"What is there beyond knowing" by Mary Oliver

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have shared exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. For our last poem for this 2025 National Poetry Month, I present a beautiful poem from the incredible Mary Oliver. She died in 2019 leaving behind a stunning catalog of work and this poem, "What is there beyond knowing" is a deceptively simple meditation on the human perspective of being alive in a big, sometimes unfathomable world.

What is there beyond knowing
by Mary Oliver

What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me? I can't

turn in any direction
but it's there. I don't mean

the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's
silk song, but the far-off

fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven's slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath;

or time that's always rushing forward,
or standing still

in the same—what shall I say—
moment.

What I know
I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,

important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable. How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out. Life so far doesn't have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass
    and the weeds.

https://maryoliver.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Star-Field On Red Lines" by Duncan Sheik

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry.

Duncan Sheik made a splash when he first appeared in 1996 with a debut album that featured a marvelous song called "Barely Breathing." Since then, he has released nine albums and created the music and lyrics for Broadway musicals including the multi-Tony-award winning "Spring Awakening." As a lyricist, he has always presented compelling stories and this song, "Star-Field On Red Lines" from his 2006 album "White Limousine" is quite evocative, and can work for multiple periods of American history like the Cold War in the 1950s, perhaps Vietnam in the 60's and 70's, and maybe even Bush the First's Gulf War in the 90s.

Star-Field On Red Lines
by Duncan Sheik

Playground
Home-land
A countryside to save

Blue skies
Air-space
Soldiers to raise
And sacrifice

Strong armed
Christians
Oiled up and fed

Safe as
Houses
In aprons of lead
And sanctified

Omens and Signs
A star-field
On red lines
Turn those blind eyes
To fantasies
And white lies

How much
Longer
This empire of night

The smallest
Subjects
All begin to fight
And multiply

Omens and Signs
A star-field
On red lines
Turn those blind eyes
To fantasies
And white lies

Omens and Signs
A star-field
On red lines
Turn those blind eyes
To fantasies
And white lies

Head down
Brace yourself
Here it comes

https://www.duncansheik.com/

"Art"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have posted work by myself each Friday. This poem is brand new after rattling around in my head for a few months and a few weeks of work, and I think it tells its own story. I hope you enjoy it.

Art

I had no one to play the game with
so I never learned the rules. But they didn’t matter,
they never did. 1970, a board game under the
Christmas tree, just me and stuffed animals and toys
and Masterpiece, a box that held a treasury,
a collection of paintings I’d never seen,
post-card sized landscapes, portraits, still lives,
quietly presenting possibilities of color and shape,
an art-shaped world, an art-colored world
a world of vast collections in hushed salons of
white, red, green walls, worn parquet floors,
a world of mansions and safes and movie-heists,
life lived larger than what I knew, out there somewhere
beyond my sheltered bedroom, the house, our little town.

On a round braided rug on hardwood floors I studied the cards:
arthritic sunflowers in a bulbous orange vase,
cotton candy angels floating in a sepia sky,
a dour farmer with pitchfork and a mournful wife,
a green-faced barmaid in a raucous dance hall,
whips of black and white paint slashing a surface,
umbrella-ed couples on a wet cobblestone street,
a bleached cow skull on white sandstone,
a bright diner counter seen from an eerie, dark city.
Windows not just to other places or times
but other ways of thinking, seeing, believing,
beckoning, imprinting on me, whispering to me,
“no journey is simple, but this one will be long.”
From a child’s game came a slow devotion, an embrace of its language,
a realization that there’s freedom to choose content and then form,
or even more expanding: to choose form for its own sake,
a startling dedication to the physical act of creating.

Did the makers of that game know that I would never play
by their rules using their tissue-thin pastel dollar bills,
but that I would many years later weep in front of works
in museums far from the braided rug by my toy box, in front of a
small, tenderly ordered bedroom in Arles with a yellow chair,
in front of a dizzying cascade into a pond of pink purple blue
water lilies rendered in rushed gobs of paint like cake frosting,
in front of a geometry of sunlight slicing through windows into an empty room?
Did the makers of that game hope—did just one of them on that team even dare to guess
that I would raise my hand with a brush loaded with pigment
to participate in this evolutionary urge to create using the
language of form color texture repetition symmetry asymmetry the head the heart

©JEF 2025

Poem In Your Pocket Day 2025: "For A Student Who Used AI To Write A Paper" by Joseph Fasano

For today's Poem In Your Pocket Day, part of 2025 National Poetry Month, I am stuffing into my pocket a beautiful little gem of a poem from Joseph Fasano. It speaks to the inescapable nature of being and the only thing we have to do while we are here: don't shirk it, let it take us, describe it, create something from it.

For A Student Who Used AI To Write A Paper
by Joseph Fasano

Now I let it fall back
in the grasses.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.

http://josephfasano.net/

"Rending the Garments" by Ronna Bloom

For this National Poetry Month, I am grateful I came across the work of Ronna Bloom. She has six published volumes of poetry under her belt and creates works of penetrating tenderness and immediacy.

This astonishing piece, "Rending the Garments" speaks to the idea of recognizing painful life changes--not just death--with ritual.

Ritual is the technology of the sacred, and can give events a shape and meaning, especially when those events are hard to comprehend and process. And ritual within one's community gives a kind of support missing in the world at large.

Rending the Garments
By Ronna Bloom

There should be a shiva for every kind of grief—
the break-up, the diagnosis, the assault—
where people come unbidden and
wash their hands and casseroles
and hold you.

They do this all day or three times a day
for seven days so you know, you know
it happened and matters to more
than you, matters to a community of you.

What’s needed is wailing with an ax, frights,
outings, and touch. Touch and singing.
Can you hear me?
Has anyone done that for you, lately
Or ever? Come over, torn open the sky
and let the snow fall in the wrong mouth
to show there’s a rip in the face of the world?

https://ronnabloom.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Wanderer" by Angelo De Augustine

To observe National Poetry Month, I am featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry. And this track from Angelo De Augustine called "Wanderer" is just that: the narrative is very intimate, like a stream of consciousness voice in someone's head...a narrative of unease, of something just not quite right steeped in a tale of missed love.

The song appeared on De Augustine's album "Tomb" which he described as "a motion towards positivity, addressing lost love, the worthwhile cost of honesty, and the ramifications, of regret. In the end...it isn’t about burying or hiding something away, it’s about opening the seal and letting something new emerge. It’s about telling people how you feel when you feel it, instead of burying everything over the span of years."

Wanderer
by Angelo De Augustine

Wanderer
Just like a song
That's been rubbed out above your left arm
Full of light
Eager eyes
For the adventure of a lifetime

She's on the run
Who you running from?
It can't be me cause I'm no one
Turtle dove
Carried my love
And left it on the moon to shine

I'll try
My best to find some peace of mind
But the light fades to black
And you don't know where the exit is at

Wanderer
Labyrinthine fern
Planted in your dilated mind
Evil talk
Heaven above
Protect her in her darkest night

Angelo De Augustine | Photo by Jess Collins

https://angelodeaugustine.com/

Happy Easter 2025!

Easter developed from the Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre, derived from the Anglo-Saxon Pagan month of Eostur-monath (which roughly corresponds to our month of April). This month was named after the goddess Ēostre or Ostara who symbolized the dawn, spring, renewal, and rebirth of the earth after the long winter.

Now we celebrate by decorating eggs, a symbol of birth and fertility and new growth, and with chocolate rabbits, since bunnies are also a symbol of spring.

When I was little, I always loved Easter time because my grandmother displayed vases of daffodils and lilies, and panoramic sugar eggs around the house. And my aunt hollowed out eggs, cut a window in the side of the shell, and painstakingly assembled pastoral scenes inside using miniature trees and flowers, and tiny ceramic rabbits to make literal panoramic eggs. But the best part was the Easter Bunny who came to deliver beautifully dyed and decorated eggs in a basket full of chocolate and treats; my mom and dad would guide me through the house with clues as to where the Easter Bunny hid my basket (thanks Mom and Dad--I miss you)!

I hope the Easter Bunny brought you some treats! Happy Easter!

"The Church of the Reindeer"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting work by myself each Friday. This piece is about an encounter with the natural world that goes beyond nature...an encounter that is enigmatic, transcendent. 

The Church of the Reindeer

In a white clearing at the bottom of a hill three men
stand in a row, each wearing a hat:
a turban of fur, a crown of wood, a crown of ice.

Supplicants, officiants, the surrounding fir trees
bend, brighten, settle under gathering snow.
If the gloaming could talk it would say,
“I take this form because it pleases me.”

For those who have died in a dream, you are welcome.
For those who can feel their heart beats, you are welcome here.
For those who hear music where there is none, you are most welcome.
Keep your eyes wide open, but be still, frozen to the ground.
In this clearing the air is even colder, effervescent,
a rustle behind a branch, a visible cloud of hot breath,
it is manifest before you, flanks, muzzle, tail, fur,
topped with velvet antlers and boughs of pine.
It says, “I take this form because it pleases me.”

It ambles past, gently brushes each one with a tine.
It disappears at the deckled edge of this forest dream,
all this held in your mind just for a moment.

©JEF 2024

"Pornography" by Richard Siken

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am sharing exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. And this prose poem by talented poet, painter, and filmmaker Richard Siken proves that, with a tender and curious mind, anything can be a mirror of ourselves and our undeniable presence, an inspiration to look through something at the deeper condition of life, the big swirling breathtaking beautiful confusing shattering eternal fact of physicality and consciousness...

Pornography
by Richard Siken

They shot him by the side of the road. The sun was tangled in his hair as he leaned against the car. He fingered his chest, just over his heart, as if touching it directly. — My car broke down. — You need oil and a belt. Take off your shirt. You could consider him compromised. There is no universe where he is not a hitchhiker asking a rancher for help, where he is not plugged in like a lamp. The doctor has to crack the ribs to get to the lungs. The plumber has to pull out the sink to get to the pipes in the walls. The pornographer has to adjust the bodies to catch the slant of the light. He moves them like furniture. In the barn, the rancher spreads a blanket and their clothes fall off considerably. They are technicians. It is a compliment. They clock and clam like eels and the night goes mink. I want to be them. I want to be like them. I want to f*** everything but I don't want to be touched. It's awful, my watching: the refusal to participate, the ogling and superiority, the approximation of a true desire. It's fake, but it isn't. It's art, but it isn't. They're pretending but it doesn't matter because they're actually doing it, exhausting themselves as the acting evaporates, peak beauty, that moment — the swan dive, the little death, a bird flying into a kitchen window, open or shut, this or nothing, it strips the bolts. The cameraman is standing very quietly. It looks like he is weeping.

https://richard-siken.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Book of Brilliant Things" by Simple Minds

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry.

Simple Minds, a blockbuster group in the 80s, released a pair of albums that stand out as their best work: "New Gold Dream" and "Sparkle In The Rain." Both albums contained lyrics by lead singer-songwriter Jim Kerr that are romantic, surreal, literate, and dense. Some verged into metaphysical territory like this amazing track from "Sparkle" called "Book of Brilliant Things."

Book of Brilliant Things

by Jim Kerr

Thank you for the voice, the eyes and the memories shine
Thank you for the pictures of living in the beautiful black and the white
Some say we'll be together for a very long time
Some say that our first impressions never will lie

I open up to take a look into the bright and shiny book
Into the open scheme of things
Book of brilliant things
Book of brilliant things
I open up to take a look into the bright and shiny book;
Into the open scheme of things
Book of brilliant things
Oh, book of brilliant things

I thank you for the shadows
It takes two or three to make company
I thank you for the lightning that shoots up and sparkles in the rain
Some say this could be the great divide
Some day some of them say that our hearts will beat
Like the wheels of the fast train, all around the world

I open up to take a look into the bright and shiny book
Into the open scheme of things
Book of brilliant things
Book of brilliant things

Some say we can be together for a very long time
Some say our hearts will beat like the wheels of a fast train
All around the world
All around the world
All around the world
Some say our hearts beat like the wheels of a fast train
All around the world
All around, all around, around, around
All around the world

Our hearts beat like the wheels of a fast train
A very long time
All around and all around and all around and all around the world
Some say we'll be together
Some say
A very long time, some of them will say
A very long time all around the world

https://www.simpleminds.com/

"Night After Night"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I will be posting work by myself each Friday. This is a piece about our second, inner lives...so there is a feeling of never resting, going from wake to sleep but still always present, always engaged, always doing, seeing, hearing, walking, running.

Night After Night

Plateau on plateau,
haunted by ideas,
tossing and rolling, parsed out
quadrants of measurements that
don’t need to be measured.

Here we are again,
the same street, the same building,
the same rising water,
the shift.

It’s the same store selling the
same toys and food.

It’s the same Boardwalk and
the same restaurant where
you look in and see yourself,
a few years from now or
a few years ago,
wearing glasses you’ve never seen.

©JEF 2020

"Poem with an Embedded Line by Susan Cohen" by Barbara Crooker

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am sharing exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. Here I present a heartfelt, quite timely poem by Barbara Crooker.

Poem with an Embedded Line by Susan Cohen
by Barbara Crooker

When the evening newscast leads to despair,
when my Facebook feed raises my blood pressure,
when I can't listen to NPR anymore,
I turn to the sky, blooming like chicory,
its dearth of clouds, its vast blue endlessness.
The trees are turning copper, gold, bronze,
fired by the October sun, and the bees
are going for broke, drunk on fermenting
apples. I turn to my skillet, cast iron
you can count on, glug some olive oil,
sizzle some onions, adding garlic at the end
to prevent bitterness. My husband,
that sweet man, enters the room, asks
what's for dinner, says it smells good.
He could live on garlic and onions
slowly turning to gold. The water
is boiling, so I throw in some peppers,
halved, cored, and seeded, let them bob
in the salty water until they're soft.
To the soffrito, I add ground beef, chili
powder, cumin, dried oregano, tomato sauce,
mashed cannellinis; simmer for a while.
Then I stir in more white beans, stuff the hearts
of the peppers, drape them with cheese and tuck
the pan in the oven's mouth. Let the terrible
politicians practice / their terrible politics.
At my kitchen table, all will be fed. I turn
the radio to a classical station, maybe Vivaldi.
All we have are these moments: the golden trees,
the industrious bees, the falling light. Darkness
will not overtake us.

https://www.barbaracrooker.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Urn" by Chanel Beads

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry.

And we start off the month with a set of short lyrics from the song "Urn" by Chanel Beads, Shane Lavers' uncategorizable musical project (I posted a live set they played this past autumn that knocked my socks off here). A fleeting look at a certain aspect of death, one that we never think of until we are faced with it, occupies the first two lines of the song. Having one's grief free-floating or fixed is a powerful conundrum. We who are left when a loved one dies have to navigate the actual physical remains and what that means emotionally, since it is all that is left...buried in the earth or cremated and put...somewhere.

Urn
by Chanel Beads

Sometimes, I wish that we buried you now
Assigned a location to my grief somehow
But I know that you would think the cemetery is silly
It's dust to me
Your ashes move too quickly

It's funny, numbers have significance now
Yeah, your birthday that kinda hurts me now
Like the day you died, the day you drank all that honey
Like the day you died, the day you got sick from drinking honey

https://www.instagram.com/chanel_beads/

"Christine's Circus"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I will be posting work by myself each Friday.

Last year, I learned of the death of a very close friend of mine whom I had known for forty years. We met in a drama class in college and she was a spectacular presence. Her high energy and explosive sense of humor was only matched by her fearlessness. She dove into any unusual situation, any odd job, any red-flag romance with bravado. But later her modus operandi gave way to mental illness, possibly bi-polar or manic depression, which she self-medicated with alcohol (and maybe more). She was troubled and she struggled against life itself, seemingly punching the air at all the injustice in her life and in other's, at anything and everything around her. I did as much as I could to help her but she disappeared from my life for periods and would resurface living in another part of the country, sometimes homeless, having suffered some more. As one could possibly guess, she ended up in the prison system the last several years. I spoke with her last year when she phoned me out of the blue, and it was a heartbreaking, erratic conversation in which she said she was going to buy property in Wales, and that she was feeding a family of racoons. The racoon part was not surprising...she adored animals, all of them, and often took in any stray dog or cat that crossed her path, and showered them with great love and care. I wrote this poem for her in 1991, already sensing the trajectory of her life. And now she is gone.

Christine's Circus

After she left college and
before she settled down,
Christine joined a
traveling circus.
After intermission,
she was a dancing
harem girl,
shaking her tambourine,
circling the tent
with the caravan.
They’d get the animals
ready, in a line:
white horses in
Arabian caparisons,
elephants with lions
riding on their backs...
and camels
loaded with parcels
and boxes and goods.
The cast assembled.

But the camels
always had trouble
getting up.
Their legs would shake
as they tried to
lift the weight.
“I have watched
those camels struggle,
with all that shit
strapped to them--
five days a week,
two shows on Saturdays--
and when the camels
were a little too slow,
they were whipped.”

One night, when
two of the camels
just couldn’t get up,
she ran into
the center ring and
led the audience in
“The Star Spangled Banner”
to stall for time.

Now, in her dreams,
she sees the camels
in a storybook
she reads to some children...
C is for Camel.

©JEF 1991

I hope you have found some peace and rest my friend, as you join the everything of the Universe.

"Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames]" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Every Wednesday of this National Poetry Month 2025, I will be sharing exquisite poems by monumental poets. And today I share the powerful, urgent "Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames]" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, because we live in desperate times and this poem is needed.

Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames]
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am signaling you through the flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.

Civilization self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.

You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words....

Happy National Poetry Month 2025!

April is National Poetry Month, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets since 1996. And this year marks the celebration's 29th anniversary! Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets celebrating poetry’s vital place in our culture.

How to celebrate?
- Read your favorite poet again.
- Read some new poetry.
- Find a new favorite poet.
- Write some poetry.
- Leave poems for people to find in public places.
- Read poetry out loud to family and friends.
- Dream a poem.

Throughout April, I'll be posting poems, some by me, some by others, as well as a series of lyrics to popular songs that double as exquisite poetry.

And this year, Poem in Your Pocket Day is Thursday April 25th! Every April, on Poem in Your Pocket Day, people celebrate by selecting a poem, carrying it with them, and sharing it with others throughout the day at schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, workplaces, and on social media using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

Poem in Your Pocket Day was originally initiated in 2002 by the Office of the Mayor, in partnership with the New York City Departments of Cultural Affairs and Education, as part of the city’s National Poetry Month celebration. In 2008, the Academy of American Poets took the initiative to all fifty United States, encouraging individuals around the country to join in and channel their inner bard. In 2016, the League of Canadian Poets extended Poem in Your Pocket Day to Canada.

To kick off the month, here is an incredibly inspiring quote about the nature of poetry itself from Robert Frost:
“A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words”.
--Robert Frost

Happy National Poetry Month!

https://poets.org/