our second beating hearts (the fourth week)

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


Good words I've read: 
Dear Sugar at the Rumpus: The Dudes in the Woods Debacle
Alyssa at alyssaclaire's: A case of the winter blues
Sarah at Emergingmummy: In which it's a Sunday alone and we're all singing
The whole ATLT series over at Preston's blog: at the lord's table: a conversation
In particular, Nish's post at Preston's blog: i have the heart of israel
Joy at Joy in this Journey: A Plain Ol' Ordinary Love Letter


A poem to hear sounding through your week: 


Human Beauty
(Albert Goldbarth)

If you write a poem about love...
the love is a bird,

the poem is an origami bird.
If you write a poem about death...

the death is a terrible fire,
the poem is an offering of paper cutout flames

you feed to the fire.
We can see, in these, the space between

our gestures and the power they address
- an insufficiency. And yet a kind of beauty,

a distinctly human beauty. When a winter storm
from out of nowhere hit New York one night

in 1892, the crew at a theater was caught
unloading props: a box

of paper snow for the Christmas scene got dropped
and broken open, and that flash of white

confetti was lost
inside what it was a praise of.

And a poem from me:

Birthday Cake

She gathers her breath
in her purple shirted chest,
hands pressed into the planked table,
knees into the big kid chair.

Suddenly, without warning,
she unleashes the wind inside her.
The force of the wish knocks us back,
we sputter like flames,

wipe bits of frosting from our cheeks,
she offers us the first handful of cake. We don't see
how she is the only one at the table
still in love with believing.

The rest of us float, pink and green balloons
bobbing against the ceiling,
unwilling to unleash the wind,
afraid to whisper the wish.

Love,

Hilary