On the Bus Someday

In the latest Poetry.

Absolute tension and absolute stillness

Art is like Christianity in this way: at its greatest, it can give you access to the deepest suffering you imagine—not necessarily dramatic suffering, not necessarily physical suffering, but the suffering that is in your nature, the suffering of which you must be conscious to fulfill your nature—and at the same time provide a peace that is equal to that suffering. The peace is not in place of the sorrow; the sorrow does not go away. But there is a moment of counterbalance between them that is both absolute tension and absolute stillness.

--Christian Wiman

52

The shame of dumb ideas is suffered by the best
but the absence of intelligence means a fool for sure
claiming external things are nothing but illusions
and not understanding wealth is simply luck
the leaves in the stream move without a plan
the clouds in the valley drift without design 
I closed my eyes and everything was fine
I opened them again because I love mountains

--Stonehouse

The Beauty of a Busted Fruit

When we were children, we traced our knees,
shins, and elbows for the slightest hint of wound,
searched them for any sad red-blue scab marking us
both victim and survivor.

All this before we knew that some wounds can’t heal,
before we knew the jagged scars of Great-Grandmother’s
amputated legs, the way a rock can split a man’s head
open to its red syrup, like a watermelon, the way a brother
can pick at his skin for snakes and spiders only he can see.

Maybe you have grown out of yours—
maybe you no longer haul those wounds with you
onto every bus, through the side streets of a new town,
maybe you have never set them rocking in the lamplight
on a nightstand beside a stranger’s bed, carrying your hurts
like two cracked pomegranates, because you haven’t learned
to see the beauty of a busted fruit, the bright stain it will leave
on your lips, the way it will make people want to kiss you.

—Natalie Diaz

Also this. 

I love reading about others' NYC relationships

Excerpt from this great book--

During the following spring, spending most of our time back in Brendan's farmhouse together, it began to dawn on me that I had actually left New York.

I remembered one morning, a month or so before I'd fallen in love with Brendan, when I had awoken trapped in my bed, listening to clanking, roaring garbage trucks outside, choking on cigarette smoke from the apartment downstairs, sensing the seething millions of people around me, pressing on my skull. That morning, I saw the city clearly, suddenly, as if for the first time--it was loud, dirty, crowded, touristy, expensive, maddening. Had I changed or had New York? Was it me or it? It didn't matter. From that moment on, I had to leave. 

In my mind, of course, I was still a New Yorker, just an expatriated one. New York was the only place I'd ever felt I belonged. Whenever I went back, I felt the startling relief of hearing my own language, and every block shimmered with a ghostly overlay of memories. But nothing made me want to live there again.

I loved the deep, total quiet of the farmhouse. I loved not seeing any lights at night, only the Milky Way arching over the sloping fields. ...

Favorites from W.S. Merwin's latest, "The Moon Before Morning"

HOMECOMING [this is the opening poem]

Once only when the summer

was nearly over and my own

hair had been white as the day’s clouds

for more years than I was counting

I stood by the garden at evening

Paula was still weeding around

flowers that open after dark

and I looked up to the clear sky

and saw the new moon and at that

moment from behind me a band

of dark birds and then another

after it flying in silence

long curving wings hardly moving

the plovers just in from the sea

and the flight clear from Alaska

half their weight gone to get them home

but home now arriving without

a sound as it rose to meet them

THEFT OF MORNING

Early morning in cloud light 

to the sound of the last

of the rain at daybreak dripping

from the tips of the fronds

into the summer day

I watch palm flowers open

pink coral in midair 

among pleated cloud-green fans

as I sit for a while after breakfast

reading a few pages

with a shadowing sense 

that I am stealing the moment

from something else

that I ought to be doing

so the pleasure of stealing is part of it

FOOTHOLDS

Where I dug the logs into the rise

to make the steps along the valley

I forget how many years ago

their wood has dissolved completely now

disappearing into the curled slope

gone without my seeing it happen

while the green clouds of the trees have grown

above their mingled shadows

yet I set my feet down in the same

places I did when the steps were there

without even thinking about them

Father and Mother friend upon friend

what I remember of them now

footholds on the slope

in the silent valley this morning

Wednesday with few clouds and an east wind

STILL

Even if I were to return it would not be

the place we came to one evening down a narrow lane

between old walls not far south of Orleans

on the Loiret the clustered village as the sun was sinking

the lane leading down to the edge of the small river

that seemed scarcely to flow between the near shore

and the tangled screen of trees on the far side

a scene Corot would have recognized

with the small child at the water's edge

feeding the ducks that swam over to him

under the gaze of the portly man standing

a few steps behind him thinking about

money and a woman somewhere and dinner

while the seamless water slipped past under the reflections

ELEGY FOR A WALNUT TREE

Old friend now there is no one alive

who remembers when you were young

it was high summer when I first saw you

in the blaze of day most of my life ago

with the dry grass whispering in your shade

and already you had lived through wars

and echoes of wars around your silence

through days of parting and seasons of absence

with the house emptying as the years went their way

until it was home to bats and swallows

and still when spring climbed toward summer

you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers 

of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened

you and the seasons spoke the same language

and all these years I have looked through your limbs

to the river below and the roofs and the night

and you were the way I saw the world 

TIME IN THE GRASS

In a few fields the first hay is lying

naked in its new fragrance as its color fades

and no one has stayed to see the noon light

dappling the small growth in the shade of the trees

beside the meadows that are still untouched

where the spring grasses go on rippling

in the shimmering daylight of their lives

and the voles clad in velvet shadows

trickle through their feet under the whispers

of the tall world while the clear notes

of crickets on all sides call keep calling

to the world to stay just as it is

they go on calling even when the grass has gone

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE

An airport is nowhere

which is not something

generally noticed

yet some unnamed person in the past

deliberately planned it

to be there

and you have spent time there

again

and are spending time there again

for something you have done

which you do not entirely remember

like the souls of Purgatory

you sit there in the smell

of what passes for food

breathing what is called air

while the timepieces measure

their agreement

you believe in it

while you are there

because you are there

and sometimes you may even feel happy

to be that far on your way

to somewhere

ANCIENT WORLD

Orange sunset

in the deep shell of summer

a long silence reaching

across the dry pastures

in the distance a dog barks

at the sound of a door closing

and at once I am older

WHITE ON WHITE

Above the terraces almost at the top

of the Tower of Babel my eyes are

travelling among the sailing clouds

once more they find themselves at home among

migrating flocks of birds both those that still

return to earth and those that have left it

lying in its losses they fly knowing

their unknowable way and my ears follow them

as they always did toward sounds from before

there was hearing and they ride echoes

into a music more familiar than

I could ever have believed possible

its passions swelling as deep as ever

ringing upward from the bells of the streams

every moment that I loved and had lost

rising toward me to be recognized

the sound of it in the rush of the night rain

I am awake and have been at home the whole time