Blow-up (Monday Poem)

 by X. J. Kennedy

Our cherry tree

Unfolds whole loads

Of pink-white bloom--

It just explodes.

 

For three short days

Its petals last.

Oh, what a waste.

But what a blast.

 

 

from The Family Read-Aloud Holiday Treasury

selected by Alice Low, illustrated by Marc Brown

Little, Brown and Company, 1991

 

Perhaps the World Ends Here (Monday Poem)

 by Joy Harjo

 

 

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

 

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

 

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. The scrape their knees under it.

 

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

 

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

 

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

 

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

 

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

 

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

 

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

 

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

 

 

from 

How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems: 1975-2001 

by Joy Harjo

W. W. Norton & Company, 2002

Promise of Blue Horses (Monday Poem)

 by Joy Harjo

 

 

A blue horse turns into a streak of lightning,     

                                                                then the sun ----

relating the difference between sadness

                                                                and the need to praise

that which makes us joyful. I can't calculate

                                                                how the earth tips hungrily

toward the sun---then soaks up rain---or the density

                                                                of this unbearable need

to be next to you. It's a palpable thing---this earth philosophy

                                                                and familiar in the dark

like your skin under my hand. We are a small earth. It's no

                                                                simple thing. Eventually

we will be dust together, can be used to make a house, to stop

                                                                a flood or grow food

for those who will never remember who we were, or know

                                                                that we loved fiercely.

Laughter and sadness eventually become the same song turning us

                                                                toward the nearest star---

a star constructed of eternity and elements of dust barely visible

                                                                in the twilight as you travel

east. I run with the blue horses of electricity who surround

                                                                the heart

and imagine a promise made when no promise was possible.

 

 

from How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems: 1975-2001 

by Joy Harjo

W. W. Norton & Company, 2002