Poem of the day-Jane Miller

Jane Miller (b. 1949) worked as a painter before her career in poetry. I liked what she had to say about her poetry, “I use and have brought forward many of the reasons why I was attracted to painting into my poems. For example, I make use of color and design, so the structure of poetry, that’s related, and it’s a lot like making the underpainting for a painting.”

I'm not sure this poem makes a lot of sense in places ("may your desire always overcome your need"? Is that really a good thing always? I'd own 5000 comic books, seven pairs of Prada shoes and be homeless.) However, it sounds lovely when read out loud, which the Poetry Foundation recommends you do to really get the full effect of a poem. This really works better when you live alone, of course:

May You Always be the Darling of Fortune

By Jane Miller

March 10th and the snow flees like eloping brides

into rain. The imperceptible change begins

out of an old rage and glistens, chaste, with its new

craving, spring. May your desire always overcome

 

your need; your story that you have to tell,

enchanting, mutable, may it fill the world

you believe: a sunny view, flowers lunging

from the sill, the quilt, the chair, all things

 

fill with you and empty and fill. And hurry, because

now as I tire of my studied abandon, counting

the days, I’m sad. Yet I trust your absence, in everything

wholly evident: the rain in the white basin, and I

 

vigilant.