
So to be husbanded for poorer days.
Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?
Why need I galleries, when a pupil's draught
After the master's sketch, fills and o'erfills
My apprehension? Why should I roam,
Who cannot circumnavigate the sea
Of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn
The nearest matters to another moon?
Why see new men
Who have not understood the old?

TommieBoy

Midnight Salvage by Adrienne Rich

In the windowglass
a blurred face
- is it still mine?

Who out there hoped to change me - what out there has tried?
What sways and presses against the pane - what can't I see beyond or through?
charred, crumpled, ever-changing human language
- is that still you?