Night is for Poetry.

Friday night we celebrated communion and poetry together, and here are the poems that I shared.

Pleasant Hill, MO

by Jennifer Addis

There is a foresty green tile in the bathroom

I will always remember-

I hid there from a pack of wild dogs one afternoon;

It was a long day in September.

I will always remember

ridges on the arched metal barn roof

It was a long day in September

as I perched atop the barn and saw a bull lose his hoof.

Ridges on the arched metal barn roof

Reminded me of corn cob kernel lines

as I perched atop the barn and saw a bull lose his hoof-

a routine chore done with those long steel tines.

Reminded of corn cob kernel lines,

Mom divided up the dinner meat in that old white house-

a routine chore done with those long steel tines,

and Dad unhitched the plows.

Mom divided up the dinner meat in that old white house-

I hid there from a pack of wild dogs one afternoon

and Dad unhitched the plows.

There is a foresty green tile in the bathroom.

SIGHT AND TOUCH

for Balthus

by Octavio Paz

The light holds them - weightless, real -

the white hill and the black oaks,

the path that runs on,

the tree that remains;

the rising light seeks its way,

a wavering river that sketches

its doubts and turns them to certainties,

a river of dawn across closed eyes;

the light sculpts the wind in the curtains,

makes each hour a living body,

comes into the room and slips off,

slipperless, along the edge of a knife;

the light creates woman in a mirror,

naked under the diaphanous leaves,

a glance can enchain her,

she vanishes with a blink;

the light touches the fruit, touches the invisible,

a pitcher for the eyes to drink clarity,

a clipped flower of flame, a sleepless candle

where the butterfly with black wings burns:

the light smoothes the creases in the sheets

and the folds of puberty,

it smolders in the fireplace, its flames shadows

that climb the walls like yearning ivy;

the light does not absolve or condemn,

it is neither just nor unjust,

the light with invisible hands constructs

the buildings of symmetry;

the light goes off through a path of reflections

and comes back to itself:

a hand that invents itself, an eye

that sees itself in its own inventions.

Light is time thinking about itself.