by Rasma Haidri

Ocean Satori

I sing a song you do not quite hear
in a language you do not yet understand.

It is the song of ocean.
Hear – we have been singing to you
from the beginning
from the first word
from the first tone
stirring on the tongue of God.

Go under and wonder
at the multitude of wonders you are.
You will find a new way of breathing.
A new way to open your eyes.

In the ocean all things turn
and there is no up down.

There is breathing at birth and at death,
and to the one being born
it appears the world will end.

Where will you throw these bones?
There is no such place as “away” for them to go.
The body can dissolve in ocean
and rise again in another form.

There is no starting point or end
when you live along the circle of God.

All water is this water.
The ocean is within you now,
woven into your hair and tingling on your skin.
Open your mouth and unloose your own singing.
This is the hum of your own song.
This is your welcoming drown.

Here is where I come to you–
where I call and you come.
Here there is no alone
no waiting
no questions
no words
no thought
no end to our embrace
no beginning–
The ocean is one.


from Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami, Bayeux Arts, 2005

American Life in Poetry: Column 046

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

We constantly compare one thing with another, or attempt to, saying, "Well, you know, love is like...it's like...well, YOU know what it's like." Here Bob King, who lives in Colorado, takes an original approach and compares love to the formation of rocks.

Geology

I know the origin of rocks, settling
out of water, hatching crystals
from fire, put under pressure
in various designs I gathered
pretty, picnic after picnic.

And I know about love, a little,
igneous lust, the slow affections
of the sedimentary, the pressure
on earth out of sight to rise up
into material, something solid
you can hold, a whole mountain,
for example, or a loose collection
of pebbles you forgot you were keeping.


Reprinted from the Marlboro Review, Issue 16, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2005 by Robert King, whose prose book, "Stepping Twice Into the River: Following Dakota Waters," appeared in 2005 from The University Press of Colorado. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

by Robin Chapman

THE GORILLA THAT WALKS THROUGH THE BASKETBALL GAME

Thirty professors at the chaos talk
on how the mind works,
we watch the white-shirted players
on the videoscreen, doing our assigned job
of counting the number of passes they make,
not so easy when two different balls
have appeared in play, and our counts
at the end of the videoclip vary–
eleven say some, fourteen insist others–
but we’re feeling good
that we’ve kept our eyes on the balls
and the hands and the backs,
carried out our appointed task,
and when we’re asked
if we noticed anything odd, no one nods;
though shown the replay
we see we’ve missed
the gorilla that wanders through
the twist of bodies,
crossing the court
from left to right in a leisurely way,
looking about with curiosity–
leaving us shaken by the query
of what else we’ve missed in our lives
keeping our eye on the ball.

–from Images of a Complex World:
The Art and Poetry of Chaos (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2005, by Robin Chapman & Julien Clinton Sprott).

American Life in Poetry: Column 045

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Poets are experts at holding mirrors 
to the world. Here Anne Caston, from 
Alaska, shows us a commonplace scene. 
Haven't we all been in this restaurant 
for the Sunday buffet? Caston overlays 
the picture with language that, too, 
is ordinary, even sloganistic, and overworn. 
But by zooming in on the joint of meat 
and the belly-up fishes floating in butter, 
she compels us to look more deeply into 
what is before us, and a room that at first 
seemed humdrum becomes rich with inference.


Sunday Brunch at the Old Country Buffet

 Madison, Wisconsin, 1996

Here is a genial congregation,
well fed and rosy with health and appetite,
robust children in tow. They have come
and all the generations of them, to be fed,
their old ones too who are eligible now
for a small discount, having lived to a ripe age.
Over the heaped and steaming plates, one by one,
heads bow, eyes close; the blessings are said.

Here there is good will; here peace
on earth, among the leafy greens, among the fruits
of the gardens of America's heartland. Here is
 abundance,
here is the promised
land of milk and honey, out of which
a flank of the fatted calf, thick still
on its socket and bone, rises like a benediction
over the loaves of bread and the little fishes,
 belly-up in butter.


Reprinted from "Flying Out with the Wounded," 
New York University Press, 1997. Copyright (c) 
1997 by Anne Caston. This weekly column is 
supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, 
and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, 
Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

******************************

by Elisavietta Ritchie

IN TRANSIT

Coming from somewhere else
at any age, even in utero,
you're never sure

your feet touch the soil.
Your whole life you hover --
hawk, helicopter

or fat dirigible, fearful
someone might poke a hole,
light a match --

You hang in there, up there,
wondering will they finally
grant permission to land

or forever challenge your passport,
check your fingerprints,
discount your money, question

could you survive as a stranger?
Best stay suspended,
forget the keys to the town.

Here, the air is dangerous, cold,
wind currents tricky, but
God, what a view.

-from Awaiting Permission to Land
(winner of the AnamnesisAward)
Cherry Grove Press, copyright 2006
Elisavietta Ritchie

American Life in Poetry: Column 043

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Unlike the calculated expressions of feeling common
to its human masters, there is nothing disingenuous
about the way a dog praises, celebrates, frets or
mourns. In this poem David Baker gives us just
such an endearing mutt.


Mongrel Heart

Up the dog bounds to the window, baying
like a basset his doleful, tearing sounds
from the belly, as if mourning a dead king,

and now he's howling like a beagle -- yips, brays,
gagging growls -- and scratching the sill paintless,
that's how much he's missed you, the two of you,

both of you, mother and daughter, my wife
and child. All week he's curled at my feet,
warming himself and me watching more TV,

or wandered the lonely rooms, my dog shadow,
who like a poodle now hops, amped-up windup
maniac yo-yo with matted curls and snot nose

smearing the panes, having heard another car
like yours taking its grinding turn down
our block, or a school bus, or bird-squawk,

that's how much he's missed you, good dog,
companion dog, dog-of-all-types, most excellent dog
I told you once and for all we should never get.

Reprinted from "The Southeast Review," Vol. 23,
No. 2, 2005, by permission of the author, whose newest book
of poetry is "Midwest Eclogue," W. W. Norton (2005).
Copyright (c) 2005 by David Baker. This weekly column
is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of
Congress, and the Department of English at the University of
Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

American Life in Poetry: Column 043 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Lola Haskins, who lives in Florida, has written a number of poems about musical terms, entitled "Adagio," "Allegrissimo," "Staccato," and so on. Here is just one of those, presenting the gentleness of pianissimo playing through a series of comparisons.

To Play Pianissimo

Does not mean silence.
The absence of moon in the day sky
for example.

Does not mean barely to speak,
the way a child's whisper
makes only warm air
on his mother's right ear.

To play pianissimo
is to carry sweet words
to the old woman in the last dark row
who cannot hear anything else,
and to lay them across her lap like a shawl.

From "Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems," BOA Editions, Rochester, NY. Copyright (c) 2004 by Lola Haskins and reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.