Black Oaks

by Mary Oliver

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,
     or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
     and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound, though the blue jays
     carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
     the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after awhile I’m pale with longing
     for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen.

and you can’t keep me from the woods, from the tonnage
     of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
     little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
     one boot to another—why don’t you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists
     of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money,
     I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.

from West Wind, Mariner Books ©1997

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

Why We Must Struggle

by Kay Ryan

If we have not struggled
as hard as we can
at our strongest
how will we sense
the shape of our losses
or know what sustains
us longest or name
what change costs us,
saying how strange
it is that one sector
of the self can step in
for another in trouble,
how loss activates
a latent double, how
we can feed
as upon nectar
upon need?

from Say Uncle, Grove Press, ©2000

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

After the Long Enduring (for Charles)

by May Sarton

After the long enduring,
The agony of staying alive
With AIDS inside you,

You who noticed everything
With wide-open eyes,
The veins in a leaf or a wrist,
Ladybird on a grass blade at rest,
They told me, “Charles is blind.”
“Blind,” is what they said.

Remember the salamander
You found in the bird bath
One summer,
A vermillion streamer?
The solitary doe at dusk
Stamping and huffing
In the luscious field?
Rilke tells you
With great tenderness,
Einblick, my friend,
Inwardness, in-sight.

published in Poetry, December 1992

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

Toy Boat (for Tamir Rice)

by Ocean Vuong

yellow plastic
black sea

eye-shaped shard
on a darkened map

no shores now
to arrive—or
depart
no wind but
this waiting which
moves you

as if the seconds
could be entered
& never left

toy boat—oarless
each wave
a green lamp
outlasted

toy boat
toy leaf dropped
from a toy tree
waiting

waiting
as if the sp-
arrows
thinning above you
are not
already pierced
by their own names

published in Poetry, April 2016

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

Immigration Interview with Jay Leno

by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

What is your objective?
          To return all the children
          hidden behind the street lamps.

How long do you plan on staying here?
          I don’t understand
          the question.

I said how long do you plan on staying here?
          We would have drowned
          even without our laughter.

Is that really your name?
          Yes, the clothes on the floor
          blossomed like the orchards in spring.

Have you been here before?
          There was a man who knew the way.
          I put his fingers in my mouth
          when he pointed in the direction of the sun.

Who are you wearing?
          The woman gave birth in the dark.
          I thought I felt hands where there were none.

          Everyone dug a useless hole.

Are you alone?
          North was whichever way
          the mannequins were pointing.

          The softest bone was the one
          that burned the longest.

Do you cry at night?
Are you alone right now?

from Cenzontle, BOA Editions, ©2018

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.