{"id":917,"date":"2014-11-17T00:00:51","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T00:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=917"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:50:02","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:50:02","slug":"nov-17-a-love-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2014\/11\/17\/nov-17-a-love-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"Nov 17 – a love poem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday \u00a0November 17 \u00a0“<\/strong>Watching you, I see how your face bears the signs of our time together”<\/strong><\/p>\n

I stood in the pre-dawn dark looking out on the McNichols gate, watching early traffic. \u00a0But mostly, breathing in the first snow that stuck after it fell overnight. \u00a0The campus always looks good — thank you Facilities \u2014 but this snow dusting helped me enter the morning with stillness, a restful time after the intensity of the past two weeks. \u00a0Judge Rhodes signs off on the City\u2019s bankruptcy exit plan; Barak Obama responds to the elections by facing off with GOP leaders;\u00a0some of the media I follow holds up\u00a0the 25th anniversary of the 2 Salvadoran women and 6 Jesuit faculty. \u00a0That\u2019s a lot in a short while.<\/p>\n

The snow got me looking for simple beauty. \u00a0 I lucked out and met Stephen Dobyns for the first time. \u00a0Wikipedia tells me he graduated from Wayne State and got an MFA at the University of Iowa. I counted 13 books of poetry between 1973 & 2010. \u00a0\u00a0As with most good poems, \u201cWaking\u201d opens with the ordinary, the poet waking beside his still asleep wife and their baby. \u00a0 Then it finds its depth. I hope you like it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s best to read poems out loud, budgeting time for some pauses.<\/p>\n

Winds out of the West South West get gustier as the day goes on, slightly warmer weather by the weekend, maybe some snow on Wednesday; so says Weather.com<\/a>. \u00a0Have a good week.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

john sj<\/p>\n

Stephen Dobyns: “Waking”<\/a><\/h2>\n

Posted by Phyllis Cole-Dai on Nov 13, 2014 12:00 am<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Barbwire\"
\n<\/a>Waking, I look at you sleeping beside me.
\nIt is early and the baby in her crib
\nhas begun her conversation with the gods
\nthat direct her, cooing and making small hoots.
\nWatching you, I see how your face bears the signs
\nof our time together\u2014for each objective
\ndescription, there is the romantic; for each
\nscientific fact, there’s the subjective truth\u2014
\nthis line was caused by days at a microscope,
\nthis from when you thought I no longer loved you.
\nLast night a friend called to say that he intends
\nto move out; so simple, he and his wife splitting
\nlike a cell into two separate creatures.
\nWhat would happen if we divided ourselves?
\nAs two colors blend on a white pad, so we
\nhave become a third color; or better,
\nas a wire bites into the tree it surrounds,
\nso we have grown together. Can you believe
\nhow frightening I find this, to know I have
\nno life except with you? It’s almost enough
\nto make me destroy it just to protest it.
\nAlways we seemed perched on the brink of chaos.
\nBut today there’s just sunlight and the baby’s
\nchatter, her wonder at the way light dances
\non the wall. How lucky to be ignorant,
\nto greet joy without a trace of suspicion,
\nto take that first step without worrying what
\ncomes trailing after, as night trails after day,
\nor winter summer, or confusion where all
\nseemed clear and each moment was its own reward.<\/p>\n

\"Stephen-Dobyns\"
\n<\/a>“Waking” by\u00a0Stephen Dobyns,<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0Velocities<\/em>:\u00a0New and Selected Poems, 1996-1992.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a9 Penguin, 1994.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday \u00a0November 17 \u00a0“Watching you, I see how your face bears the signs of our time together” I stood in the pre-dawn dark looking out on the McNichols gate, watching early traffic. \u00a0But mostly, breathing in the first snow that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":923,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions\/923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}