“Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?" Ron Koertge

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.

The Poetry of Bad Weather

Debora Greger

Someone had propped a skateboard
by the door of the classroom,
to make quick his escape, come the bell.

For it was February in Florida,
the air of instruction thick with tanning butter.
Why, my students wondered,

did the great dead poets all live north of us?
Was there nothing to do all winter there
but pine for better weather?

Had we a window, the class could keep an eye
on the clock and yet watch the wild plum
nod with the absent grace of the young.

We could study the showy scatter of petals.
We could, for want of a better word, call it “snowy.”
The room filled with stillness, flake by flake.

Only the dull roar of air forced to spend its life indoors
could be heard. Not even the songbird
of a cell phone chirped. Go home,

I wanted to tell the horse on the page.
You know the way, even in snow
gone blue with cold.
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i was waiting for today, when the stormy skies would clear to open up the joyous blue skies of the heavens--waiting for the sunshine after the rain. i imagine those brooding, northern poets, bundled up by a fire, watching icicles drip from the roof, longing for better weather. each season has it's own unfolding beauty...but after a couple months of winter, i really look forward to warmth and to seeing cute green buds popping out of the rich soil. spring.

hazy

when i come home i retreat, but not really in a good way. the things that are important kind of dim, and lesser things take their place. things like entertainment, books, nothingness, and soon i forget about what i need to do. it's like things are out of focus, hazy. it's so annoying, it really is, but somehow a part of me delights in It. It is this pretend place where work and studying can be put off in exchange for watching a tv show without it creeping up on me to bite me in the butt. but this pretend place also makes me sad. i feel like i'm looking at the world, admiring it thorough a pair of lenses, but not really being a participant in it. is this normal?

why are all my posts so sad sounding? do people enjoy reading this emo stuff? i think i'm just trying to figure it all out. who i'm supposed to be and where i am now verses where i will be. where will i be? i have no idea, and that's what scares me. it really does sometimes. do i have what it takes to be successful? and who and what measures success?

it feels hazy.
i feel hazy.
feel hazy.
hazy.

almost like i'm not really an outline, but rather a scribble of pencil marks, no defined line. so even if i tried to grab ahold of myself, i wouldn't know which scribble is really me. i think i'm just in a funk. don't worry i'll snap out of it.

Prone to wanter, Lord I feel it

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.