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Reading and Rhyming
A Calendar Without Dates
by Herbert Knapp
We all know that in devious and crooked ways the weather influences what we read, and what we read influences how we feel about the weather—but the feelings that connect what we read to the weather are also influenced by a host of other things—personal things—which means that the connections aren’t amenable to scientific analysis. Connecting them is a job for poetry.
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A Calendar Without Dates
by Herbert Knapp
We all know that in devious and crooked ways the weather influences what we read, and what we read influences how we feel about the weather—but the feelings that connect what we read to the weather are also influenced by a host of other things—personal things—which means that the connections aren’t amenable to scientific analysis. Connecting them is a job for poetry.
Purchase Reading Weather
Or read for free with Kindle Unlimited
Excerpt:
Reading Weather
A Calendar Without Dates
by Herbert Knapp
by Herbert Knapp
The Old Book
I opened an old book.
It had that library smell.
And when I pressed it to my face
everything came back.
It was all there.
I recognized it
the way you do a person in a crowd
who doesn’t hear you and is gone
before he sees you but was there.
All there.
I opened an old book.
It had that library smell.
And when I pressed it to my face
everything came back.
It was all there.
I recognized it
the way you do a person in a crowd
who doesn’t hear you and is gone
before he sees you but was there.
All there.
I Sit Here Waiting for My Friends
All that’s left to do
is turn a page or two.
It’s like waving goodbye.
The author’s argument is plain.
There’s nothing further to explain.
He’s covered everything.
But I am old enough to know
the solid sense that his words make
is like that ice out there upon the lake.
I shut the book and there it goes
into the dark beneath what shows
along with all the other things
that I’ve forgotten or have never known.
I sit here waiting for my friends,
the daffodils and the forsythia.
All that’s left to do
is turn a page or two.
It’s like waving goodbye.
The author’s argument is plain.
There’s nothing further to explain.
He’s covered everything.
But I am old enough to know
the solid sense that his words make
is like that ice out there upon the lake.
I shut the book and there it goes
into the dark beneath what shows
along with all the other things
that I’ve forgotten or have never known.
I sit here waiting for my friends,
the daffodils and the forsythia.
The Interview
Standing at a window growing old,
she shuts her eyes and sips her tea; the steam
fingers her face. What must the world be like
for someone without sight? Her tea grows cold.
She feeds her goldfish. Do they know she’s there?
Does anyone? She tries to see her life
between her roles
as daughter sister, mother, friend, and wife.
The room grows dark. She twists her ring.
The life she’s looking for is intertwined
too intricately with the lives of others
ever to be separately defined.
And yet from time to time she knows herself
to be a person who is on her own
composed of moments that belong
to no-one but herself alone.
Standing at a window growing old,
she shuts her eyes and sips her tea; the steam
fingers her face. What must the world be like
for someone without sight? Her tea grows cold.
She feeds her goldfish. Do they know she’s there?
Does anyone? She tries to see her life
between her roles
as daughter sister, mother, friend, and wife.
The room grows dark. She twists her ring.
The life she’s looking for is intertwined
too intricately with the lives of others
ever to be separately defined.
And yet from time to time she knows herself
to be a person who is on her own
composed of moments that belong
to no-one but herself alone.
On Getting High
No weed that grows, no chemical men cook
can alter my reality like a book.
No weed that grows, no chemical men cook
can alter my reality like a book.
Henry David Thoreau
Offended by the shouldn’ts and the shoulds
of good society,
he built himself a playhouse in the woods
and set up as a prelapsarian
utilitarian.
From there, he sought his bliss
in fields and ponds, in Greek and Latin,
everywhere but anywhere
remotely near the hiss-
sing of silk or satin.
After, that is, Ellen Sewall rejected the marriage proposals of both the Thoreau brothers.
Offended by the shouldn’ts and the shoulds
of good society,
he built himself a playhouse in the woods
and set up as a prelapsarian
utilitarian.
From there, he sought his bliss
in fields and ponds, in Greek and Latin,
everywhere but anywhere
remotely near the hiss-
sing of silk or satin.
After, that is, Ellen Sewall rejected the marriage proposals of both the Thoreau brothers.
People of the Book
Dozing in your mother’s womb,
you hear us talking in the living room.
You are not an animal that hears
noises in the shadows that it fears,
nor a faceless spirit with no place
in either time or space.
You are something even more absurd,
a beast who can turn air into a word.
We call your name. You wake and look,
then come to join us in our storybook.
Dozing in your mother’s womb,
you hear us talking in the living room.
You are not an animal that hears
noises in the shadows that it fears,
nor a faceless spirit with no place
in either time or space.
You are something even more absurd,
a beast who can turn air into a word.
We call your name. You wake and look,
then come to join us in our storybook.
Epilogue
A Reader’s Prayer
To rede and dryve the night away.
—Chaucer, “The Book of the Duchess”
When I was young I planned to resurrect
every character who’d ever been
buried by an author in a book.
But now I know that when I’m dead
I’ll leave a trillion billion books unread,
and more are being written every day.
So now I pray that when I die,
that God, who has more time than I,
will read my life as if it were a book,
and I, enlivened by his look,
will read again inside His head
as if I were at home in my own bed.
will read again inside His head
as if I were at home in my own bed.
