our second beating hearts: the first week

The only way to be a poet is to write. The only way to know good words is to find them, and use them, and love them. So I'm starting a series here on Mondays, where I share some of the good words I've found throughout the week, and I share my scribbles, too. Together, we write the contours of our second beating hearts.


Good words I've read:

The Gypsy Mama: Be careful which mirrors you choose to believe
Dear Sugar: How the Real Work is Done
Joy over at Deeper Story: A Revealing Lecture
Emerging Mummy: In which [love looks like] a real marriage
Billy Coffey (found through Joy): Writing Naked

A poem to hear sounding through your week:

IV
Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus (trans. Stephen Mitchell)

O you tender ones, walk now and then
into the breath that blows coldly past.
Upon your cheeks let it tremble and part;
behind you it will tremble together again.

O you blessèd ones, you who are whole,
you who seem the beginning of hearts,
bows for the arrows and arrows' targets -
tear-bright, your lips more eternally smile.

Don't be afraid to suffer; return
that heaviness to the earth's own weight;
heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

Even the small trees you planted as children
have long since become too heavy; you could not
carry them now. But the winds... But the spaces...

And a poem from me:


Forgetfulness

The coffee is cold,
the morning already more than half
done. See, there, the light
drips through the shades, leaning
towards night?

It's not her friend's lateness
or the lukewarm porcelain
the straw like a periscope in her ice water
even the salt between the cracks of the table.

It's the realization (and we all have it)
that this moment is always over
before we get our fingers around it,

that we barely blink, and the sun has kissed us
and crept away -

before we remembered to see it.

Love,

Hilary