Poetry on Thursday

The poem I'm sharing today is one that I stumbled upon and it surprised me. The author is Barbara Kingsolver, and though I've read and enjoyed many of her novels and non-fiction, I never knew she wrote poetry. She has indeed and has published two volumes of poetry that I have somehow missed, including How to Fly, published just two days ago. It may be time for another covert mission to the library so I can read more of her poetry.

Beating Time

Barbara Kingsolver

Commemorating the removal of poetry as a requirement in Arizona's schools, August 1997

The Governor interdicted: poetry is evicted
from our curricula,
for metaphor and rhyme take time
from science. Our children's self-reliance rests
upon the things we count on. The laws
of engineering. Poeteering squanders time, and time
is money. He said: let the chips fall where they may.

The Governor's voice fell down through quicksilver
microchip song hummed along and the law
was delivered to its hearing. The students
of engineering bent to their numbers in silent
classrooms, where the fans overhead
whispered "I am I am" in iambic pentameter.
Unruly and fractious numbers were discarded at the bell.
In the crumpled, cast-off equations,
small black figures shaped like tadpoles
formed a nation, unobserved, in the wastepaper basket.

Outside, a storm is about to crack the sky.
Lightning will score dry riverbeds, peeling back the mud
like a plow, bellowing, taking out bridges,
completely unexpectedly.

The children too young to have heard
of poetry's demise turn their eyes
to the windows, to see what they can count on.
They will rise and dance to the iamb of the fans,
whispering illicit rhymes,
watching the sky for a sign
while the rain beats time.

Kingsolver, Barbara. "Beating Time." Another America, Seal Press, 1998.  

You can read an intriguing piece written by Kingsolver entitled "How Poems Happen" here.

I wish you mindfulness, peace, some magic, lots of attention, and lots of poetry as this week winds down.