National Poetry Month - April 3rd
Apr. 3rd, 2007 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jcd1013I'm sitting here in neurology clinic, trying out the "post by email" feature. I can't access LJ from the VA hospital (they have more security firewalls than any other place and so far, I haven't been able to bypass
it). So this might be the next best thing.
April is National Poetry Month. In years past,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fileg has posted a poem a day for the entire month, and I was introduced to so many lovely poets and works of art that stirred something deep inside that I thought long dead. I had forgotten, that once upon a time, I found time to paint, to write, to engage that creative side of me.
She hasn't posted any this year (nudge, nudge), but I thought I might continue the tradition. I won't be able to do every day (I've already missed 2 days), but I'll do as many as I can. In addition, if you have any favorite poetry to share, send them on!
This was The Writer's Almanac poem for today, which I adored (and he's a Utah writer! Even better!):
"Unwise Purchases" by George Bilgere from Haywire
Unwise Purchases
They sit around the house
not doing much of anything: the boxed set
of the complete works of Verdi, unopened.
The complete Proust, unread:
The French-cut silk shirts
which hang like expensive ghosts in the closet
and make me look exactly
like the kind of middle-aged man
who would wear a French-cut silk shirt:
The reflector telescope I thought would unlock
the mysteries of the heavens
but which I only used once or twice
to try to find something heavenly
in the windows of the high-rise down the road,
and which now stares disconsolately at the ceiling
when it could be examining the Crab Nebula:
The 30-day course in Spanish
whose text I never opened,
whose dozen cassette tapes remain unplayed,
save for Tape One, where I never learned
whether the suave American
conversing with a sultry-sounding desk clerk
at a Madrid hotel about the possibility
of obtaining a room
actually managed to check in.
I like to think
that one thing led to another between them
and that by Tape Six or so
they're happily married
and raising a bilingual child in Seville or Terra Haute.
But I'll never know.
Suddenly I realize
I have constructed the perfect home
for a sexy, Spanish-speaking astronomer
who reads Proust while listening to Italian arias,
and I wonder if somewhere in this teeming city
there lives a woman with, say,
a fencing foil gathering dust in the corner
near her unused easel, a rainbow of oil paints
drying in their tubes
on the table where the violin
she bought on a whim
lies entombed in the permanent darkness
of its locked case
next to the abandoned chess set,
a woman who has always dreamed of becoming
the kind of woman the man I've always dreamed of becoming
has always dreamed of meeting.
And while the two of them discuss star clusters
and Cézanne, while they fence delicately
in Castilian Spanish to the strains of Rigoletto,
she and I will stand in the steamy kitchen,
fixing up a little risotto,
enjoying a modest cabernet,
while talking over a day so ordinary
as to seem miraculous.
---
it). So this might be the next best thing.
April is National Poetry Month. In years past,
fileg has posted a poem a day for the entire month, and I was introduced to so many lovely poets and works of art that stirred something deep inside that I thought long dead. I had forgotten, that once upon a time, I found time to paint, to write, to engage that creative side of me.She hasn't posted any this year (nudge, nudge), but I thought I might continue the tradition. I won't be able to do every day (I've already missed 2 days), but I'll do as many as I can. In addition, if you have any favorite poetry to share, send them on!
This was The Writer's Almanac poem for today, which I adored (and he's a Utah writer! Even better!):
"Unwise Purchases" by George Bilgere from Haywire
Unwise Purchases
They sit around the house
not doing much of anything: the boxed set
of the complete works of Verdi, unopened.
The complete Proust, unread:
The French-cut silk shirts
which hang like expensive ghosts in the closet
and make me look exactly
like the kind of middle-aged man
who would wear a French-cut silk shirt:
The reflector telescope I thought would unlock
the mysteries of the heavens
but which I only used once or twice
to try to find something heavenly
in the windows of the high-rise down the road,
and which now stares disconsolately at the ceiling
when it could be examining the Crab Nebula:
The 30-day course in Spanish
whose text I never opened,
whose dozen cassette tapes remain unplayed,
save for Tape One, where I never learned
whether the suave American
conversing with a sultry-sounding desk clerk
at a Madrid hotel about the possibility
of obtaining a room
actually managed to check in.
I like to think
that one thing led to another between them
and that by Tape Six or so
they're happily married
and raising a bilingual child in Seville or Terra Haute.
But I'll never know.
Suddenly I realize
I have constructed the perfect home
for a sexy, Spanish-speaking astronomer
who reads Proust while listening to Italian arias,
and I wonder if somewhere in this teeming city
there lives a woman with, say,
a fencing foil gathering dust in the corner
near her unused easel, a rainbow of oil paints
drying in their tubes
on the table where the violin
she bought on a whim
lies entombed in the permanent darkness
of its locked case
next to the abandoned chess set,
a woman who has always dreamed of becoming
the kind of woman the man I've always dreamed of becoming
has always dreamed of meeting.
And while the two of them discuss star clusters
and Cézanne, while they fence delicately
in Castilian Spanish to the strains of Rigoletto,
she and I will stand in the steamy kitchen,
fixing up a little risotto,
enjoying a modest cabernet,
while talking over a day so ordinary
as to seem miraculous.
---
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-03 06:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-05 03:28 am (UTC)You're welcome! Enjoy!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-03 07:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-05 03:32 am (UTC)*HUGS* So glad to have you around again, my friend.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-03 09:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-05 03:41 am (UTC)