April 24, 2011: Sweet Star Chisel, Dearest Flaming Crumbs in Your Beard Lord, John Rybicki
Sweet Star Chisel, Dearest Flaming Crumbs in Your Beard Lord,
John Rybicki
May my body last—last so I can sing apple blossoms blown out of my open mouth and
raining their petals onto rag-top convertibles, and fields of wild asparagus; raining their
petals onto milk barns and silos and blowing them wide open; petals melting down onto
the tongues of men and women hanging their clock faces out every open window along
Sixth Avenue; wild blossoms gusting into doorways and tumbling up staircases; blossoms
whirlwinding around the bare ankles, whirlwinding around the heart of my beloved and
climbing with her into bed; blossoms swirling into hospital rooms and churches, spilling
their feathers onto the shimmering outlines of just gone people down on their knees—those
feathery vowels, those blood drop men and women, locking their fingers around the lowest
rung of those ladders we haul around like crosses mounted to our backs; ladders jutting
their bones into the stars; sweet ladders we’ll one day take off and climb, pushing our faces
through the blue womb of this world, into that garden of stars bell knocking on their
vines.
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More like this:
you can’t be a star in the sky without holy fire, Frank X. Gaspar
From Blossoms, Li-Young Lee
On this day in…
2010: Rain Travel, W.S. Merwin
2009: Goodnight, Li-Young Lee
2008: Bearhug, Michael Ondaatje
2007: Meditation at Lagunitas, Robert Hass
2006: Autumn, Rainer Maria Rilke
2005: On Turning Ten, Billy Collins
