love is a deep and a dark and a lonely
and you take it deep take it dark
and take it with a lonely winding
and when the winding gets too lonely
then may come the windflowers
and the breath of wind over many flowers
winding its way out of many lonely flowers
waiting in rainleaf whispers
waiting in dry stalks of noon
wanting in a music of windbreaths
so you can take love as it comes keening
as it comes with a voice and a face
and you make a talk of it
talking to yourself a talk worth keeping
and you put it away for a keen keeping
and you find it to be a hoarding
and you give it away and yet it stays hoarded
like a book read over and over again
like one book being a long row of books
like leaves of windflowers bending low
and bending to be never broken
----------------
Hello Friends —
"Love Is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely" from Carl Sandburg's 1953 collection Honey and Salt begs to be read out loud. Here's a little experiment for you: read this poem out loud to yourself. Then find someone else and ask them to read it out loud. Notice if the two of you made the same choices about where to put punctuation, or when to 'wind' and when to 'wind.'
It's National Poetry Month all month! If a poem a day just isn't enough, you
can always find more at the website of the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org.
Cheers,
Ellen
Labels: NPM