On the precipice

After Luke 19:11-27

On the precipice

of the crack in time,

the moment when

nothing would be

the same again,

the moment 

at the juncture

of the before

and the after,

a price was

required, a toll

to cover the before.

Eyes focused 

on the after,

they would miss

the reality

of the moment,

they would see

the wrong thing,

at least for a time,

until after the cock

crowed,

until after the curtain

tore,

until after the stone

rolled,

until after the wound

was touched.

Photograph by Cristina Gottardi via Unsplash. Used with permission.

A Window into Poetry and Change with Jane Hirshfield

Poetry, the poet and essayist Jane Hirshfield reminds us, was born in need. “We read or write poems because we need them,” she writes in Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. “The first poems were work songs, love songs, war songs, lullabies, prayers – rituals meant to carry assistance.”

Hirshfield is the author of eight poetry collections: Alaya (1982); Of Gravity & Angels (1988); The October Palace (1994); The Lives of the Heart (1997); Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001); After (2006); Come, Thief (2011); and The Beauty (2105). She is also a poetry translator, editor of anthologies, and the author of Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (1997) and other collections of essays. She’s received enough recognitions and honors to fill two or three articles; see her entry at the Poetry Foundation.

It was coincidence that I was reading Hirshfield’s Ten Windows at the time of the election. Published in 2015, the book is a collection of 10 essays on poetry. The subtitle, “How Great Poems Transform the World,” is somewhat misleading; the essays do not directly address that subject. Indirectly, however, they do. The essays are just subtler about it.

Like poetry.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Autorow

Young country young industry

wheels, mobility, boom times,

offerings spilling from showroom windows

lining the street for blocks

Names speaking to power and style

and excitement and desire:

Model T Ford Dodge

Kenmore Touring Car

Cadillac LaSalle Phaeton

Packard Hudson

Pierce Arrow Buick

Hupmobile Franklin

Duesenberg Chevrolet

Oldsmobile salesmen

in straw hats

Autorow roars, empowers

movement, shrinks time,

invents commutes, builds

suburbs, accelerates

its own dispersal, spells

its own eventual doom

commuters drive away

with the names they bought,

desires fulfilled

The street quiet in its subsidence,

windows boarded, empty, pigeons

occupy the architecture as homeless

shelter in doorways tattooed

by old signs, the silence broken

only by the rolling of empty bottles

Industry birthday, bits and data, pixels

lowing on webs of electronic screens,

ideas flowing, seeking old space

to suggest stability, windows cleaned,

debris hauled away

street reborn

Photograph: St. Louis Auto Row (Locust Street) in the 1920s.

Once upon a time

Once upon a time

I read books, and wrote

about books, and now

I curate literary content.

Once upon a time

I protested war, and lit

my anti-war candle, and now

I protest perceived microaggressions.

Once upon a time

I prayed to God, and lifted

my prayers upward, and now

I pray downward to my smart phone.

Once upon a time

itself is no longer

once upon a time

Once upon a time

has become

once upon a spin,

once upon a brand,

once upon a tipping point.

Rumpelstiltskin sits

at his wheel, spinning

straw into what passes

for gold, turning

to demand the child.

Heather Eure at Tweetspeak Poetry has a poetry prompt this week involving that classic fairy tale beginning “once upon a time.” To see what others are thinking (and writing), please visit the site.

Photograph by Larisa Koshkina via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.