Today is Poetry Friday, and our host is Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities. She has a successful first reverso poem to share!
My husband has been reading Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. In this book, Keith is finding much truth about his second half of life. Rohr claims: “Poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mary Oliver, David Whyte, Denise Levertov, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rainer Maria Rilke, and T.S. Eliot now name your own inner experience…” My husband jumped right in, especially to Mary Oliver, and he has been devouring her collection Devotions. This morning I woke up to have him right away share the poem “Evidence” with me. Here’s just the very beginning:
Where do I live? If I had no address, as many people do not, I could nevertheless say that I lived in the same town as the lilies of the field, and the still waters.
I couldn’t find the poem “Evidence” online, but it is in the book Evidence and in her Devotions collection.
It’s been very rewarding to read poetry about the second half of life with my love.
Here’s another Mary Oliver poem, and a response poem by me.
Morning Glories
Blue and dark blue
rose and deepest rose
white and pink they
are everywhere in the diligent
cornfield rising and swaying
in their reliable
finery in the little
fling of their bodies their
gear and tackle
Read the rest of her poem here
Desert Weeds
A Golden Shovelish Poem after “Morning Glories”
Draft by Denise Krebs
After Hilary came
through with four inches of
summer rain, weeds
have been popping up
around here, but
they are weeds without
a season, short-lived–
for the days will grow shorter
and cooler, but they add value
to this desert of sand
and value to my vision–
eyefuls of glorious humorous
green to surprise us
in the heat of summer
bridges of the beautiful
will we ever take the
lessons and learn from
our friends the weeds
Striking line is taken from the last two lines of Oliver’s “Morning Glories” poem: “weeds without value humorous / beautiful weeds”
