one inch frame

The internet says science is not sure
how cats purr, probably
a vibration of the whole larynx,
unlike what we do when we talk.

Less likely, a blood vessel
moving across the chest wall.

As a child I tried to make every cat I met
purr. That was one of the early miracles,
the stroking to perfection.

Here is something I have never heard:
a feline purrs in two conditions,
when deeply content and when
mortally wounded, to calm themselves,
readying for the death-opening.

The low frequency evidently helps
to strengthen bones and heal
damaged organs.

Say poetry is a human purr,
vessel mooring in the chest,
a closed-mouthed refuge, the feel
of a glide through dying.

One winter morning on a sunny chair,
inside this only body,
a far-off inboard motorboat
sings the empty room, urrrrrrrhhhh
urrrrrrrhhhhh
urrrrrrrhhhh

— Coleman Barks, from Winter Sky: New and Selected Poems (via The Writer’s Almanac)

Buffalo Bill's
defunct
        who used to
        ride a watersmooth-silver
                                  stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                  Jesus
he was a handsome man
                      and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death




-- e. e. cummings

If on your grandmother’s birthday you burn a candle
To honor her memory, you might think of burning an extra
To honor the memory of someone who never met her,
A man who may have come to the town she lived in
Looking for work and never found it.
Picture him taking a stroll one morning,
After a month of grief with the want ads,
To refresh himself in the park before moving on.
Suppose he notices on the gravel path the shards
Of a green glass bottle that your grandmother,
Then still a girl, will be destined to step on
When she wanders barefoot away from her school picnic
If he doesn’t stoop down and scoop the mess up
With the want-ad section and carry it to a trash can.
For you to burn a candle for him
You needn’t suppose the cut would be a deep one,
Just deep enough to keep her at home
The night of the hay ride when she meets Helen,
Who is soon to become her dearest friend,
Whose brother George, thirty years later,
Helps your grandfather with a loan so his shoe store
Doesn’t go under in the Great Depression
And his son, your father, is able to stay in school
Where his love of learning is fanned into flames,
A love he labors, later, to kindle in you.
How grateful you are for your father’s efforts
Is shown by the candles you’ve burned for him.
But today, for a change, why not a candle
For the man whose name is unknown to you?
Take a moment to wonder whether he died at home
With friends and family or alone on the road,
On the look-out for no one to sit at his bedside
And hold his hand, the very hand
It’s time for you to imagine holding.

Carl Dennis, from New and Selected Poems, 1974-2004, via The Writer’s Almanac

(transcribed from the Writers’ Almanac for 11 September 2006. Layout mine. For the subject of this poem, see the wikipedia article)

I see you again and again
tumbling out of the sky
in your slate gray suit
and pressed white
shirt

At first I thought you were
debris from the explosion
maybe gray plaster wall or
fuselage

But then I realized people were
leaping

I know who you are
I know there’s more to you
than just this image on the news
this ragdoll
plummetting

I know you were someone’s lover
husband
daddy

Last night you read stories to your children
tucked them in
then curled into sleep next to your
wife

Perhaps there was small sleep talk of the
future

Then before your morning coffee had
cooled

You had come to this
A choice between fire or
falling

How feeble these words!
Bellowing in this
aftermath

How ineffectual this utterance of sorrow!
We can see plainly it’s
hopeless

Even as the words trail from our mouths
But we can’t help
ourselves

How I wish we could trade them
for something that could really have
caught you

— Annie Farnsworth

Me up at does

out of the floor
quietly Stare

a poisoned mouse

still who alive

is asking What
have i done that

You wouldn’t have

— e.e. cummings

The Sup-
er ego
ofthistown
looked@
me and
said”
you
th is
was
ted
on the wrong
peo
ple”i
rep
lied
“wis
dumb
is
too. ”

— ea. Farris

you shall above all things be glad and young.
For if you’re young,whatever life you wear

it will become you; and if you are glad
whatever’s living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man’s
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and(in his mercy)your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies;the foetal grave
called progress,and negation’s dead undoom.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

— e. e. cummings

wherelings whenlings
(daughters of ifbut offspring of hopefear
sons of unless and children of almost)
never shall guess the dimension of

him whose
each
foot likes the
here of this earth

whose both
eyes
love
this now of the sky

— e. e. cummings