Tag: Maggie Smith

Poem for the Day: August 29th, 2021

Good Bones by Maggie Smith

This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful. 

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine 
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways 
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least 
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative 
estimate, though I keep this from my children. 
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. 
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, 
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world 
is at least half terrible, and for every kind 
stranger, there is one who would break you, 
though I keep this from my children. I am trying 
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, 
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on 
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Poem for the Day: August 18th, 2021

Poem Beginning With a Retweet by Maggie Smith 

If you drive past horses and don’t say horses
you’re a psychopath. If you see an airplane 
but don’t point it out. A rainbow,
a cardinal, a butterfly. If you don’t 
whisper-shout albino squirrel! Deer! 
Red fox! If you hear a woodpecker 
and don’t shush everyone around you 
into silence. If you find an unbroken 
sand dollar in a tide pool. If you see 
a dorsal fun breaking the water. 
If you see the moon and don’t say 
oh my god look at the moon. If you smell 
smoke and don’t search for fire. 
If you feel yourself receding, receding,
and don’t tell anyone until you’re gone.