Poets dance in our dreams after the bars close their naked feet slapping out a rhythm to keep us from slipping into sleep. I’ll remember you as you were there then, a birthmark in my brain, sitting near naked, propped up at your dining room table, not like we found you, a turtle trapped on your back crashed up against those free weights, crushed underneath the ancient bench press thinking
The shades enter and leave each frame in unexpected ways. Being human means being part of the projection. I’m a visitor, here for a while but then off to somewhere else, wearing the body and everything that goes with it. The accessories make us think this is who we are, but they’re just borrowed trappings cloaking the penetralium, tight-fitting suits we have to wear until the ceremony is over.
The firestorm that swept a swath of Mount St. Helens clean left nothing alive. Nothing. Nothing but a pumice field, lifeless and dry as old bones, devoid of any sustenance. Within a year, though, within a year, life had begun again, insects blew in on the wind and died and left phosphorus enough for a vagrant lupine to take in, and root, and live, giving more nitrogen than it took,
I wanted to return to some imaginary life based on a collection of unstable memories I thought were real. I would gaze fondly on those memories and dwell in their hazy light, hoping they would do more than flicker in and out of my thoughts like quiet visitors shapeshifting from one identity to another, never staying long enough to keep honest company with me. Memories are never real, and they
Everything is an imposed illusion, an undisclosed projection, observed by unwitting players seeking knowledge just beyond perception. The beautiful things translate, perched on a rocky ledge at sunset, watching the valley turn to gold.
This continues the series of columns that highlights a much-loved poem and other poems that speak to, or resonate with, that poem. This week features “The Weary Blues,” crafted by Langston Hughes. The two related poems are “The Blues Don’t Change” by Al Young and “Slow Drag Blues” by Kevin Young. (While they share the same surname and were both Stegner Fellows, Al and Kevin are unrelated). The Poetry Foundation
