Dan Edwards: Blessed

Blessed are those who can read Neruda
          in Spanish or Merwin or Mitchell.
Blessed are they for there are times
          when the heart is too dull
and then those times it is not
          nearly dull enough.
But blessed are you
          when Neruda speaks your very soul;
and almost blessed when he speaks
          your soul remembered
                    almost fondly.

Dan Edwards: For Louise Bogan

“Poems came rarely and at a cost.”
                                        Wendy Hirsch writing of Louse Bogan

Like children.
Like love,
          the kind that turns night magic.
Like truth
          that settles to the center and stays
                    forever.

Dan Edwards: Mary Oliver’s Ducks

If I had Mary Oliver’s ducks,
          it would be a different story.
We might be talking
          National Book Award or better.
Mary Oliver’s ducks, or David Whyte’s
          – not to mention Annie Dillard’s –
          make life worth living
          no matter what your people are up to.
They quack and a quiet joi de vivre
          seeps into your soul.
But the ducks in my neighborhood
          are big and ugly,
          the size of geese and just as vicious.
Red, splotchy faces betraying some ancestral liaisons
          with turkey buzzards.
One has a wing that sticks straight out,
          – his badge of honor from a bar room brawl.
The ducks in my neighborhood
          chase the dogs.
          Even the menacing chow turns tail.
Large these ducks, but quick of webbed foot.
They hurry between your car and the porch,
          block your path, demanding bread,
                    then your watch.
You cannot write poems about such ducks.
Even Mark Strand could not
          – they have escaped from his disquiet dreams.
Oh but if I had Mary Oliver’s ducks,
          it would be a different story.