According to Elves

How Can You Become A Poet? - Eve Merriam

take the leaf of a tree

trace its exact shape

the outside edges

and inner lines.

memorize the way it is fastened to the twig

(and how the twig arches from the branch)

how it springs forth in April

how it is panoplied in July. 

by late August

crumple it in your hand

so that you smell its end-of-summer sadness

chew its woody stem

listen to its autumn rattle

watch it as it atomizes in the November air

then in winter

when there is no leaf left

invent one

- Eve Merriam

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You - Pablo Neruda

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it’s you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

- Pablo Neruda

If by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—-and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—-which is more—-you’ll be a Man, my son! 

- Rudyard Kipling

Love After Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come 
when, with elation 
you will greet yourself arriving 
at your own door, in your own mirror 
and each will smile at the other’s welcome, 
and say, sit here. Eat. 

You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart 
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 
all your life, whom you ignored 
for another, who knows you by heart. 

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, 
the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror. 
Sit. Feast on your life. 

- Derek Walcott

(R)Evolved

Many moons ago I orbited him because he was my sun. Back then he told me I was dust and that I polluted his atmosphere. And so I began to consider his gravitational pull as a figment of my imagination. I drifted until I was sucked into a black hole. Now, many moons later, he tells me he was mistaken. He says I was the star he couldn’t see and didn’t name.

I suppose, now that he will have me, that I should want to go back into his orbit and live off the warmth of his rays. I live in another universe now. In this place I am the star and I am the galaxy. I am the moon and I am the sun. I constitute the atmosphere and I form the rings around the moons. How can I, after my revolution, orbit any sun? How can I, after my evolution?

Where Is The Evidence

Where is the evidence?

Where did I get the idea?

Did I hope it into conception?

Wish it through to its birth?

Who told me you would never hurt me?

Who told me that you cared?

How did forever enter the sphere of my thinking?

Was it your cheap words coupled with my hopeful thinking?

But what about your actions?

The goodness I claimed you had was thrust upon you by my imagination

And in my headspin I felt “I love you” meant the same thing to us both

I lied to myself and believed it.

So now when I want to curse and blame and scream

I cannot turn out I must turn in

I created a wonderland where I got lost

A place where you couldn’t live

So you left me there longer than I knew you were gone

Loneliness stopped by

Depression checked in

In the courtroom of my mind I was tried and sentenced

I was asked “Where is the evidence?”

I had no reply

No defense

No explanation

So here I am in solitary confinement

Reflecting on my wrong

Reforming my mind

Trapped in myself

All because I lied to myself and believed it

- Elva Clarke  © 2011