Favourite Poets

Filling Station
by Elizabeth Bishop

Oh, but it is dirty!
--this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it's a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color--
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
ESSO--SO--SO--SO

to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

This poem is one of my very favourites. I think it is something about the nearly haunting quality of the perfectly understated humour, or maybe the whispering row of cans, or maybe that last line that makes me shiver it fits so perfectly right where it is. Bishop is an inspiration.

One Poem

This is a Map

I am touched by the blue water
where all the edges of me
are carved out by the sea.
The veins of me are more colours
than red and blue--
(vehicular more than ventricular).
I am all over freckled with cities.
I am smooth and flat and tattooed.

All the people, touching, building
their little lives on my skin.
I am fixed here
As a bottle blue dragonfly pinned to a frame.
I am between two pages
And freed, briefly, for a road trip and
We touch only beneath those acres of blue
Where no cartographer can see.


{have a little taste of my writing :D }