A beautiful Milton poem...to mark a transition

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent

BY JOHN MILTON

When I consider how my light is spent,

   Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

   And that one Talent which is death to hide

   Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

   My true account, lest he returning chide;

   “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

   I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need

   Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best

   Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

   And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:

   They also serve who only stand and wait.”

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174016

Reading at Stockholm University, October 16th 2013

Old Autumn Poem

As the seasons are changing in Stockholm, I recently remembered this poem I wrote in Santa Cruz in 2004. I was nineteen. I remember the assignment: write a poem in two parts, each containing a contrasting color. So here is that nine year old assignment,

A New October

1. 

We step out onto our stoop

as the ginger dusks slips into night

and I think I can smell, pumpkins

coming in with the cold

We drive a dusty car

through shadowed streets

staring into the yellow gold glow

of strangers’ attic bedrooms

and lamp lit living rooms

the scent of toasted seeds

and heated caramel crawls

out the orange space beneath

a kitchen door

2.

In the crisp of my first “grown up” autumn

living alone, sharing a bed, I stand on sand

and realize that to dive beneath this surface

of cool blue glass, must be what is like

to be a man, the quiet of life without air

My ocean changes with the seasons

especially here, I watch it rise in the cold

and deflate in the warm summers

yet, always it stays the same wash of blue

Happy to have two poems in Two Thirds North 2013

You can read the full anthology here, http://www.twothirdsnorth.com/two-thirds-north-2013/

http://www.twothirdsnorth.com/

FIrst Publication in Sweden!

I am thrilled to be part of Two Thirds North, Stockholm University's initial anthology. My poems, Harvest and Jewish Cemetery are on pages 34 and 42 respectively.

Read the Anthology Here

Hlavní Nádraží

A man leans out a train window

vlak, the Czech word for train

like Viola loving her bottom lip

for a split second, vlak

He holds out a nectarine, orange

against the green enamel of the train

With his right hand he freely

pours water from a bottle

washing the fruit and again, rubbing

the skin clean with his left thumb

From across the tracks I watch him

and realize how strongly I yearn
to be cared for like a peach
plum, or even a nectarine

Slowly, with enough care to feel

the delicacy of a woman's skin

and the softness of fruit beneath it

My train pulls away and his hand

reaches back inside to hand this gift

to a child, his wife, or perhaps just to himself

I like the idea of someone doing this

for me, a short moment of romance

at hlavní nádraží