Showing posts with label Kay Ryan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kay Ryan. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

wooden






In the presence of supple
goodness, some people
grow less flexible,
experiencing a woodenness
they wouldn't have thought possible.
It is as strange and paradoxical
as the combined suffering
of Pinocchio and Geppetto
if Pinocchio had turned and said,
I can't be human after all.




~ Kay Ryan
from The Best of It






Friday, September 21, 2012

new rooms





The mind must
set itself up
wherever it goes
and it would be
most convenient
to impose its
old rooms — just
tack them up
like an interior
tent. Oh but
the new holes
aren't where
the windows
went.





~ Kay Ryan 
from Poetry July/August 2012
with thanks to whiskey river


Sunday, January 22, 2012

chinese foot chart





Every part of us
alerts another part.
Press a spot in 
the tender arch and 
feel the scalp
twitch.  We are no
match for ourselves
but our own release.
Each touch
uncatches some 
remote lock.  Look,
boats of mercy
embark from
our heart at the 
oddest knock.




~ Kay Ryan
from The Best of It




Friday, July 22, 2011

shark's teeth




.
Everything contains some
silence.  Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark's-tooth-
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark.  Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.


~ Kay Ryan
from The Best of It



Monday, June 27, 2011

counsel





.
It is possible 
that even the best counsel
cannot be processed
by the body.
All supplements to
our personal chemistry
are screened by tiny fanatical secret organs
that refuse much more than
they accept.  It is hard
to add even minerals.
Iron tablets, for example,
are not correct
and pass through us like
windowless alien crafts.
What the body wants is so exact.



~ Kay Ryan
from The Best of It



Sunday, June 26, 2011

age





.
As some people age 
they kinden.
The apertures
of their eyes widen.
I do not think they weaken;
I think something weak strengthens
until they are more and more it,
like letting in heaven.
But other people are 
mussels or clams, frightened.
Steam or knife blades mean open.
They hear heaven, they think boiled or broken.



.
~ Kay Ryan
from The Best of It