To Dorothy

(Untitled, photograph by Vivian Maier, 1926-2009,
American photographer, from a collection of tens of
thousands of photographs she took on the streets of
mid-century Chicago; her work was discovered when
a real estate agent found the negatives in 2007 at an
auction of boxes abandoned in storage lockers)

A poet can say “I can’t imagine life without you” so much more poignantly than can most of us.

TO DOROTHY

You are not beautiful, exactly.
You are beautiful, inexactly.
You let a weed grow by the mulberry
and a mulberry grow by the house.
So close, in the personal quiet
of a windy night, it brushes the wall
and sweeps away the day till we sleep.

A child said it, and it seemed true:
“Things that are lost are all equal.”
But it isn’t true. If I lost you,
the air wouldn’t move, nor the tree grow.
Someone would pull the weed, my flower.
The quiet wouldn’t be yours. If I lost you,
I'd have to ask the grass to let me sleep.

~ Marvin Bell, born in 1937, American poet

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On My First Son

(Untitled, photograph by Vivian Maier, 1926-2009,
American photographer, from a collection of tens of
thousands of photographs she took on the streets of
mid-century Chicago; her work was discovered when
a real estate agent found the negatives in 2007 at an
auction of boxes abandoned in storage lockers)

Ben Jonson wrote this elegy on the death of his eldest son, seven-year-old Benjamin.

ON MY FIRST SON

Farewell, though child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy;
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon ’scaped world’s and flesh’s rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age!
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, Here doth lie
Ben Johnson his best piece of poetry,
For whose sake, henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.

~ Ben Jonson (1572-1537), playwright and poet of the English Renaissance

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My Grandfather, Dead Long Before I Was Born

(Untitled, photograph by Vivian Maier, 1926-2009,
American photographer, from a collection of tens of
thousands of photographs she took on the streets of
mid-century Chicago; her work was discovered when
a real estate agent found the negatives in 2007 at an
auction of boxes abandoned in storage lockers)

We don’t lose our family connections.

MY GRANDFATHER, DEAD LONG BEFORE I WAS BORN

My grandfather, dead long before I was born,
died among strangers; and all the verse he wrote
was lost —
except for what
still speaks through me
as mine.

~ Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976), American poet

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A Boy’s Head

(Photo by Vivian Maier, 1926-2009, American “street
photographer,” from a collection of tens of thousands
of photographs she took on the streets of mid-century
Chicago; her work was discovered when a real estate
agent found the negatives in 2007 at an auction of boxes
abandoned in storage lockers)

“Recall that the imagination is a natural faculty in man. Some people make the mistake of fostering it, but it is often so powerful on its own that it will assert itself if we simply allow people to live what used to pass for an ordinary life. If you are breathing hard from the airborne soot of a city, all it may take for your lungs to clear again is to spend a week in the country. And all it might take for the imagination to breathe again is some time in solitude and silence.” ~ Anthony Esolen, from his book Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

A BOY’S HEAD

In it there is a space-ship
and a project
for doing away with piano lessons.

And there is
Noah’s ark,
which shall be first.

And there is
an entirely new bird,
an entirely new hare,
an entirely new bumble-bee.

There is a river
that flows upwards.

There is a multiplication table.

There is anti-matter.

And it just cannot be trimmed.

I believe
that only what cannot be trimmed
is a head.

There is much promise
in the circumstance
that so many people have heads.

~ Miroslav Holub (1923-1998), Czech poet

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