Two Poems
Why Survive?
a cento
To see if it was true.
To see what comes next.
To give the body a chance.
To be, but you are also in air and sand and earth.
To go on a run somewhere with lindens.
To match the zigzag of the clear sky’s lightning,
its alien script across the sky.
To host the latter-day bee,
who is a midwife by virtue.
To marvel at time, at the long reach
of life’s bottomless watering.
To drink, in the afternoon, and
to celebrate the anniversary of a lakeside bar.
To feel possessed of a soul that’s better schooled
under a dome of choral sound.
To be both music and comfort.
To mark arrangements of blue.
To be drenched and dried in the sun’s bright voltage.
To see her stumbling out on the other shore
sending up a riot of yellow flowers.
To see her knees. Oh God, the thin tendons.
To leave behind belonging, for moving.
To try to explain where you are—
the jumbled, sun-bleached universe: Hold on
to say wisdom will come,
to mean no harm, or to not especially, just now, be looking for it.
To stand on desert dirt wishing stars would fall,
another bright reminder
belief is not a requirement to go on living.
Nevertheless, live.
A Blessing for Survivors of the Anthropocene
a cento
Let our leaders of today go back into the past,
down through the great broken heart.
Let them flower in each other’s arms.
Only that which exists can be spoken of.
I pray I may be ready with my witness.
Come wind, come rain, come winter or the night;
fumes that injure the tender landscape.
The glaciers relinquish their secrets: that sound is the ice bowing.
Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky.
May one survive that other eyes may drink the green.
May ginger and turmeric flourish.
May we remember that holiness exists in the ordinary elements of our lives,
in long grass. Let the stars appear.
Let us smell rain. Let the breeze through an oak hymn.
O, ill-willed dark, give with the sound of rain.
Beyond the face of fear,
go. Let there be only paradise
Let less happen.
“Why Survive”: Lines taken from (in order): L.I. Henley, Derek Robbins, Landon Godfrey, Martha Collins, Talin Tahajian, Amit Majmudar, T. J. McLemore, Austin Segrest, Hannah VanderHart, E. Bradfield, David Salner, Virginia Konchan, Anne Bangrover, Lucia Perillo, Mary Barnard, Keetje Kuipers, Benjamin Landry, Lucia Perillo, Elizabeth Bradfield, Alice Friman, Elizabeth Bradfield, Gina Franco, Tony Hoagland, Anne-Marie Thompson, V. Penelope Pelizzon, Carl Phillips, Javier Zamora, Samantha Tetangco, Tony Hoagland, Gwendolyn Brooks
“A Blessing for Surivors”: Lines taken from (in order): Margaret Burroughs, Galway Kinnell, John S. Anson, Fanny Howe, John Berryman, Charles Reznikoff, Michael Davidson, D. A. Powell, George Meredith, Margery Mansfield, Karen An-Hwei Lei, Luci Tapahonso, Jane Kenyon, Justin Phillip Reed, Lisel Mueller, Lucille Clifton, Charles Olson, Kay Ryan