Find and share the perfect poems.
when love floods a person
it cuts
a canyon
that deepens year after year
carrying silt
away leaving
the essential person
revealed
letting everyone see
the layers of yellow
sandstone, red basalt
grey granite
when love washes over a person
it washes
the person away
Copyright © 2021 by Alicia Ostriker. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 5, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling
—Robert Graves, “To Juan at the Winter Solstice”
That one story worth your telling
Is the ancient tale of the encounter
With the goddess
Declares the poet Robert Graves
It is all about speed and flexibility, about speed
and flexibility and teamwork and accuracy. We move
like neurons charging in your head, man,
choreography from the ground up,
meanwhile smelling the hot asphalt and exhaust,
the chainlink fence around the playground spinning
Whether it’s a turtle who drags herself
Slowly to the sandlot, where she digs
The sandy nest she was born to dig
And lay leathery eggs in, or whether it’s salmon
Rocketing upstream
Toward pools that call, Bring your eggs here
And nowhere else in the world, whether it is turtle-green
Ugliness and awkwardness, or the seething
Grace and gild of silky salmon, we
Are envious, our wishes speak out right here,
Thirsty for a destiny like theirs,
An absolute right choice
To end all choices. Is it memory,
We ask, is it a smell