for my family, from American Life In Poetry

Joe Paddock is a Minnesota poet and he and I are, as we say in the Midwest, “of an age.” Here is a fine poem about arriving at a stage when there can be great joy in accepting life as it comes to us.

One’s Ship Comes In

I swear
my way now will be
to continue without
plan or hope, to accept
the drift of things, to shift
from endless effort
to joy in, say,
that robin, plunging
into the mossy shallows
of my bird bath and
splashing madly till
the air shines with spray.
Joy it will be, say,
in Nancy, pretty in pink
and rumpled T-shirt,
rubbing sleep from her eyes, or
joy even in
just this breathing, free
of fright and clutch, knowing
how one’s ship comes in
with each such breath.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson : The Poetry Foundation [poem]

“Hope” is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson : The Poetry Foundation [poem]

ancient darling clue

the eye of the darling said a clue


"sorrow upon stone",
the old bear told me, his
spine battered into moss
under bright whistles of stars
among the swimming fish
the warm black opens
like heat of voices within the bark
like rough bones poking out of the sun
long sick rays of music
suffocating the soldiers
like honey over a burn
like the enduring buzz of markets
stuffed with hats and shoulders
deep under the clouds with wilting skin
over jagged monasteries and goats with bells
chopping up our knowing chunk by
chunk"

dreams of customs

i once went to a town
where all the girls wore
their wedding dress until they were married,
they swept the city like
an infestation of winter owls.

well of cellos

the well of cellos
howl into the night
and keep up the farmer

outside confused
in his ghost
he tries to tighten the faucet
of his mind
the birds together with gaps
lace or a war time roof
play shadows over the
his long goatskin face.

smokes

an afternoon of ancestors and lemonade
cold hands dipped in salt water
and then night came with its
bitter ashy tongues
with hairy footed fire inside our throats
an old globe of gravel and lava
lit up the cavern of language

ourselves

1. we are trying to learn ourselves
(so moon dreams leave greasy trails behind us)
put your face on my face
pressed linen bridges
to smell for sure that you are the same
burnt up pulp
like moving mud in what we know


2. we are not mostly ourselves
all kinds of wiggling isms
tied together by cell strings and meat
it's our diets of lightening and star glass
that cause these flocks of birds
to package our bodies our weights.

medical

anatomy rumpled up like paper
hearts and bones blotted out by tears
or rain; so smeared together
letting go a mesh of eyelashes
and fish as way to map our bodies.

5pm

bartender

i park my car in the same gravel
every night watching
my USA flag colored pine tree freshner
twirl back and forth
in last fingerprinted sun
thinking about wet hair
and wet elbows

accordion poem

a knowing fish hurled into a bears mouth
cheese boiled down and molded into hands
and given out to the greek colony of handless men
a house made of spoons and flowers
even the beggars beds are beautiful
the woman in india who sews her own wrinkles
into blankets for the children
all the fat children holding
hands and feet to make a raft
for the abandoned wet dogs
caught in a flood

antique

last night we turned a plate
into a house
walls with spine of an open dry sail
the moving sea
a stomach around its porcelain
waiting to be splayed out like
broken window into the open lap
of a desk drawer

5pm series

bee keeper

in the early morning i watch the euhphonic
coins of light in a cloud
and in the evening i watch the one
floating molar wheel the old wood hive
& i hear him call out to me,

astronomer

i watch his giant eyes twirl around the table
and i know that the cornbread is orbitting
the potatoes. i know our children are two bee hives
of moving atoms, and when they speak up hears
sheet music being erased back to the beginning.

dusk

I ache for dusk,
everywhere I am,
and every day it comes.
but mostly I ache for it here on the lake,
it is the time for simultaneity
it is the time for the sweet sort of death
with the harmonies of cries
from all of us who reside in both
spheres of the heart
"please don't let this day end"
"please, god, let this day end"
and in this moment, in this alignment
of the sun, each prayer is granted.
all prayers are spoken and granted
by tired hearts with tender eyes
that is why i can look at you
and be looked at by you
because we are being lulled by
ten thousand exhales.
both the grass and the wood
are breathing out their last
bits.
i can hear so much music then,
but i can also here the hollow
of the bowl,
the hollowness of our dreams emptied
and i want to tell you,
old man, fragile woman,
you sorrow is singing
in unison, and it is glowing
like the lit buildings.