{ A Month of Thanks } Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth

There is no happiness like mine.

I have been eating poetry.

~Mark Strand, "Eating Poetry," Reasons for Moving, 1968

I am so thankful for this new ritual of ours.  

The heating of the kettle, the clinking spoons in the mugs, the sweet crumbs on our lips and the delightful belly laugh as we read another nonsense poem...it is all so wonderful.   I doubted its power, this "tea-time and poetry," especially with two boys, but I am overjoyed to be so very wrong.  Sure, the warm drinks and sweet confections did their magical wooing but the word plays and rhymes kept them at the table.  And now there are favorite poems and there are recitations of verses, delivered at just the right moment and it

is. all. so. wonderful.

I will let the poems do the rest of the talking.

Soliloquy of a Tortoise

on Revisiting

the Lettuce Beds

After an Interval of One Hour

While Supposed

to Be

Sleeping

in a Clump

of Blue Hollyhocks

One cannot have enough

of this delicious stuff!

-E.V. Rieu

----------------------------------------------

Chocolate

Chocolate

                                                                                                 i

                                                                love 

                                                                                       you so

                                                                                                 i

                                                                 want

                                                                         to

                                                                  marry

                                                                         you

                                                                          and

                                                            live

                                                                forever

                                                                            in the

                                                                            flavor

                                                             of your

                                                               brown

-Arnold Adoff

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Mindful

Every day

  I see or I hear

       something

           that more or less

kills me

   with delight

       that leaves me

            like a needle

in the haystack

   of light.

        It is what I was born for--

             to look, to listen,

to lose myself

   inside this soft world--

        to instruct myself

           over and over

in joy,

    and acclamation.

         Nor am I talking

              about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,

     the very extravagant--

        but of the ordinary,

             the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.

      Oh, good scholar,

         I say to myself,

              how can you help

but grow wise

     with such teachings

         as these--

             the untrimmable light

of the world,

   the ocean's shine,

       the prayers that are made

          out of grass?

-Mary Oliver