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Morning Open Thread: Anything Can Happen – Poems by Linda Pastan on Her Birthday [1]
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Date: 2023-05-27
Linda Pastan was born May 27, 1932, in New York City; American poet who lives in Maryland; former Poet Laureate of Maryland (1991-1995). Among her many poetry collections are: Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998; Queen of a Rainy Country; Traveling Light; A Dog Runs Through It; and Almost an Elegy.
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by Linda Pastan
Half drunk
on the heavy scent
of purple,
I almost expect
the naked
trees
to step from behind
their fringed
and beaded
curtains
to the electric thrum
of bees.
“Wisteria Floribunda” © 1993 by Linda Pastan appeared in the May 1993 issue of Poetry magazine
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Misreading Housman
by Linda Pastan
On this first day of spring, snow
covers the fruit trees, mingling improbably
with the new blossoms like identical twins
brought up in different hemispheres.
It is not what Housman meant
when he wrote of the cherry
hung with snow, though he also knew
how death can mistake the seasons,
and if he made it all sound pretty,
that was our misreading
in those high school classrooms
where, drunk on boredom, we had to recite
his poems. Now the weather is always looming
in the background, trying to become more
than merely scenery, and though today
it is telling us something
we don’t want to hear, it is all
so unpredictable, so out of control
that we might as well be children again,
hearing the voices of thunder
like baritone uncles shouting
in the next room as we try to sleep,
or hearing the silence of snow falling
soft as a coverlet, even in springtime
whispering: relax, there is nothing
you can possibly do about any of this.
“Misreading Housman” from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998, © 1998 by Linda Pastan – W.W. Norton & Company
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The Death of the Bee
by Linda Pastan
The biography of the bee
is written in honey
and is drawing
to a close.
Soon the buzzing
plainchant of summer
will be silenced
for good;
the flowers, unkindled
will blaze
one last time
and go out.
And the boy nursing
his stung ankle this morning
will look back
at his brief tears
with something
like regret,
remembering the amber
taste of honey.
“The Death of the Bee” © 2002 by Linda Pastan – from If Bees Are Dew: A Hive of Bee Poems, edited by James P. Lenfestey – University of Minnesota Press, 2016 edition
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Insomnia
by Linda Pastan
I remember when my body
was a friend.
when sleep like a good dog
came when summoned.
The door to the future
had not started to shut,
and lying on my back
between cold sheets
did not feel
like a rehearsal.
Now what light is left
comes up—a stain in the east,
and sleep, reluctant
as a busy doctor,
gives me a little
of its time.
“Insomnia” from Insomnia, © 2015 by Linda Pastan – W.W. Norton & Company
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The New Dog
by Linda Pastan
Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and paper
and pen, has come
this manic animal
whose innocent disruptions
make nonsense
of my old simplicities-
as if I needed him
to prove again that after
all the careful planning,
anything can happen.
“The New Dog” from A Dog Runs Through It, © 2018 by Linda Pastan – Norton & Company
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Memory of a Bird
by Linda Pastan
Paul Klee, watercolor and pencil on paper
What is left is a beak,
a wing,
a sense of feathers,
the rest lost
in an pointillist blur of tiny
rectangles.
The bird has flown,
leaving behind
an absence.
This is the very
essence
of flight—a bird
so swift
that only memory
can capture it.
“Memory of a Bird” from Almost an Elegy: New and Later Selected Poems, © 2022 by Linda Pastan – W.W. Norton & Company
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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