Center for Journal Therapy
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Poem of the Month: June 2006

 In memory of Stanley Kunitz, 1906-2006, who was named as US Poet Laureate in 2000, when he was 95.

Touch Me Summer is late, my heart. Words plucked out of the air some forty years ago when I was wild with love and torn almost in two scatter like leaves this night of whistling wind and rain. It is my heart that's late, it is my song that's flown. Outdoors all afternoon under a gunmetal sky staking my garden down, I kneeled to the crickets trilling underfoot as if about to burst from their crusty shells; and like a child again marveled to hear so clear and brave a music pour from such a small machine. What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire. The longing for the dance stirs in the buried life. One season only,      and it's done. So let the battered old willow thrash against the windowpanes and the house timbers creak. Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.   - Stanley Kunitz Journal prompts: Write about a time when you were "wild with love." What words did you "pluck out of the air"? Write about "desire, desire, desire." What "makes (your) engine go"? Who touches you? Who remembers you, reminds you who you are?

The Poems of the Month are copyrighted in the names of the individual authors, and are reproduced here for educational and therapeutic purposes.

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