Each Day

It is hard for me to resist playing with that Waterlogue app!

This is the Little Union Canal, one of the homes of my heart.

EACH DAY UNEXPECTED SALVATION  (JOHN CAGE)

Forest shade, lake shade, poplar shade, highway shade,

backyard shade, café shade, down-behind-the-high-school

shade, cow shade, carport shade, blowing shade, dappled

shade, shade darkened by rain above, shade under ships,

shade along banks of snow, shade beneath the one tree in a

bright place, shade by the ice cream truck, shade in the new-

car sales room, shade in halls of the palace as all the electric

lights turn on, shade in a stairwell, shade in tea barrels, shade

in books, shade of clouds running over a distant landscape,

shade on bales in the barn, shade in the pantry, shade in the

icehouse (the smell of shade), shade under runner blades,

shade along branches, shade at night (a difficult research),

shade on rungs of a ladder, shade on pats of butter sculpted

to look like scallop shells, shade to holler from, shade in the

chill of bamboo, shade at the core of an apple, confessional

shade, shade of hair salons, shade in a joke, shade in the town

hall, shade descending from legendary ancient hills, shade

under the jaws of a dog with a bird in its mouth trotting

along to the master’s voice, shade at the back of the choir,

shade in pleats, shade clinging to arrows in the quiver, shade

in scars.

   

Anne Carson

The New Yorker, August 10 & 17, 2015.

This is an interesting poem, and I was very glad to find it in The New Yorker! Try making a list of something like this and using it as the basis for several different forms of poem!