boryrory - a small shrub.
boryrory
a small shrub.

I cry a lot.

179 posts

Chelsea DesAutels, Maybe You Need To Write A Poem About Mercy, In A Dangerous Place

MAYBE YOU NEED TO WRITE A POEM ABOUT MERCY // Start this one with the woman standing at the edge / of the woods. Or the desert, it doesn’t matter, / what matters is she’s standing under a darkening sky / and she knows, at this point, having spent months / in the hospital, that there’s nothing she can do— / no threshold between threat and tranquility, / no demarcation she can draw around herself / or her child for protection, everything is actually / everything else, the stone just kicked / and whatever comes next are the same. / And, knowing this, a great emptiness swells / inside her stomach, an airiness she could float away on— / and the night bellows and the sun rings once more / then slips under the horizon. Maybe then: / a humming of an old tune, her own hand / stroking her red hair. Mercy.
As in the story the man on the bus told me / about his late wife, how by the end she’d forgotten / their wedding, even, and their children’s names, / and once she went missing in the depths of winter / dead bent on saving the cattle from the blizzard / that years ago left all the calves frozen / on their sides. He told me his wife saw angels. / It was her last day, she was at home and the nurse / called him to the living room where the bed was. / His wife asked, Do you see them? And he said, / Yes. And together they counted the wings. / When he told me this story, the man wasn’t sad. / He had just picked up groceries to make bread— / he missed fresh bread, he said, and so / he bought yeast and flour and fine kosher salt. / He wanted to watch the dough rise. // Because the man wasn’t sad, I tried not to be sad, / too. He smiled and got off the bus. Out there, / the streetlamp flickered and the cold night grew / and off he went to warm his kitchen. I waved / and wondered if there’s a word for the way / joy and pain are the same, how, if we’re lucky, / they thread us like an electrical wire cuts a tree, / and there we stand, tender and green, reaching, / charged, humming.

Chelsea DesAutels, “Maybe You Need to Write A Poem About Mercy,” in A Dangerous Place

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boryrory
2 years ago
You, Reading This, Be Ready by William Stafford Starting here, what do you want to remember? How sunlight creeps along a shining floor? What scent of old wood hovers, what softened sound from outside fills the air? Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now? Are you waiting for time to show you some better thoughts? When you turn around, starting here, lift this new glimpse that you found; carry into evening all that you want from this day. This interval you spent reading or hearing this, keep it for life— What can anyone give you greater than now, starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

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boryrory
2 years ago
Praise the woman who took me in her arms & / wouldn’t let go of me. We sank to the floor / in the middle of the aisle in Rite Aid. / It was a late morning & I walked slowly, / furious that spring could still be so wonderful. / Magnolia tempted me to forget about my mother / for a few minutes. I stared at a Brooklyn blue sky / through branches clasping pear blossoms. / The limbs shook in sunlight. My eyes adjusted / when I went into the pharmacy & realized / everywhere I looked the world announced / it would soon be Mother’s Day. Something / ripped itself out of me. A howl so wide / I thought I would burst. The woman near the counter / understood right away the way my mother / once understood I had been born in a specific sadness. / The woman did not say she was a mother but I knew it. / She put her arms around me & waved away the cashiers, / the security guard who repeated Ma’am, Ma’am? / A stranger rocked me in her arms, so much kindness / as we fell over & crashed against a row of votive candles. / She didn’t say it would be okay. She didn’t ask me / what was wrong. But her arms put me in a vicious prayer. / I almost bit her, almost pushed her away. / We held on. We held on & praised the nameless thing / that makes us what we think we aren’t strong enough / to know. She knew. She didn’t let go of me.
Praise the woman who didn’t wipe my snot from her shirt, / my tears from her collarbone, who did not tell me to / pull myself together while everything inside me dropped. / Crushed bones. Blossoms pushing through my mouth— / a word: Mom Mom Mom. This broken birdsong of mine / with no bird, no wing, no way to fly back through time. / Praise the woman who did not leave me / like something suddenly dead on the sidewalk / with a breeze blowing over its face. / Praise the woman who smelled like fabric softener / & coffee & the good things I must believe I am too. / Praise the mothers who walk slowly through the world, / bringing children into themselves, burying children sometimes / before themselves, & who defend something harder / than innocence. Praise the guts & grace of mothers. / Praise their exhaustion & their good work. Praise their wit, / their wonderful ways of listening to the world fall / asleep against its clean pillow. For the woman / who knelt with me in an ugly heap in the middle of / Rite Aid on an unbearable spring day, / who helped me buy a Mother’s Day card / for my dead mother, who knew better than to say /I’d be just fine, for you I lift my arms each spring / & wish you a kindness so fantastic I sometimes feel / I’m in midair, the shadow of my wings clapping in joy / above your children who must love you.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths, “Good Mother”

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boryrory
2 years ago
boryrory - a small shrub.

🍓🐹🌿

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