loose threads

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Jo McCrory is a writer and artist living in northern California.

  • mary oliver

    I like Mary Oliver. You need to read Mary Oliver. This week’s McSweeney’s was about Mary Oliver, and here is an unrelated prose poem I read this week. I read it ten times or so, and then I stared at it for a while, and then I cried a bit. Life is delicate and wonderful.

    “Clam” by Mary Oliver, What Do We Know: Poems And Prose Poems

    Each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its
    place in the universe is not found out. Like us, they
    have a heart and a stomach; they know hunger, and
    probably a little satisfaction too. Do not mock them
    for their gentleness, they have a muscle that loves
    being alive. They pull away from the light. They pull
    down. They hold themselves together. They refuse to
    open.

    But sometimes they lose their place and are tumbled
    shoreward in a storm. Then they pant, they fill
    with sand, they have no choice but must open the
    smallest crack. Then the fire of the world touches
    them. Perhaps, on such days, they too begin the
    terrible effort of thinking, of wondering who, and
    what, and why. If they can bury themselves again in
    the sand they will. If not, they are sure to perish,
    though not quickly. They also have resources beyond
    the flesh; they also try very hard not to die.

  • copper

    Fall - not winter, not spring, not summer -

    Fall
    wet leaves
    copper cold on my skin
    the smell of damp earth, comforting
    rain falling in drizzling sheets
    toes are cold, socks soaked through

    Someone’s chimney puffs out smoke, which hangs low
    and makes the rain smell like smoldering wood

    Air, cold
    rain
    wet leaves, copper underfoot

    You take my hand
    and lead me home

    -rjm