"We could have played gin rummy and taken a stroll
into town or along the boardwalk, maybe,
with dear old Godzilla,
the first one, the best one, the 1954 one,
reprising his role this one last time, raising himself up
over the horizon at dusk,
and hurrying us to a place we never would have
dreamt of
going."
"A bird
has never sinned. They have no need for grace,
salvation, guilt, contrition, holy words,
and make the choice instead to fill the space
above with soulless bodies, not with prayer
but song."
"you know, I was so small then, I let
your winds & waters rock me round
and couldn’t talk enough to tell you
—Big Trees, I like to be with you to-night."
Excerpt from "In California: Morning, Evening, Late January" by Denise Levertov
At day’s end the whole sky,
vast, unstinting, flooded with transparent
mauve,
tint of wisteria,
cloudless
over the malls, the industrial parks,
the homes with the lights going on,
the homeless arranging their bundles.
"Guestbook and pew aside, the place stank
of someone’s scheme to shill the weary: small
donation box locked by the entrance. Pray
(and pay) for safe deliverance. Patience be
damned."
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.
-- 'Disillusionment of Ten O'clock' by Wallace Stevens
"Jane floated down the 400 to land in Sibelius Park, she's the love child of Kip and Hannah, she's every girl lost on a Girl Guide trip who turned into a bear at the mouth of the Humber."
"I don't believe the sky is blue;
I don't believe in thunder's echoes;
I don't believe that dreams are false;
I don't believe that death has no revenge."
"in my brain resides this grey wolf on the one side
a brown rabbit on the right,
down, down, down
spiral into the darkness of the icy lair
gently I go – without resistance, it’s all static
without seeing the light ahead"
I prepared this ("Aging Beauty") before remembering what day tomorrow is... But maybe moms of the age of my own might appreciate this simple, funny epigram from the 1600s :)
(Check out this poem on the Italian Poetry website https://italianpoetry.it/poems/bella-chinvecchia/ for the full experience: help with the translation, listening to the reading out loud, and some more notes to the most difficult words.)
"I dream of a cobalt glow in an empty room.
I dream of your warm tongue. It calls and calls for me and not
me and I listen anyway for the fluent coo of my name."