I subscribe to a couple of the poem-a-day email services, partly for surprise and partly in order to reread and contemplate a poem or poet I read long ago, at another time in my life. One of those services I've stuck with longest is run by a fellow named Joe Riley, whose weekly poetic post is called Panhala. It is accessed simply by going to panhala-subscribe@yahoogroups.
I'd be interested to know why Joe Riley chose Panhala. It is a city in India built initially between 1178 and 1209 CE, and most widely known for a large fort that rises more than 400 meters (1,312 feet) above its surrounding plain. One reason, sufficient in itself, is a lovely lotus motif (see below), carved on Panhala by Raja Bhoj, who supervised the building of the fort. A larger representation of the lotus carving is available (along with much information on Panhala's fort) by going to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panhala_Fort.
This introduction is, first, to express my gratitude to Joe Riley, but mainly in this instance, to offer a poem reprinted this week by Riley, written by a poet I have long admired, Lisel Mueller, born in Hamburg in 1924. Like so many families, Lisel Mueller's was forced to flee the Nazis when Lisel was fifteen. She is a translator of accomplishment, and her collections of poems have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. I have written about her and included her work, here and elsewhere in Reckonings. Think of the ways love is like salt.
Love Like Salt
It lies in our hands in crystals
too intricate to decipher
It goes into the skillet
without being given a second thought
It spills on the floor so fine
we step all over it
We carry a pinch behind each eyeball
It breaks out on our foreheads
We store it inside our bodies
in secret wineskins
At supper, we pass it around the table
talking of holidays and the sea.
~ Lisel Mueller ~
The lotus motif at Panhala