These are some of my favourite poems by Rita Dove.
Some people's minds run from point A to point B with the linear determination of an express bus roaring from stop to distant stop. Theirs are minds trained to avoid detours, to cut a path past the alleys and side streets of distraction. Rita's mind is more like the water of a stream swirling randomly, chaotically and unpredictably over the stones below as it still flows resolutely downstream... Rita is not like those who see tangential thoughts as distracting digressions: "I'm interested in the sidetracking."
— Walt Harrington, The Shape of Her Dreaming — Rita Dove Writes a Poem (1995, The Washington Post)
Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don’t look back,
the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits—
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours
to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
shake a leg! You’ll never know
who’s down there, frying those eggs,
if you don’t get up and see.
The fish in the stone
would like to fall
back into the sea.
He is weary
of analysis, the small
predictable truths.
He is weary of waiting
in the open,
his profile stamped
by a white light.
In the ocean the silence
moves and moves
and so much is unncessary!
Patient, he drifts
until the moment comes
to cast his
skeletal blossom.
The fish in the stone
knows to fail is
to do the living
a favor
He knows why the ant
engineers a gangster’s
funeral, garish
and perfectly amber.
He knows why the scientist
in secret delight
strokes the fern’s
voluptuous braille.
Who can forget the attitude of mothering?
Toss me a baby and without bothering
To blink I’ll catch her, sling him on a hip.
Any woman knows the remedy for grief
is being needed: duty bugles and we’ll
climb out of exhaustion every time,
bare the nipple or tuck in the sheet,
heat milk and hum at bedside until
they can dress themselves and rise, primed
for Love or Glory—those one-way mirrors
girls peer into as their fledging heroes slip
through, storming the smoky battlefield.
So when this kind woman approached at the urging
of her bouquet of daughters
(one for each of the world’s corners,
one for each of the winds to scatter!)
and offered up her only male child for nursing
(a smattering of flesh, noisy and ordinary),
I put aside the lavish trousseau of the mourner
for the daintier comfort of pity:
I decided to save him. Each night
I laid him on the smoldering embers,
sealing his juices in slowly so he might
be cured to perfection. Oh, I know it
looked damning: at the hearth a muttering crone
bent over a baby sizzling on a spit
as neat as a Virginia ham. Poor human—
to scream like that, to make me remember.
Snow would be the easy
way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won’t give.
So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline. We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing
a gloomy line
or two of German.
When spring comes
we promise to act
the fool. Pour,
rain! Sail, wind,
with your cargo of zithers!
Proof casts a shadow;
doubt is to walk
onto a field
at high noon
one tendril
held to
the
wind.
A stone to throw
A curse to hurl
A silence to break
A page to write
A day to live
A blank
To fill
between the lip
and the kiss
between the hand
and the fist
between rumor
and prayer
between dungeon
and tower
between fear
and liberty
always
between
Tragedy
involves
one.
History
involves many
toppling
one
after
another.
why is the rose
how is the sun
where is first
when is last
who will
love us
what
will
save
us
—And who are you?
—Nobody.
—What do you do?
—I am alive.
But who'll vouch
for you?
—Listen closely,
you'll hear
the
wind.
Climb
into a jar
and live
for a while.
Chill earth.
No stars
in this stone
sky.
You have ceased
to ache.
Your spine is
a flower.
And it came to pass, that, as I made my
journey, and was come nigh unto Damascus
about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven
a great light round about me. And I fell to the
ground . . .
ACTS 22:6–7
They say I was struck down by the voice of an angel:
flames poured through the radiant fabric of heaven
as I cried out and fell on my knees.
My fist recollection was of Unbroken Blue—
but two of the guards have already sworn by
the tip of my tongue set ablaze. As an official,
I recognize the lure of a good story:
useless to suggest that my mount
had stumbled, that I was pitched into a clump
of wild chamomile, its familiar stink
soothing even as my plans sprang blisters
under the nicked leaves. I heard shouts,
the horse pissing in terror—but my eyes
had dropped to my knees, and I saw nothing.
I was a Roman and had my business
among the clouded towers of Damascus.
I had not counted on earth rearing,
honey streaming down a parched sky,
a spear skewering me to the dust of the road
on the way to the city I would never
enter now, her markets steaming with vendors
and compatriots in careless armor lifting a hand
in greeting as they call out my name,
only to find no one home.
In the city, under the saw-toothed leaves of an oak
overlooking the tracks, he sits out
the last minutes before dawn, lucky
to sleep third shift. Years before
he was anything, he lay on
so many kinds of grass, under stars,
the moon’s bald eye opposing.
He used to sleep like a glass of water
held up in the hand of a very young girl.
Then he learned he wasn’t perfect, that
no one was perfect. So he made his way
North under the bland roof of a tent
too small for even his lean body.
The mattress ticking he shares in the work barracks
is brown and smells
from the sweat of two other men.
One of them chews snuff:
he’s never met either.
To him, work is a narrow grief
and the music afterwards
is like a woman
reaching into his chest
to spread it around. When he sings
he closes his eyes.
He never knows when she’ll be coming
but when she leaves, he always
tips his hat.
He avoided the empty millyards,
the households towering
next to the curb. It was dark
where he walked, although above him
the traffic was hissing.
he poked a trail in the mud
with his tin-capped stick.
If he had a son this time
he would teach him how to step
between his family and the police,
the mob bellowing
as a kettle of communal soup
spilled over a gray bank of clothes. . . .
The pavement wobbled, loosened by rain.
he liked it down here
where the luck of the mighty
had tumbled,
black suit and collarbone.
He could smell the worms stirring in their holes.
He could watch the white sheet settle
while all across the North Hill Viaduct
tires slithered to a halt.
Count it anyway he wants—
by the waiting room clock,
by the lengthening hangnail,
by his buttons, the cigars crackling
in cellophane—
no explosion. No latch clangs
home. Perfect bystander, high
and dry with a scream caught
in his throat, he looks down
the row of faces coddled
in anxious pride. Wretched
little difference, he thinks,
between enduring pain and
waiting for pain
to work on others.
The doors fly apart—no,
he wouldn’t run away!
It’s a girl, he can tell
by that smirk, that strut of a mountebank!
But he doesn’t feel a thing.
Weak with rage,
Thomas deals the cigars,
spits out the bitter tip in tears.