12.2.2015

I picked this poem because I liked it when it came in my email (and so relatable--I imagine most of us have spent an otherwise perfect moment obsession over imperfections). However, I liked Greenbaum's pacing and diction an awful lot, so I decided to bring you some more. I love the speaking pace of the words, and I imagine the speaker talking to themselves as if no one was around.


A Nearly Perfect Morning


By Jessica Greenbaum 



It was a nearly perfect morning—bucolic, pastoral—
so I found myself cataloguing my past humiliations.
Really, there was no reason for it! I might as well have
looked for an ant hill to lie down on in a meadow
of goldenrod. I can’t explain it but perhaps I thought
that with the rising sun as my witness, with the catbirds
crows, and whizzing hummingbirds my soundtrack
that I could ameliorate them, neutralize their charges
against me by holding them up to the woods now in wait
for the light to balance on their individual leaves, on
the absorbing vastness of my fortune. The concentric rings
of the spider web have the wiry shine of guitar strings
there’s been so little wind it seems the trees have not
yet shook themselves awake, but we are moving around
this light at such a pace that by now the sun is nested
in the crook of two thin branches that could not hold
anything else. I was barely up to the third count
against my integrity when the whole lake turned white
but I decided it was not aghast, just trying to erase.



A Poem for S. 

Because you used to leaf through the dictionary,

Casually, as someone might in a barber shop, and

Devotedly, as someone might in a sanctuary,

Each letter would still have your attention if not

For the responsibilities life has tightly fit, like

Gears around the cog of you, like so many petals

Hinged on a daisy. That’s why I’ll just use your

Initial. Do you know that in one treasured story, a

Jewish ancestor, horseback in the woods at Yom

Kippur, and stranded without a prayer book,

Looked into the darkness and realized he had

Merely to name the alphabet to ask forgiveness—

No congregation of figures needed, he could speak

One letter at a time because all of creation

Proceeded from those. He fed his horse, and then

Quietly, because it was from his heart, he

Recited them slowly, from aleph to tav. Within those

Sounds, all others were born, all manner of

Trials, actions, emotions, everything needed to

Understand who he was, had been, how flaws

Venerate the human being, how aspirations return

Without spite. Now for you, may your wife’s

X-ray return with good news, may we raise our

Zarfs to both your names in the Great Book of Life.

This poem is an acrostic!! What a fantastic motif to put in, I didn't even notice it until I was copying-and-pasting! It is a strong motif, but not self-congratulatory. I would certainly be a little smug if I managed to pull the thing off. (Note, because I had to look this up, a zarf is the metal handle added to glass vessels meant to hold hot beverages).