Secrets

Jim Moore

1943 –

for my mother on her birthday

Somewhere at this very moment someone is eating peanut butter right out of the jar! He is alone and the television is off. His mother has no idea what he is doing. It is his secret. Very far away a dog barks, a horn honks. The day his grandmother died he had a crazy desire to laugh and yet he was very sad. You don’t tell your mother your secrets for fear she won’t love you.

Jim Moore was born on June 22, 1943, in Decatur, Illinois. He began writing in the mid-1960s and received his bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota and his master’s degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His poetry collections include Prognosis (Graywolf Press, 2021), Underground: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2014), Invisible Strings (Graywolf Press, 2011), and Lightning at Dinner (Graywolf Press, 2005).

About Jim Moore

Themes

Mothers

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The Need Is So Great

Sometimes I just sit like this at the window and watch
the darkness come. If I’m smart, I’ll put on Bach.

I’m thinking now of how far it always seems there is to go.
Maybe it is too easy that I speak so often

of late last light on a December day,
of that stubborn grass that somehow still remains green

Jim Moore

2022

Five Charms in Praise of Bewilderment

At first when you leave town,

the dog and I maintain dignified silence.
           After no more than two hours
I’m talking to her, after three
           she’s telling me the story of her life.
I nod my head at every word,
           encouraging her
to take all the time she needs

I have the vice

Jim Moore

2018

Love in the Ruins

1
I remember my mother toward the end,

folding the tablecloth after dinner
so carefully,
as if it were the flag
of a country that no longer existed,
but once had ruled the world.

2
7 A.M. and the barefoot man

leaves his lover's house
          to go back to his basement room
across the alley. I nod hello,
          continuing to pick
the first small daffodils
          which just yesterday began to bloom.

3
Helicopter flies overhead

Jim Moore

2018

Poems

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Secrets

More by this poet

The Need Is So Great

Five Charms in Praise of Bewilderment

Love in the Ruins

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