THINGS TO THINK

Think in ways you've never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door, 
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own home you've never seen. 

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die. 

—Robert Bly

AND THE DAYS ARE NOT FULL ENOUGH

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass

— Ezra Pound

How often do you hear the tenderness you need to hear? I mean exactly when you need to hear it? Is it ever before that little yolk of hurt wraps itself in layers hard enough to break teeth? 

GOSPEL OF THE TWO SISTERS, Terrance Hayes

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In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

—Mark Strand

If you asked about my Aunt Dorcas

I’d tell you “She died yesterday.”

I’d tell you
she buried two husbands:
one, a drunk bastard
one, a name she already wore,
so then it doubled

She was thin as a kitchen match

Bright as the end of that hot-boxed Pall Mall

Sharp as the hook she baited
squatting in tall grass
skeeters on her chin

I’d tell you she cashed out
hid her money in the funeral home safe
so she could live in hell for free

and I’d tell you
we shared some blood

and her name was biblical
but she wasn’t

(even though she was popped on the foot
by a ball of lightning
skipping fast as “My Lou”
across the church parking lot
as she folded her double-name-causing second husband
and his oxygen tank
into that smoky sedan.

wheeeezgruntPOW)

She laughed at that devil
and fearful Southern Baptists
rooted firmly on asphalt

Later I’d tell you
how I squandered my last chance
to learn of her little brother –
my long-gone father

—Dorn