The first of September arrived in a jacket
bringing the first drops of rain we’d seen in months
We made coffee and dragged our quilt to the porch,
listened to the rain, to each other’s breathing
A moment in time, frozen
-rjm
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Jo McCrory is a writer and artist living in northern California.
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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.
loose threads 