by the Night Writer
I saw the following poem on The Writer’s Almanac the other day and thought it was pretty good.
Naming My Daughter
(In the Uruba tribe of Africa, children are
named not only at birth but throughout their
lives by their characteristics and the events
that befall them.)
The one who took hold in the cold night
The one who [...]
Closest to the Heart
When the dust had settled,
He took it in His mighty hand,
and squeezed it close together,
and then breathed life into a man.
He saw that one was not enough,
that man alone was just a part,
so God fashioned woman from a rib,
closest to the heart.
That’s why she knows the rhythm,
of the Spirit’s inner work;
her ears [...]
Time of passage,
time is passing,
the leaves are here and gone.
Turn the page,
start an age,
and hear the faint old song.
Distant rhythm,
always driven
like the thread that weaves the linen,
Soft but binding,
knit but winding,
what wondrous cloth we’re given!
Go and come back,
give and get back,
but never the same again,
Familiar sights,
seen in different lights,
are like old but distant [...]
I’ve felt like this before. The nausea,
simultaneously sweating and shivering,
knowing that something was about to happen
and it wouldn’t be good.
Then it was being crammed into the landing craft,
Pressing toward Omaha Beach,
held in place by the shoulders of the men on either side of me,
eyes fixed on the door at the front,
with death [...]
A memorial written for another’s unborn son.
Cowboy Song
The cowboy’s found his way
to the high plateau,
where there’s blue sky above
and gold clouds below;
where the grass waves to him,
and he rides like the wind,
with a smile on his face
as if he’s never known sin.
His horse is named Mercy,
his saddle is Grace,
and he knows that there [...]
The Missouri foothills have been both the home and final resting place for my family going back seven generations. Along about the 1850s Thomas Ryerson was the first in the line to settle in the Oak Hill community to try and pull a living out of hardscrabble ground. He married a Souders girl, and others [...]
