A Poetic Excerpt

I'm the type of person who believes in recycling books. On numerous occasions I have gone through my bookshelves and said goodbye to some great reads. I love books, and in particular I love my books, but I think that a book that sits on a shelf collecting dust is a waste and a shame. Despite this, there are some core books that I cherish and that I would never donate or pass on. These books are magical. It does not matter how long I have had them or how many times I re-read them, they continuously inspire and offer new gifts. Among these books are Hafiz' poems, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, works by James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Linda Hogan, Federico Lorca, and the list goes on. One of the most recent additions to my "permanent" book collection is All The Odes by Pablo Neruda. What I love about this thick volume of poems is that it includes odes to the most common of things--a spoon, a table, a chair, salt, an apple, an onion, a bird, a few yellow flowers. Here's an excerpt. Hope you enjoy.

Ode to a Few Yellow Flowers

Against the blue shaking its blue,
the sea, and against the sea,
a few yellow flowers.

October arrives.

And although
the developed sea is so important,
its myth, mission, yeast,
the gold
of a single yellow plant
explodes on the sand
and your eyes
are tied
to the ground,
escaping from the magnanimous sea
and its whip,

We are dust, we shall become.

Not air, or fire, or water
but
earth,
we shall be
mere earth
and maybe
a few yellow flowers.