Poetry Jackpot

First, a quick fall recipe - Peach Cobbler Oatmeal.

It's not much to look at but it's tasty and healthy.  So, win win.

Combine 1/2 cup raw oats and 1 cup water, cook in the microwave for one minute.  Then add a chopped (fresh) peach and cook for about 2-2.5 minutes.  Add brown sugar and cinnamon.  Voila - fall in a bowl.

As I've mentioned, I'm a fan of The New Yorker.  But.  They mix in several poems throughout their articles and I never get them.  I know they are artistic works, but I think to myself, if I studied poetry in school and am voluntarily going back to study more, and I don't get this stuff, what chance do I have?  And what about all their readers who don't even like poetry to begin with?  This stuff has got to seem like jibberish to them.  It's like if Picasso used words instead of paint - you look at it with your head cocked to the side until your eyes glaze over.

The latest edition (I accidentally typed "the latest episode" - ha!  Too much TV?!)  is a jackpot though.  Not one, but two poems that I really enjoyed!  I thought you might like them, too.

KALE

I hear James but can't see him so
I call out his baby name, Jamey-James,
and he pops up from behind a plow
bank.  We walk down the driveway
past the barn to the fenced-in
garden, iron rail, green metal grid,
red thread for the deer.  The black
mama cat with the extra toes comes
running past us.
                         "The ones buried
in snow are insulated," James
tells me, as if quoting from
"The Pruning Book."  He might be.
"If you cut a butterfly bush
down to nothing it grows back
the next year twice as high."

There are five or six tall stumps
of the flat variety, and eight or nine
low curly ones.  We fill a plastic
popcorn bowl and leave as much
behind still growing.

-----Jordan Davis


BIG SCENES

And what was King Kong ever going to do
with Fay Wray, or Jessica Lange,
but climb, climb, climb, and get shot down?
No wonder Gulliver's amiably chatting
with that six-inch woman in his palm.
Desire's huge, there's really nowhere to put it
in our small world that it will stay put:
might as well just talk.
Rage also, and fear, and elation
are windswept summits, your poor mind
half the time an F6 tornado
that could drive a blade of grass through armor plate.
But a lit match inches from your eyes?
Unwavering.  Out there,
in the world we call Real, is calm.
When you stalk down Broadway, fifty feet tall
and building like a thunderhead, your clothes
tattering and whirled away like leaves,
you can nonchalant it, you can be at peace:
it's only in movies that anyone notices.

-----James Richardson

{The New Yorker, October 14, 2013 edition}