When you doubt the world
look at the undivided darkness
look at Wheeler Peak
cliffs like suspended prayers
contemplate the cerulean
the gleaming limestone
the frozen shades
the wildflowers
look at the bristlecone pine
a labyrinth to winding wonders
listen to the caves
sing silently
remember the smell of sagebrush
after a thunderstorm
that Lexington Arch
is a bridge of questions
in the solitude of dreams
that here
distances disturb desire
to deliver a collision of breaths
the desert echoes
in this dark night sky
stars reveal the way
a heart can light a world.
Copyright © 2016 by Nathalie Handal. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 25, 2016, this poem was commissioned by the Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts Imagine Your Parks grant.
I'm traveling back home to you but it's an omen: my road map's creased and torn along dead straight lines. The hill and gully ride is over now and I'm flat out on the dead straight highway with a toll. Not a glimmer of the coastline as I try to make it home to you through a forest of hotels as thick as thieves. For the sea, the coves and beaches once seen through seaside shacks and palm trees have been sold. And the rest of us are herded to the verge by this new highway while over there our beauty is extolled, bottled and sold. And gated. In this new paradise the only palms are greased. And somebody's beach umbrella has replaced the shade tree we once sat under and the towns and settlements molder as they are bypassed. I can no longer witness on this highway with a toll that makes us seem as modern as elsewhere. For elsewhere is not where I'm meant to be. And a dead straight highway leaves no scent, no monument to the past, no scenic beauty for the curvature of my eye to take in. And endless empty space is not inviting. But perhaps there's no social meaning to this tirade after all. I'm just feeling lost without a map as I make it home to you and pay the toll. You could see it simply as a love song. To the curving of your cheekbones, to the mountains of your thighs, the hill and gully passion of your eyes, and your hair that is not dead straight but very much otherwise.
From So Much Things To Say: 100 Calabash Poets, edited by Kwame Dawes and Colin Channer. Copyright © 2010 by Natasha Trethewey. Used with permisson of Calabash International Literary Trust and the author.
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain'd!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen'd!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn'd!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
This poem is in the public domain.
The shine of many city streets
Confuses any countryman;
It flickers here and flashes there,
It goes as soon as it began,
It beckons many ways at once
For him to follow if he can.
Under the lamp a woman stands,
The lamps are shining equal well,
But in her eyes are other lights,
And lights plus other lights will tell:
He loves the brightness of that street
Which is the shining street to hell.
There’s light enough, and strong enough,
To lighten every pleasant park;
I’m sorry lights are held so cheap,
I’d rather there were not a spark
Than choose those shining ways for joy
And have them lead me into dark.
This poem is in the public domain, and originally appeared in Poems about God (Henry Holt and Co, 1919).