choices

There is a great deal of wisdom packed in this perplexing little poem by Nikki Giovanni.

Choices

if i can't do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don't want
to do

it's not the same thing
but it's the best i can
do

if i can't have
what i want    then
my job is to want
what i've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more
to want

since i can't go
where i need
to go    then i must    go
where the signs point
though always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral

when i can't express
what i really feel
i practice feeling
what i can express
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry

—Nikki Giovanni

shifting source of sorrow

Has this happened to you?   You find yourself emotionally distraught over something that had never mattered before.This poem describes it so well.
 

Second Tour

Penelope Scambly Schott

While my husband packed to fly back to Vietnam,

this time as a tourist instead of a soldier,

I drove to the zoo to say goodbye to the musk oxen

who were being shipped out early next morning

to Tacoma. We were getting lions instead.

When I got there, it was too easy to park.

The zoo was closing early so they wouldn’t let me in.

I went back to my car and slid into the driver’s seat.

Sobs tore from deep in my chest, I who had never

seen a musk ox and never cared until now.

 Crow Mercies, Calyx Books, 2010.

To be lost is only a failure of memory

What a gorgeous poem this is. Just what I needed today. I hope it moves you too.

A Boat

Margaret Atwood

Evening comes on and the hills thicken;
red and yellow bleaching out of the leaves.
The chill pines grow their shadows.

Below them the water stills itself,
a sunset shivering in it.
One more going down to join the others.

Now the lake expands
and closes in, both.

The blackness that keeps itself
under the surface in daytime
emerges from it like mist
or as mist.

Distance vanishes, the absence
of distance pushes against the eyes.

There is no seeing the lake,
only the outlines of the hills
which are almost identical,

familiar to me as sleep,
shores unfolding upon shores
in their contours of slowed breathing.

It is touch I go by,
the boat like a hand feeling
through shoals and among
dead trees, over the boulders
lifting unseen, layer
on layer of drowned time falling away.

This is how I learned to steer
through darkness by no stars.

To be lost is only a failure of memory.

"A Boat" by Margaret Atwood, from Selected Poems II: 1976-1986.