Wednesday, April 4

Another for National Poetry Month

Quaker Dave posted a poem by Molly Peacock a couple days ago. (We've got to stop linking like this, QD.) Years ago I had a poem stuck in my office calendar by her. I still have it. I didn't know I was saving it for now. (It's also available in her book Cornucopia, which you simply must go out and buy right away. Blue Gal highly recommended.)

Little Miracle
by Molly Peacock

No use getting hysterical.
The important part is: we're here.
Our lives are a little miracle.

My hummingbird-hearted schedule
beats its shiny frenzy, day into year.
No use getting hysterical--

it's always like that. The oracle
a human voice could be is shrunk by fear.
Our lives are a little miracle

--we must remind ourselves--whimisical,
and lyrical, large and slow and clear.
(So no use getting hysterical!)

All words other than I love you are clerical,
dispensable, and replaceable, my dear.
Our inner lives are a miracle.

The beat their essence in the coracle
our ribs provide, the watertight boat we steer
through others' acid, hysterical
demands. Ours is the miracle. we're here.

4 comments:

  1. well the poem i posted today has the same message but yours is on a happy note. love it!

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  2. Anonymous7:23 PM

    I used to annoy my construction crew by cranking the radio during Garrison Keeler's Writers' Almanac program. The general brown-collar consensus was that poetry is tre gay, but I honestly enjoyed it, especially the more modern, less structured forms.

    Unfortunately, all of my best efforts at writing poetry begin something like, "Here I sit, Broken Hearted..."

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  3. I once talked to a person who mentioned that his favorite time of day was the morning. When asked why, he said, "Because I know I'm still here".

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  4. wonderful. i'm so happy to see how many people like poetry and that the old notions about it being just a high school boring must do are being replaced. tho the classics still sing.

    there is so much good new poetry out there.
    it isn't just something to get thru and be graded on.

    it breathes.

    ReplyDelete

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