Marvin Bell

Marvin Bell (August 3, 1937 – December 14, 2020), American poet and teacher who was the first Poet Laureate of the state of Iowa.

He was the author of more than 20 books of poetry, including The Book of the Dead Man (Copper Canyon Press, 1994), Ardor: The Book of the Dead Man, Vol. 2 (Copper Canyon Press, 1997), Nightworks: Poems 1962–2000 (Copper Canyon Press, 2000), Mars Being Red (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), and Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2011).

 Here are two of his poems for your consideration:

To Dorothy
You are not beautiful, exactly. 
You are beautiful, inexactly. 
You let a weed grow by the mulberry 
And a mulberry grow by the house. 
So close, in the personal quiet 
Of a windy night, it brushes the wall 
And sweeps away the day till we sleep. 

A child said it, and it seemed true: 
'Things that are lost are all equal.' 
But it isn't true. If I lost you, 
The air wouldn't move, nor the tree grow. 
Someone would pull the weed, my flower. 
The quiet wouldn't be yours. If I lost you, 
I'd have to ask the grass to let me sleep. 
--Marvin Bell
__________________________

Yes
We need to think of what might grow in the field
from our ashes, from the rot of our remains,
from tillage and spoilage, from the watery corn
plowed under. We need to picture lilies of the valley
and the hard weeds on the mountain haloed by clouds,
and the minutest beads of water as they roll up
into raindrops to replenish what we relinquished
through expiration. We have been breathing-in
the wild rosebuds and the spoor left by those who
avoid us, we have been to the sea and the forest
to learn who we are, and it is time to say yes
to the intangible reach of our being, the stirring
that sifts, pans and rearranges the billion parts
of us, who once thought we were goners.
--Marvin Bell