Celebrations - One Poem At A Time

 “As poets, we’re writing into the void, and we’re not writing to be bestsellers.  Whatever individual responses we get, whether at a reading, by a conversation or a letter, mean the world.” – Mary Jo Salter

 

Born in Michigan on this date in 1954, Salter is a poet and poetry editor, co-editing the prestigious Norton Anthology of Poetry.  Professor in the Writing Seminars Program at Johns Hopkins, she’s a graduate of Harvard, where she began her writing career.   Her first book of poems (of 6 so far) was published in 1985 while teaching at Mount Holyoke.  And, sandwiched around several teaching stints she has served as an editor at the Atlantic Monthly and The New Republic.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Salter’s, 

 

         Two Pigeons

 

They've perched for hours
on that window-ledge, scarcely
moving. Beak to beak,

a matched set, they differ
almost imperceptibly—
like salt and pepper shakers.

It's an event when they tuck
(simultaneously) their pinpoint
heads into lavender vests

of fat. But reminiscent
of clock hands blandly
turning because they must

have turned—somehow, they've
taken on the grave,
small-eyed aspect of monks

hooded in conferences
so intimate nothing need
be said. If some are chuckling

in the park, earning
their bread, these are content
to let the dark engulf them—

it's all the human
imagination can fathom,
how single-mindedly

mindless two silhouettes
stand in a window thick
as milk glass. They appear

never to have fed on
anything else when they stir
all of a sudden to peck

savagely, for love
or hygiene, at the grimy
feathers of the other;

but when they resume
their places, the shift
is one only a painter

or a barber (prodding a chin
back into position)
would be likely to notice.

 

 

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