Me Thinks

Three poems I read this week:

 

Late Fragment by Raymond Carver

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

 

Taking Care by Callista Buchen

Callista Buchen

I sit with my grief. I mother it. I hold its small, hot hand. I don't say, shhh. I don't say, it is okay. I wait until it is done having feelings. Then we stand and we go wash the dishes. We crack open bedroom doors, step over the creaks, and kiss the children. We are sore from this grief, like we've returned from a run, like we are training for a marathon. I'm with you all the way, says my grief, whispering, and then we splash our face with water and stretch, one big shadow and one small.

 

Moses by Luis Alberto de Cuenca

Translated from the Spanish by Gustavo Pérez Firmat

Give me your hand. We have to cross the river and my strength fails me. Hold me as if I were an abandoned package in a wicker basket, a lump that moves and cries in the twilight. Cross the river with me. Even if this time the waters don't part before us. Even if this time God doesn't come to our aid and a flurry of arrows riddles our backs. Even if there is no river.