Poem for Monday, June 2, 2008

The Sleepless Grape

by Li-Young Lee

Like any ready fruit, I woke

falling toward beginning and

welcome, all of night

the only safe place.

Spoken for, I knew

a near hand would meet me

everywhere I heard my name

and the stillness ripening

around it. I found my inborn minutes

decreed, my death appointed

and appointing. And singing

gathers the earth

about my rest,

making of my heart a way home

the stars hold open.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

Carry

by Billy Collins



I want to carry you
and for you to carry me
the way voices are said to carry over water.


Just this morning on the shore,
I could hear two people talking quietly
in a rowboat on the far side of the lake.


They were talking about fishing,
then one changed the subject,
and, I swear, they began talking about you.







Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, May 12, 2008

Names







by Lyn Lifshin







Lately I become

whatever you call

me, the way some

Indians do. First

I couldn’t say

your because

it belonged to

someone who’d

turned me into

who I wasn’t.

When you called

me love near the

rag shop on Caroline,

I tried to remember

the spell Iroquois

put on names to

make them stay.














Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, April 28th, 2008

Poem in the Night Month

by Beth Ann Fennelly

Now that they've X-rayed

the mummified female crocodile

in the Egypt room in the British Museum,

they've found a baby crocodile, mummified,

inserted far back in her throat.

Just so, little one,

we drift toward the next world.

Our days are numbered.

Strangers will catch your head,

will thumb your eyes back to zero,

will say Welcome to the world, not

the afterworld.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, April 14, 2008

Birds


by Tom Clark


Sky full of blue nothing toward which the Magi
Move, like dream people who are Walt Fraziers of the air…
Sometimes the moves they make amaze them
For they will never happen again, until the end of time; but there they are.


So shall I be like them? I don’t think so…and yet to float
Above the rolling H²O
On wings that express the mechanics of heaven
Like a beautiful golden monkey wrench
Expresses mechanics of earth…t’would be bueno.










Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, April 7, 2008

Planting a Mailbox

by John Updike



Prepare the ground when maple buds have burst
And when the daytime moon is sliced so thin
His fibers drink blue sky with litmus thirst.
This moment come, begin.


The site should be within an easy walk,
Beside a road, in stony earth. Your strength
Dictates how deep you delve. The seedling’s stalk
Should show three feet of length.


Don’t harrow, weed or water; just apply
A little gravel. Sun and motor fumes
Perform the miracle: in late July,
A branch post office blooms.







Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, March 31, 2008

The Day and the Hour

by Fredric Koeppel


Someone comes to tell you the day and the hour
of your death. He sits in a chair and brushes
the dust of the road from his hat. You get him
a glass of cold water from the kitchen; he closes
his eyes as he drinks, slowly, beholden. He leans


forward and whispers a few words into your ear
and then turns toward the door. He stands on
the porch, looking out at the distance. Clouds
fill the hills with purple scrim, and he wonders
which will find him first, the rain or the fall of night.











Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, March 24, 2008

“I Keep to Myself Such Measures…”

by Robert Creeley







I keep to myself such
measures as I care for,
daily the rocks
accumulate position.

There is nothing
but what thinking makes
it less tangible. The mind,
fast as it goes, loses

pace, puts in place of it
like rocks simple markers,
for a way only to
hopefully come back to

where it cannot. All
forgets. My mind sinks.
I hold in both hands such weight
it is my only description.















Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, March 10, 2008

The Fisherwoman




by David Ignatow



She took from her basket four fishes
and carved each into four slices
and scaled them with her long knife,
this fisherwoman, and wrapped them;
and took four more and worked
in this rhythm through the day,
each action ending on a package
of old newspapers; and when it came
to close, dark coming upon the streets,
she had done one thing, she felt, well,
making one complete day.






Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, March 3, 2008

Walking Thoughts

by Marvin Bell


The sidewalk is growing soft. I am growing soft.
Absence is a principle, a silence wholly.
If the moon fell, there would be no use for it.


What do we mean by “a killing effort”?
Back there, back there the darkness waits.
Everything we know is a circle.


In a dumb country, the one way is everyone’s.
And something has a chance in such a land.
Is my last friend ahead under that light?


I walk on, and the watchdogs bark crossly.
The other sidewalk is softening also.
It lets me down with curious consistency.


Settling for the average of full and empty
I turn toward home, begin to hurry in the dark,
having talked myself into going back once more.


Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, October 8, २००७

The Fall




by Heather McHugh






Gold leaf fell

to the rake and the fire.
Leaping headlong into those
upholstered yards, we couldn’t tell


rags from riches, loving a little
trash by nature, having
an orange crush. But love
becomes a set of pet


names, all diminutive,

and as for God,
we saw it was the dark
that made the stars. As time


went by,
the jeweled movement
of the loan shark’s car
would utterly impoverish the sky.








Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com