our second beating hearts (the second 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:

Emily at Chatting at the Sky (from over at incourage): For When Your Future Keeps Changing
Preston at See Preston Blog: Back to Manna
Kate at The Sexy Celibate: What Single People Wish Married People Knew
Chris at From the Smallest: Beauteous Buteo / Why I Love Poetry
Anna at Goannatree: A naked theologian
Joy at Joy in this Journey: I'm in a hopeless place but...

A poem to hear sounding through your week:

The Widening Sky
Edward Hirsch

I am so small walking on the beach
at night under the widening sky.
The wet sand quickens beneath my feet
and the waves thunder against the shore.

I am moving away from the boardwalk
with its colorful streamers of people
and the hotels with their blinking lights.
The wind sighs for hundreds of miles.

I am disappearing so far into the dark
I have vanished from sight.
I am a tiny seashell
that has secretly drifted ashore

and carries the sound of the ocean
surging through its body.
I am so small now no one can see me.
How can I be filled with such a vast love?

And a poem from me:

The Road to Nowhere

The ancient birches wave.
Shadows fall across the ground,
venetian blinds in a big, white room.

They've seen it before.
The sky is cold, scraped by branches.
Just a thousand years ahead of here, it turns blue.

This is the road frosted, well-traveled.
The horizon doesn't want us,
so it keeps moving.

It edges nearer the endless.
Our footprints and tire tracks plow
the way, red faces stroked by fading light.

Love,

Hilary