Poetry Friday – Bridget Pegeen Kelly

The Leaving

by Bridget Pegeen Kelly

My father said I could not do it,

but all night I picked the peaches.

The orchard was still, the canals ran steadily.

I was a girl then, my chest its own walled garden.

How many ladders to gather an orchard?

I had only one and a long patience with lit hands

and the looking of the stars which moved right through me

the way the water moved through the canals with a voice

that seemed to speak of this moonless gathering

and those who had gathered before me.

I put the peaches in the pond’s cold water,

all night up the ladder and down, all night my hands

twisting fruit as if I were entering a thousand doors,

all night my back a straight road to the sky.

And then out of its own goodness, out

of the far fields of the stars, the morning came,

and inside me was the stillness a bell possesses

just after it has been rung, before the metal

begins to long again for the clapper’s stroke.

The light came over the orchard.

The canals were silver and then were not.

and the pond was–I could see as I laid

the last peach in the water–full of fish and eyes.

From Poets.Org

Poetry Friday – Vinod Kumar Shukla

A poem in translation from Hindi:

One Should See One’s Own Home From Far Off One should see one’s own home from far off. One should cross the seven oceans to see one’s home, in the helplessness of the unbridgeable distance, fully hoping to return some day. One should turn around, while journeying, to see one’s own country from another. One’s Earth, from space. Then the memory of what the children are doing at home will be the memory of what children are doing on Earth. Concern about food and drink at home will be concern about food and drink on Earth. Anyone hungry on Earth will be like someone hungry at home. And returning to Earth will be like returning home. Things back home are in such a mess that after walking a few steps from home, I return homewards as if it were Earth. Translation: 2002, Vinod Kumar Shukla and Daniel Weissbort From: Survival (ed. by Daniel Weissbort and Girdhar Rathi) Publisher: Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 2002

American Sentences

I’ve been reading a book by Kim Addonizio called Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within.  Sometimes when I’m stuck or lost it helps to read  the wise words of poets and writers.  Addonizio introduced me to the concept of  “American Sentences”  created by Alan Ginsberg.  Based on the syllable count from Haiku but with no line breaks it was a joy to discover.  There is more about this form here.