National Poetry Month, Day 26: Dorothea Lasky

by | Apr 26, 2014 | Great Reads

Boy holding book

Boy holding book

Today’s poem is by the talented Dorothea Lasky.

Dotty and I studied together briefly at UMass Amherst and she’s a love. Her book Awe (Wave Books, 2007) is beautiful and very compelling, and she’s published two more books, since. It’s nice to see someone, you know, making a successful go at this poetry life.

Here is “Love Poem,” which you can hear Dotty read via this link.

Enjoy!

Love Poem

The rain whistled.
.
A taxi brought me to your apartment building
And there I stood.
.
I had dreamed a dream
Of us in a bedroom.
The light shining upon us in white sheets.
.
You were singing me a song of your sailing days
And in the dream
I reached deep in you and pulled out a cardinal
Which in bright red
Flew out the window.
.
Sometimes when we talk
On the phone, I think to myself
That the deep perfect of your soul
Is what draws me to you.
But still what soul is perfect?
All souls are misshapen and off-colored.
Morning comes within a soul
And makes it obey another law
In which all souls are snowflakes.
.
Once at a funeral, a man had died
And with the prayers said, his soul flew up in a hurry
Like it had been let out of something awful.
It was strangely colored, that soul.
And it was a funny shape and a funny temperature.
As it blew away, all of us looking felt the cold.
(? Dorothea Lasky, from Awe)