Hum
The days are beautiful
The days are beautiful.
I know what days are.
The other is weather.
I know what weather is.
The days are beautiful.
Things are incidental.
Someone is weeping.
I weep for the incidental.
The days are beautiful.
Where is tomorrow?
Everyone will weep.
Tomorrow was yesterday.
The days are beautiful.
Tomorrow was yesterday.
Today is weather.
The sound of the weather
Is everyone weeping.
Everyone is incidental.
Everyone weeps.
The tears of today
Will put out tomorrow.
The rain is ashes.
The days are beautiful.
The rain falls down.
The sound is falling.
The sky is a cloud.
The days are beautiful.
The sky is dust.
The weather is yesterday.
The weather is yesterday.
The sound is weeping.
What is this dust?
The weather is nothing.
The days are beautiful.
The towers are yesterday.
The towers are incidental.
What are these ashes?
Here is the hate
That does not travel.
Here is the robe
That smells of the night
Here are the words
Retired to their books
Here are the stones
Loosed from their settings
Here is the bridge
Over the water
Here is the place
Where the sun came up
Here is a season
Dry in the fireplace.
Here are the ashes.
The days are beautiful.
*
Hello Friends —
Today’s is the title poem of Ann Lauterbach‘s 2005 collection Hum.
April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you wish to be unsubscribed from this Poem-a-Day email list at any time, please reply to this email with a friendly unsubscribe request (preferably in heroic couplet form). You may also request to add a consenting friend to the list, or even nominate a poem.
To learn more about National Poetry Month, or to subscribe to a more official-like Poem-a-Day list, visit www.poets.org.
Enjoy.
Ellen
“Hum” by Ann Lauterbach was featured again for Poem-a-Day April 21, 2009.