Good Poems

I have this book of poetry (I have many books of poetry to be truthful) but there is one in particular that always travels with me. My friend, Emily, gave me Good Poems, a collection of poems read by Garrison Keillor on the Writer's Almanac, for my 22nd birthday. This is the book I take with me where ever I wander, it is always short listed.

Some of its brothers and sisters are tucked away in boxes at my parents, or camouflaged on the bookshelf of my home in Tacoma. Other books of poetry take it in turns to be on my bedside table. Poetry is food for me, and I crave it...sometimes the poems of Robert Frost or Mary Olivier, perhaps I feel like Billy Collins or Charles Bukowski; Edna St. Vincent Millay and the poems e.e. cummings (especially the love poems) are in regular rotation. I spent time with a few remarkable African poets, Rogara Muzanenhamo and Chinua Achebe in particular. The list could go on for quite some time, I will continue it later (I have to finish the footnotes to my thesis!)

Seems everytime I thumb through this book I find a new poem. I think this is because poems speak to us in relation to what is happening in our lives, and depending on my situations, some poems metaphorically speak a little louder than others.
Like this one:

where we are
by Gerald Locklin
(for edward field)

i envy those
who live in two places:
new york, say, and london;
wales and spain;
l.a. and paris;
hawaii and switzerland.

there is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are. i have
always loved both the freshness of
arriving and the relief of leaving. with
two homes every move would be a homecoming.
i am not even considering the weather, hot
or cold, dry or wet: i am talking about hope.