It is, however, too hot to think much about what I’m doing… Suffice to say that I am thinking prayerful thoughts in the direction of my friend Wendy in Denver, and wondering what I’m going to write for class this week…
Today’s poem is called “To Drown in Honey,” and comes to us from Carl Phillips. There is video of him performing it at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2009/04/weekly-poem-to-drown-in-honey.html
I am kindof in love with the linebreaks.
To Drown in Honey
Carl Phillips
Now the leaves rush, greening, back. Back now,
the leaves push greenward. –Some such song, or
close to. I forget the most of it. His voice, and
the words pooling inside it. And the light for once
not sexual, just light. The light, as it should be …
You can build for yourself a tower to signal from.
Can become a still life. A slow ruin. You can
walk away. They all say that. Sir, I see no way
out of it. I have put my spade to the black loam
that the mind at one moment lets pass for truth,
at the next, oblivion. I have considered. I know
what’s buried there: emptiness and renunciation and
ash, and ash … Why, then, so suddenly–overnight
almost–all the leaves again? Why now, rushing back?
