Day 160 | blessing the boats by Lucille Clifton

blessing the boats
Lucille Clifton

                                    (at St. Mary’s)

may the tide

that is entering even now

the lip of our understanding

carry you out

beyond the face of fear

may you kiss

the wind then turn from it

certain that it will

love your back     may you

open your eyes to water

water waving forever

and may you in your innocence

sail through this to that

Day 159 | Ithaka by C. P. Cavafy, trans. Edmund Keeley

Ithaka
C. P. Cavafy, trans. Edmund Keeley

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn’t have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Day 158 | I Was Always Leaving by Jean Nordhaus

I Was Always Leaving
Jean Nordhaus

I was always leaving, I was

about to get up and go, I was

on my way, not sure where.

Somewhere else. Not here.

Nothing here was good enough.

It would be better there, where I

was going. Not sure how or why.

The dome I cowered under

would be raised, and I would be released

into my true life. I would meet there

the ones I was destined to meet.

They would make an opening for me

among the flutes and boulders,

and I would be taken up. That this

might be a form of death

did not occur to me. I only know

that something held me back,

a doubt, a debt, a face I could not

leave behind. When the door

fell open, I did not go through.

Day 157 | December by Michael Miller

December
Michael Miller

I want to be a passenger

in your car again

and shut my eyes

while you sit at the wheel,

awake and assured

in your own private world,

seeing all the lines

on the road ahead,

down a long stretch

of empty highway

without any other

faces in sight.

I want to be a passenger

in your car again

and put my life back

in your hands.

Day 156 | Transplanting (excerpt) by Lee Ann Roripaugh

Transplanting (excerpt)
Lee Ann Roripaugh

5. Japanese Apple

She was given an apple on the plane,

round and fragrant with the scent

of her grandfather’s fruit orchards

during autumn, when chestnuts

dropped from their trees and struck

the metal rooftop like the small heavy

tongues of bells, and black dragon-

flies like quick shiny needles darted

in and out of the spin and turn

of leaves fluttering down like soft

bright scraps of silk. She wrapped

the apple in a napkin to save

for later, and it was confiscated

at customs before she had the chance

for even a taste. Over the years it

seemed to grow larger, yellower, juicier

and more delicious, and even though

there were burnished rows of apples

stacked in gleaming pyramids

at the supermarket with quaint

names like Macintosh, Winesap,

and Granny Smith, and even though

there were sunlit apple orchards

at my American grandfather’s ranch,

where rattlesnakes slumbered

in the heat and redolence of fruit

flesh, frightening the horses,

she sampled one after another,

but they never tasted as sweet

or as bright as the apple taken from her,

the one she had to leave behind.

Day 104 | Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Day 149 | Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Day 98 | Against Travel by Charles Tomlinson

Against Travel
Charles Tomlinson

These days are best when one goes nowhere,

The house a reservoir of quiet change,

The creak of furniture, the window panes

Brushed by the half-rhymes of activities

That do not quite declare what thing it was

Gave rise to them outside. The colours, even,

Accord with the tenor of the day—yes, ‘grey’

You will hear reported of the weather,

But what a grey, in which the tinges hover,

About to catch, although they still hold back

The blaze that’s in them should the sun appear,

And yet it does not. Then the window pane

With a tremor of glass acknowledges

The distant boom of a departing plane.

Day 97 | Singapore by Mary Oliver

Day 121 | Singapore by Mary Oliver

Day 96 | Lesson by Forrest Hamer

Day 130 | Lesson by Forrest Hamer

Day 95 | American Sonnet by Billy Collins

Day 137 | American Sonnet by Billy Collins