Summer in a Small Town

by Linda Gregg

When the men leave me,
they leave me in a beautiful place.
It is always late summer.
When I think of them now,
I think of the place.
And being happy alone afterwards.
This time it’s Clinton, New York.
I swim in the public pool
at six when the other people
have gone home.
The sky is gray, the air hot.
I walk back across the mown lawn
loving the smell and the houses
so completely it leaves my heart empty.

from ALL OF IT SINGING: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Linda Gregg. Published by Graywolf Press, 2008.

Most Poetry will post a poem on the theme of joy and celebration, selected by our members, each day through the month of September.

Elegy For the Poet Charles Moulton

by Peter Everwine

When we were last together,
you read me your latest poem from a sheaf
of hand -scrawled pages, dog-eared
and rolled together by a rubber band.
You didn’t ask me to look at it.
We both knew why: I thought a catfish
had a better grasp of English spelling;
you thought my soul had narrowed
from too many years in a classroom.
Yours was a freedom one might envy,
listening to your drawl of gravelly music,
that wild guffaw when a line pleased you.
I have a photo of you, taken
on some mountain—big grin,
arms held out wide, you’re dancing a jig
buck-naked in your broken boots
and there’s so much joy in your grizzled face
I have to turn away.
You look like you’re getting ready to fly.

“Elegy For The Poet Charles Moulton” by Peter Everwine, from Listening Long And Late. Copyright University of Pittsburg Press 2013.

Most Poetry will post a poem on the theme of joy and celebration, selected by our members, each day through the month of September.

The Blue Robe

by Wendell Berry

How joyful to be together, alone
As when we first were joined
In our little house by the river
Long ago, except that now we know

Each other, as we did not then;
And now instead of two stories fumbling
To meet, we belong to one story
That the two, joining, made. And now

We touch each other with the tenderness
Of mortals, who know themselves:
How joyful to feel the heart quake

At the sight of a grandmother,
Old friend in the morning light,
Beautiful in her blue robe!

“The Blue Robe” by Wendell Berry, from New Collected Poems; copyright  Counterpoint Press 2012.

Most Poetry will post a poem on the theme of joy and celebration, selected by our members, each day through the month of September.

Chaplinesque

By Hart Crane

We make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

From: The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane, Anchor Books, Doubleday and Company, 1966.

Most Poetry will post a poem on the theme of joy and celebration, selected by our members, each day through the month of September.

The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

by Alicia Ostriker

To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God’s love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow

To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by
your up-ended skirt

To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other
dogs can smell it

“The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog” from The Book of Seventy, by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, © 2009. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Most Poetry will post a poem on the theme of joy and celebration, selected by our members, each day through the month of September.