A Keeping-Place

All this studying of poetry makes me crave a keeping-place for my favorites. This is what I do like about blogs--the keeping. Today's post is stolen from Teresa Ballard's blog and I mention that because she is my new find. Her poem in Best New Poets 2006--yum! (available now and containing also one of the most beautiful poems you'll ever read--not surprising in that it's written by Steph Rogers). If you buy this anthology and come to AWP with it, I can arrange your copy be signed by Ms. Rogers. I think Eduardo Corral is there, and Amanda Auchter, too? Just the rumor of those people should get your cursor heading over to Barnes & Noble.

Little Things

After she's gone to camp, in the early
evening I clear our girl's breakfast dishes
from the rosewood table, and find a small
crystallized pool of maple syrup, the
grains standing there, round, in the night, I
rub it with my fingertip
as if I could read it, this raised dot of
amber sugar, and this time
when I think of my father, I wonder why
I think of my father, of the beautiful blood-red
glass in his hand, or his black hair gleaming like a
broken-open coal. I think I learned to
love the little things about him
because of all the big things
I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.
So when I fix on this tiny image of resin
or sweep together with the heel of my hand a
pile of my son's sunburn peels like
insect wings, where I peeled his back the night before camp,
I am doing something I learned early to do, I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have -
as if it were our duty to
find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.

- Sharon Olds