The poem I read, part 3, Muchness

Muchness

(Tony Hoagland)

I saw you in the rainy morning

form the window of the hotel room,

running down the gangplank to board the boat.

You were wearing your famous orange pants,

which are really apricot

and the boat rocked a little

as you stepped on its edge.

You were going to work

with your backpack and sketchbook

and your bushy gray hair

which bursts out in weather

like a steel wool bouquet

That's how my heart is, I thought-

It lies coiled up inside of me, asleep,

then springs out and shocks me

with all of its in muchness.

But as I was dreamming, your boat pulled away.

Then there was just the gray sheen

of the harbor left behind, like unpolished stell

and the steep green woods that grow down to the shore,

and the gauze of mist on the hills.

It was your vanished boat

which gave the scene a shape,

with its suggestions of journey and destination.

And the narrative then, having done its work,

it vanished too,

leaving just its affectionate cousin description behind;

-Description,

which lingers,

and loves for no reason.

(form Poetry)

The Poem I read, part 2

Lydia Davis

Men

There are also men in the world. Sometimes we forget, and think there are only women - endless hills and plains of unresisting women. We make little jokes and comfort each other and our lives pass quickly. But every now and then, it is true, a man rises unexpectedly in our midst like a pine tree, and looks savagely at us, and sends us hobbling away in great floods to hide in the caves and gullies until he is gone.

(from 32 Poems)

The Poem I read

Entering
LAURA CRONK

Moonscape of snow at night.
To die, to crash,

could be a crush of snow.
All softness.

I imagine, driving alone,
being enveloped by snow, crashed into, quickly.

The mice must have these visions.
Talking quietly when they can't sleep

about tunneling in endless grain until, full of it,
completely enveloped by it, peacefully, it takes them.

(from Lyric)