the meaning of
something important besides myself.
Another thing
I can do is pass twenty-three kidney stones
one right
after the other, a little army of them marching
one at a time
right out to my bladder and past, not knowing
it's one flood
after another and their kind is doomed.
I'm afraid of
needles, even pine needles. I do that well.
But my heart
is strong. It puts up with a lot of crap
and it cares
for silly little things that others
take for
granted. It’s good at sighing and thumping.
I'm good at
sleeping but not at schedules. Sometimes
when I'm
supposed to be sleeping I write poems and
I might be
sleeping when you think I'm working or
paying
attention like right now while I’m talking to you.
But my real
talent is discovering talent. I have found
talent under
rocks, fleeing, with too many legs and
I have found
something like talent taking its time
in the
vertical gait of a cedar heading for the clouds.
And there's
more talent than anyone, even you, can imagine
inside the
gawky vehicles that challenge us in mirrors
and sit at
desks and carry us around. I'm still discovering
how many
unexpected songs rise from the smells.
This means, of
course, that you too are talented
and need only
uncover the deeper odors others may already
be aware of.
Celebrate your genius. After all, you read
this poem and
didn't once think I smelled better than you.
Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National
Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the
Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction,
editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse,
North American Review, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West,
Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many more. He published a three-volume series of
the best of Northwest writing as well as an anthology of contemporary German
poetry titled Evidence of Fire.
He has published a limited edition collection of his own poetry and translated "Yesterday
I Was Leaving" by Johannes Bobrowski. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis
Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander. His story collection, The Balloon
Containing the Water Containing the Narrative Begins Leaking, was one of five finalists for the 2009 Starcherone
Innovative Fiction Prize.
