rh – Page 3 – Little Bristling Soul

Scraps of Moon

Scraps of moon
bobbing discarded on broken water
but sky-moon
complete, transcending
all violation
Here she seems to be talking to herself about
the shape of a life:
Only Once

All which, because it was
flame and song and granted us
joy, we thought we’d do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only; every invitation
did not begin
a series, a build-up: the marvelous
did not happen in our lives, our stories
are not drab with its absence: but don’t
expect to return for more. Whatever more
there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body-halo of flames as utterly
present, as now or never.

–Denise Levertov

Once I was on earth
and I liked it.
I got to look at my toes
underwater. They looked bigger
than they were in real life.
As anyone can tell by looking at it
sugar is meaningless.
You are not supposed to stay in the hot tub
longer than ten minutes.
After that it is meaningless.
Like white poinsettias.
I mean at Christmas.
Maybe Christmas is meaningless too
but we used to pretend it was not
and I liked that.
It’s pointless.
I don’t actually know what a football looks like.
I think they have something to do with babies.
The man is carrying a baby across a field.
He is trying to save it.
It’s hard.
Sometimes people die trying to do things.
That’s OK.
There are things more important
than life or death.
I miss holding my breath.

Mary Ruefle, “Elegy for a Game” (via fuckyeahannecarson)

Source: theoryoflostthings

Helen Keller at the Rodeo

To despair is to no longer have
experiences, except the idea thereof—
to be cosseted in a black cape,
immune to both sights and sounds.
It’s watching you watch the matador
taunt the bull with the veronica maneuver,
the selfsame motion of a woman of faith,
who wiped the face of Jesus while he walked
to Calvary. Lord, we all crave release,
be it at the ring in Cheyenne, Wyoming
or along Orchard Road, in Singapore.
The world is a welter of homonyms.
How does one finally arrive, get born?
I am writing your name as if I were a Trojan
who expected someone else to smooth the shore.

—VIRGINIA KONCHAN