La Guerre (II)

1894 –

1962

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 19, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

Memory Poem

Marlanda Dekine

I am a child
of wonder again and
rain tells me to watch
for snails and slugs.

I gather dirt, sand, and sticks
for the terrarium
where I make a safe home
away from footsteps, fast cars, and ditch water.

I don’t want them to die
so I make them
a space for living.

I ask my ma to buy lettuce
because in the book I got from the library
I learned they will eat lettuce.

I am
greedy to learn
what keeps everything alive.

Their spiral shapes leave shiny trails behind.
I imagine I am a snail leaving
magic everywhere I go.

i didn’t eat the sun

ire’ne lara silva

but

it

poured

into

me

I didn’t eat the ocean but the waves of the

south the east the west and the north

lapped against my feet and my soles drank

in the saltwater i didn’t eat the roads but a

thousand miles of asphalt rebuilt my bones

filling in all the faultlines all the places worn

down to breakage i didn’t eat the monte but

the earth the scent of earth the scent of

monte the scent of lluvia filled me and filled

me and remade my flesh i didn’t run with the

coyotes but i howled with them i howled with

them and

remembered

what

freedom

was

i didn’t eat the wind but it found my mouth

and poured in and i felt my wings my

shriveled long forgotten wings filling and

stretching and reaching and unfolding how

was it i’d forgotten myself how was it i’d

collapsed and collapsed in on myself i didn't

eat the sun but all the light came streaming

in and oh with what gladness with what

relief with what joy i received it so much

light when i hadn't even known

i’d

been

sitting

in

the

dark

once a marine biologist told me octopuses have three hearts

Denice Frohman

I wonder what I’d do
with eight arms, two eyes
& too many ways to give
myself away

see, I only have one heart
& I know loving a woman can make you crawl
out from under yourself, or forget
the kingdom that is your body

& what would you say, octopus?
that you live knowing nobody
can touch you more
than you do already

that you can’t punch anything underwater
so you might as well drape yourself
around it, bring it right up to your mouth
let each suction cup kiss what it finds

that having this many hands
means to hold everything
at once & nothing
to hold you back

that when you split
you turn your blood
blue & pour
out more ocean

that you know heartbreak so well
you remove all your bones
so nothing can kill you.

Beans

Mary Oliver

1935 –

2019

They’re not like peaches or squash.
Plumpness isn’t for them. They like
being lean, as if for the narrow
path. The beans themselves sit qui-
etly inside their green pods. In-
stinctively one picks with care,
never tearing down the fine vine,
never noticing their crisp bod-
ies, or feeling their willingness for
the pot, for the fire.

I have thought sometimes that
something—I can’t name it—
watches as I walk the rows, accept-
ing the gift of their lives to assist
mine.

I know what you think: this is fool-
ishness. They’re only vegetables.
Even the blossoms with which they
begin are small and pale, hardly sig-
nificant. Our hands, or minds, our
feet hold more intelligence. With
this I have no quarrel.

But, what about virtue?