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summer is leaving
whether you say goodbye or not

So stop pretending you haven’t noticed.
Remember good manners
Write a thank you note
For all of June, July, August
And whatever marvelous gifts
or gardens or warm nights
you received. Tuck your note
into tall grass, or under the swing,
or beneath the basil in its bright blue pot
Snail trails and mud and crickets
will track and chew and dampen
your words will sink into the ground
carrying memories you want to hold
and all you’d just as soon forget
Summer reads them all,
and writes back promises to return

World woke sky changed

while I fretted over it on paper

and missed the showiest part of sunrise

another signal, another sign

from this world that keeps unfurling

exploding and dancing and cooking

breakfast and growing peaches

while I scramble its jigsaw pieces

head down and searching for

the answers. Stop. Just stop.

this world will not be solved

by diligence.
Look up

She says, Would you like some hydrangeas?
Cuts branch after branch of huge white blossoms
says, I’ve been meaning to prune them back.
A sweet and possibly invented excuse.
But who can tell, busy as you are,
cradling what she hands you?
Armfuls of blossoms
and blossoms and branches of blossoms

outdoors, early
I watch for signs in the heavens
on what might or might not
be the last night of the Perseids

trying to be noisy enough
to scare off yard-wandering
opossums, skunks, bears, bats, bugs

trying to be quiet enough
to not wake the neighbors

One more in a long string of balancing acts

the sky opaque and speckled
to my kitchen light dazzled eyes

Then
like in all the best stories, where what you seek
arrives just before you give up
One star, bright tail of light shoots overhead

a Sign, I decide, that we’ll all be Okay.
Okay.
a word whose definition is as fuzzy
as the fixed stars fading from this lightening sky

pink clouds, crescent moon
soft gray trees slowly appear
rise through morning fog

night and day, this world
a continuous factory
of beauty, handing it out
everywhere, for free

The world behaves as if
it loves this job–
to keep tapping us on the shoulder.

Impatient, distracted,
we raise our heads up from our worries
and look where the world points–
Sunflower, laughing toddler,
Rain puddle, star
Look, says the world,
There is all this, too.

All the small birds
dart and swoop full
of being busy become
insubstantial
when heron crosses the sky
Slow calm
a deep breath
after many fast and shallow days

backyard is a wide sweep of greengreengreen
dotted with waves of white clover
dash of dashing rabbits
and one almost red tomato

From Day 5 of Every Day Is A Poem class: “It takes work to be in awe,” writes poet and teacher Jacqueline Suskin. This final day’s lesson is all about giving yourself permission to be creative.

Since I live alone
there is no one
I must ask.
But
sometimes
scurry
sometimes long, harsh lists
of Things To Get Done
Or Fix
Or Buy
Or Clean
are the mean and clever
ways I say no.

Why do you write? And who are you writing for? Those are the questions posed in Day 4 of the poetry online class I’m taking.

Weirdly, I had already been thinking about this a lot this week.

When I write my morning poems, this practice I’ve drifted away from, I don’t have to think about the why and who it’s for–when I’m actively doing it, those answers are so clear to me.

I write for you, stranger,
who I picture as a version of me
sitting in a cafe
reading and that click
of connection

Mostly, I write for me
for the moment at the end of the day
when I am tired, and morning is
long past and I think,
Did I write a poem this morning?
I write for that pink flush of joy
when the answer is Yes.

Prompt, Day 3: Use the senses. Use joy. Use suffering.
Memory is inspiration, says the poetry teacher
The past? A map of your experience, she says.

Last night, a closer look at a hidden map
As if you opened up a stranger’s glove compartment–
(Do they still call them glove compartments?)
As if you opened it and pulled out a paper map
crumpled corners, inexpertly re-folded and
stuffed back in, the small hinged door
slammed shut
with a click.
This is my father’s map.
Whole sections are torn away or
disintegrated. Look at how the old paper, damp and
creased, begins to fade at the folds,
at the way it whitens until the roads there–
and the names of those roads– disappear.