All poetry is about hope. A scarecrow walks into a bar. An abandoned space station falls to earth. When probing the monster’s brain, you’re probably probing your own. A beautiful woman becomes a ghost. I hope I never miscalculate the dosage that led to the infarction of my lab rabbit again. All poetry is a form of hope. Not certain, just actual like love and other traffic circles. I cried on that airplane too, midwest patchwork below like a board game on which mighty forces kick apart the avatars. I always wanted to be the racecar but usually ended up a thumbtack. When I was young, sitting in a tree counted as preparation and later maybe a little whoopie in the morgue. So go ahead, thaw the alien, break the pentagram but watch out for the institutional hood ornaments. It’s not a museum, it’s a hive. The blood may be fake but the bleeding’s not.
This week, the news of the world is bleak, another war grinding on, and all these friends down with cancer, or worse, a little something long term that they won’t die of for twenty or thirty miserable years— And here I live in a house of weathered brick, where a man with silver hair still thinks I’m beautiful. How many times have I forgotten to give thanks? The late day sun shines through the pink wisteria with its green and white leaves as if it were stained glass, there’s an old cherry tree that one lucky Sunday bloomed with a rainbow: cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, blue jays, indigo buntings, and my garden has tiny lettuces just coming up, so perfect they could make you cry: Green Towers, Red Sails, Oak Leaf. For this is May, and the whole world sings, gleams, as if it were basted in butter, and the air’s sweet enough to send a diabetic into shock— And at least today, all the parts of my body are working, the sky’s clear as a china bowl, leaves murmur their leafy chatter, finches percolate along. I’m doodling around this page, know sorrow’s somewhere beyond the horizon, but still, I’m riffing on the warm air, the wingbeats of my lungs that can take this all in, flush the heart’s red peony, then send it back without effort or thought. And the trees breathe in what we exhale, clap their green hands in gratitude, bend to the sky.
First published in Poetry East, then in Line Dance (Word Press, 2008).
I’m a huge fan of Nina Simone. My favorite song? Feelin’ Good. I like it in all its iterations I guess. Most people probably have forgotten all about Nina’s version and skipped right to Michael Buble. That’s OK. I don’t think she would mind. Nor would she care about the Muse version. I like that one a lot. Who sings it isn’t nearly as important to me as the lyrics.
I started really loving this song when I was 45. I liked it just fine before that, but when I was 45 I came down with a little bout of Leukemia. Music has always been huge in my life, songs associated with people, places, events. Feelin’ Good got associated with my healing, my being alive. It was a new dawn, a new day, and I was, after months of treatment, feelin’ good.
Photo by Tamra Parker
Here I am, years later, still in love with this song. Still associating it with the thrill of being alive. Because, well, I am still thrilled to be alive.
K and I were sitting here talking the other day about how weird it was that it was going to be 2019. How it seemed impossible in some way, that it was nearly 2019. I don’t know why it seemed like such a big deal because, after all, it’d been 2018 for nearly a year, but somehow it did. Somehow time has taken a leap. The idea that 2019 was nearly here, and I’m still here, and though I’m older than I used to be, I’m not as old as I’m going to get. If you’d asked me in 1983 when I graduated from high school what I’d be doing in 2019 I wouldn’t have been able to even imagine it, being so far in the future and all. And now here we are, so far in the future and all. Weird. Not bad. Just weird.
Friends of ours recently asked us to attend a party. They asked everyone who was invited to bring a bottle of booze, an appetizer, and quote or song or piece of writing to be read aloud and shared. I think it was meant as a sort of send off to the year passing and a greeting of hope and inspiration heading into the new year. Cool idea. Sadly, we couldn’t go, but I was thinking about what I would’ve shared if we had.
There are a lot of quotes I could’ve shared. I’m a quote person. Just see the inspirations page of this blog for proof of that. The fact that I get nervous and shy at times might spur the use of a quote. I probably would share a quote like this… “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” ~ W.B. Yeats
I could’ve shared a poem. I’m a lover of all things poetic and have been reading and writing poetry since I was a wee sprout, sometime near 1983 I’d say. I was 17 then, and graduating from high school, so my poems were very broody. I might’ve shared a poem at the party if I happened upon or could think of one I thought might be inspirational. Maybe the E.E. Cummings “I thank you God” poem…
i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and love and wings and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any-lifted from the no of all nothing-human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
e e cummings
(in ‘complete poems 1904 – 1962’)
Or maybe something by Pablo Neruda, Charles Bukowski, or The Type, by Sarah Kay.
If I had my wits about me I might’ve thought of something profound or witty or inspirational to say all on my own. Possible, if I’d had my wits about me. Sometimes they are vacationing and leave me searching for the right words, the right feeling, the right way to say what I want to.
Weston is currently crying over K’s shoulder as she eats her morning oatmeal. It’s the first day of the new year. He likes oatmeal. Sometimes all that matters is the hope that you’ll get the last bits of oatmeal left in the bowl. That someone will remember you like them, and that getting them will make your day. That those bits are what will bring you joy right at this moment. And maybe the story of Weston and the oatmeal bowl is the only profound thing worth sharing. It’s the simple things in life that are worth everything. Finding moments of joy. Moments of happiness. Moments of peace. We don’t need a lot to make us happy and joyful. Bits of oatmeal left in the bottom of the bowl will do. So I’ll say this… go out there and find your bits, whatever they are for you. See them for what they are, for what they mean to you. Relish them.
K has finished eating and Weston is now licking the bowl. His crying has stopped and he’s blissfully enjoying this tiny moment of joy. I’d say, like Nina, he’s feelin’ good. A pretty great way to start 2019.
I just read the best short story! On top of great storytelling, it was free! Click the image above and you will be whisked away to Mary Widdicks’ website where you can sign up to get it and read it as well. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed! It’s a great read. She is an up an coming writer who you will be on the scene and talked about for years to come.
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at
the end of the day whispering, ‘I will try again tomorrow.” – Mary Anne Radmacher
dear reader, with our heels digging into the good mud at a swamp’s edge, you might tell me something about the dandelion & how it is not a flower itself but a plant made up of several small flowers at its crown & lord knows I have been called by what I look like more than I have been called by what I actually am & I wish to return the favor for the purpose of this exercise. which, too, is an attempt at fashioning something pretty out of seeds refusing to make anything worthwhile of their burial. size me up & skip whatever semantics arrive to the tongue first. say: that boy he look like a hollowed-out
grandfather
clock. he look like a million-dollar god with a two-cent
heaven. like all it takes is one kiss & before morning,
you could scatter his whole mind across a field.
~Hanif Abdurraqib
About This Poem
“I was at a reading shortly after the election, and the poet (who was black) was reading gorgeous poems, which had some consistent and exciting flower imagery. A woman (who was white) behind me—who thought she was whispering to her neighbor—said ‘How can black people write about flowers at a time like this?’ I thought it was so absurd in a way that didn’t make me angry but made me curious. What is the black poet to be writing about ‘at a time like this’ if not to dissect the attractiveness of a flower—that which can arrive beautiful and then slowly die right before our eyes? I thought flowers were the exact thing to write about at a time like this, so I began this series of poems, all with the same title. I thought it was much better to grasp a handful of different flowers, put them in a glass box, and see how many angles I could find in our shared eventual demise.” — Hanif Abdurraqib
Hanif Abdurraqib is the author of The Crown Ain’t Worth Much (Button Poetry, 2016), his first poetry collection, which was nominated for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. He is also the author of the essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio, 2017). He lives in Columbus, Ohio.
