I didn’t know I was blue, until I heard her sing. I was never aware so much had been lost even before I was born. There was so much to lose even before I knew what it meant to choose. Born blue, living blue unconfessed, blue in concealment, I’ve lived all my life at the plinth of greater things than me. Morning is greater with its firstborn light and birdsong. Noon is taller, though a moment’s realm. Evening is ancient and immense, and night’s storied house more huge. But I had no idea. And would have died without a clue, except she began to sing. And I understood my soul is a bride enthralled by an unmet groom, or else the groom wholly spoken for, blue in ardor, happy in eternal waiting. I heard her sing and knew I would never hear the true name of each thing until I realized the abysmal ground of all things. Her singing touched that ground in me. Now, dying of my life, everything is made new. Now, my life is not my life. I have no life apart from all of life. And my death is not my death, but a pillow beneath my head, a rock propping the window open to admit the jasmine. I heard her sing, and I’m no longer afraid. Now that I know what she knows, I hope never to forget how giant the gone and immaculate the going. How much I’ve already lost. How much I go on losing. How much I’ve lived all one blue. O, how much I go on living.
"Spoken For" from The Undressing by Li-Young Lee. Copyright © 2018 Li-Young Lee. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 20, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
When I take my dachshund jogging, boys and widows gawk and stop tossing balls or lopping limbs off shrubs. They call and point at long, pot-bellied Oscar trotting like a rocker horse, tongue wagging, dragging on grass when he hops over skateboards, long muzzle wide as if laughing, eager, sniffing the breeze. All Oscar needs is a tree like a mailbox, postcards from dogs he barks at at night, and odd whiffs he can't place. When he stops and squats, up runs a neighbor's collie tall as a horse, stalking like a swan meeting an eel, muzzle to muzzle in dog talk, collie tail like a feather fan. Wherever we go, we're not alone for an hour, devoted hobblers on the block, the odd couple-- long-legged bony man jogging along, obeying the leash law, the black, retractable nylon sagging back to Oscar, who never balks or sasses when I give the dangling leash a shake, but trots to me desperate for affection, panting like a dog off to see Santa, willing to jog any block for a voice, a scratch on the back. I've seen that hunger in other dogs. I watched my wife for forty years brush dogs that didn't need the love he does. When my children visit, my oldest grandsons trot with him to the park, that glossy, auburn sausage tugging and barking, showing off. The toddlers squat and pat him on his back. They touch his nose and laugh, and make him lick them on the lips. Good Oscar never growls, not even if they fall atop him. He was a gift from them, last Christmas, a dog their pop could take for walks and talk to. Oscar would have loved my wife, who spoiled and petted our old dogs for decades, coaxing them up for tidbits on the couch beside her, offering all the bliss a dog could wish for, a hand to lick, a lap to lay their heads. Oh, he's already spoiled, barks at bluejays on his bowl, fat and lonely unless I'm home. But how groomed and frisky he could be if she were here, how calm to see us both by the fire, rocking, talking, turning out the lights.
For Grandfather, in memory of Grandmother Anna
From Blessings the Body Gave, published by Ohio State University Press. Copyright © 1998 by Walt McDonald. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow:
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
This poem is in the public domain.