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Ode to My Socks Pablo Neruda Maru Mori brought me a pair of socks which she knitted herself with her sheepherder’s hands, two socks as soft as rabbits. I slipped my feet into them as though into two cases knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin. Violent socks, my feet were two fish made of wool, two long sharks sea-blue, shot through by one golden thread, two immense blackbirds, two cannons: my feet were honored in this way by these heavenly socks. They were so handsome for the first time my feet seemed to me unacceptable like two decrepit firemen, firemen unworthy of that woven fire, of those glowing socks. Nevertheless I resisted the sharp temptation to save them somewhere as schoolboys keep fireflies, as learned men collect sacred texts, I resisted the mad impulse to put them into a golden cage and each day give them birdseed and pieces of pink melon. Like explorers in the jungle who hand over the very rare green deer to the spit and eat it with remorse, I stretched out my feet and pulled on the magnificent socks and then my shoes. The moral of my ode is this: beauty is twice beauty and what is good is doubly good when it is a matter of two socks made of wool in winter

(via Alex)

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When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

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The Ponds

By Mary Oliver

Every year the lilies are so perfect I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding the black, mid-summer ponds. Nobody could count all of them --

the muskrats swimming among the pads and the grasses can reach out their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that rife and wild. But what in this world is perfect?

I bend closer and see how this one is clearly lopsided -- and that one wears an orange blight -- and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away -- and that one is a slumped purse full of its own unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled -- to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery. I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing -- that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

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The Day Book, Chicago, January 6, 1912

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(Via Ezra)

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guess I’m required to link this one I just found….

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Another Poem About God but Really, It’s About Me

Diannely Antigua

You would’ve made a lousy nun, the woman

on the A train says to the person on the other end

of the phone. I laugh to no one and imagine 

what a lousy nun would actually do — maybe sneak

a lover into her room on Ash Wednesday or take

off her wedding ring from God, let the sun

touch the unveiled skin. I was never

a nun, but I was called Sister, and Brothers

were not allowed to do more than shake

my hand. I was called daughter when the pastor 

kissed my cheek, when I was worth more than rubies.

I was a good Sister for a decade — I was

good. After I left, I still prayed to all the Fathers

who weren’t mine. I opened my mouth

to their wisdom, and in my tongue was the law

of kindness. I became their Mary

Magdalene — holy by day, whore by night —

perfuming the feet of every man named

Jesus. After I left, I stayed devout —

devout to recklessness, devout to taking

out my virgin. I don’t remember craving

anything so much as my own destruction.

It was beautiful to watch from the bleachers

of my mind, separating myself from

all the Sisters inside me. In Proverbs,

it is virtuous for a woman to work willingly

with her hands. I only wanted to bring virtue

unto my name when I held each new body in my palms.

I only wanted to bring virtue when I hid

in the bathroom, slapped my face.

(via and via)

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love poem beginning with a yellow cab by José Olivarez