Remember
There is something to love in everything.
Sunflowers rotting by the back
door, the smell of Brussels
sprouts blowing into
your car behind the farmer’s
truck laboring down
the road. That first
whiff of god-knows-what
when an infant releases gas
and smiles. There is something to love
in everything. Find it,
lay down with it.
One day, you’ll give anything
to embrace it all again.
Today
Morning holds out its hands.
My body follows.
Not the same body as yesterday,
not the same hands.
Some days are fists,
others, feathers.
There is no telling
which day will meet me.
Yesterday, beneath the clouds,
I was seduced by a wave
of melancholy. It made me a bed,
so I rested there.
I try not to race toward tomorrow,
for I have known many mornings,
and touched many hands,
and not a single one
could I have imagined
would be just like this.
Love Poem
Usually it’s morning when he studies his reflection with the seriousness of an autumn-aged man staring down mortality. It’s morning and winter’s sun has just given off a glint of passion, covering the silent hill sheltered in half-light. He is my first visitor, my morning guest, the point eros aims her arrow at. And I am in love with him.
This afternoon, I am twice lucky! While the shivering sun sinks, the great blue heron appears again. There are two of him when he bows down, two of him in prayer, preying on the crayfish and other small swimmers in the pond. I see him twice, embrace him twice, imagine him in a family instead of alone, like me. I imagine him surrounded by herons following his cue, waiting to feed while he feeds first. For a moment he steps behind the five foot tulles and disappears, but my love calls him back. It must be love, because the sight of him makes a miracle in me. And isn’t that what love is: surprise and wonder at the very thing that stays.
Maggie Paul is the author of Scrimshaw (Hummingbird Press 2020), Borrowed World, (Hummingbird Press 2011), and the chapbook, Stones from the Baskets of Others (Black Dirt Press 2000). Her work has appeared in the Catamaran Literary Reader, Rattle, Caesura, Phren-Z, The Porter Gulch Review, Red Wheelbarrow, SALT, The Jung Journal, Moonstone, and the Valparaiso Poetry Review. Co-founder of Poetry Santa Cruz and a former writing instructor at UCSC, Cabrillo, CSUMB and DeAnza College, she is a Writing Coach for college-bound students. Maggie lives in Santa Cruz, California.
More can be found at: https://maggiepaulpoetry.com; https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/hummingbirdpress ; https://www.myessaycoach.com
There is something to love in everything.
Sunflowers rotting by the back
door, the smell of Brussels
sprouts blowing into
your car behind the farmer’s
truck laboring down
the road. That first
whiff of god-knows-what
when an infant releases gas
and smiles. There is something to love
in everything. Find it,
lay down with it.
One day, you’ll give anything
to embrace it all again.
Today
Morning holds out its hands.
My body follows.
Not the same body as yesterday,
not the same hands.
Some days are fists,
others, feathers.
There is no telling
which day will meet me.
Yesterday, beneath the clouds,
I was seduced by a wave
of melancholy. It made me a bed,
so I rested there.
I try not to race toward tomorrow,
for I have known many mornings,
and touched many hands,
and not a single one
could I have imagined
would be just like this.
Love Poem
Usually it’s morning when he studies his reflection with the seriousness of an autumn-aged man staring down mortality. It’s morning and winter’s sun has just given off a glint of passion, covering the silent hill sheltered in half-light. He is my first visitor, my morning guest, the point eros aims her arrow at. And I am in love with him.
This afternoon, I am twice lucky! While the shivering sun sinks, the great blue heron appears again. There are two of him when he bows down, two of him in prayer, preying on the crayfish and other small swimmers in the pond. I see him twice, embrace him twice, imagine him in a family instead of alone, like me. I imagine him surrounded by herons following his cue, waiting to feed while he feeds first. For a moment he steps behind the five foot tulles and disappears, but my love calls him back. It must be love, because the sight of him makes a miracle in me. And isn’t that what love is: surprise and wonder at the very thing that stays.
Maggie Paul is the author of Scrimshaw (Hummingbird Press 2020), Borrowed World, (Hummingbird Press 2011), and the chapbook, Stones from the Baskets of Others (Black Dirt Press 2000). Her work has appeared in the Catamaran Literary Reader, Rattle, Caesura, Phren-Z, The Porter Gulch Review, Red Wheelbarrow, SALT, The Jung Journal, Moonstone, and the Valparaiso Poetry Review. Co-founder of Poetry Santa Cruz and a former writing instructor at UCSC, Cabrillo, CSUMB and DeAnza College, she is a Writing Coach for college-bound students. Maggie lives in Santa Cruz, California.
More can be found at: https://maggiepaulpoetry.com; https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/hummingbirdpress ; https://www.myessaycoach.com