Well-Mannered Frivolity

End of Summer

2011-08-15T03:00:00.001-05:00

An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.

Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.

~ by Stanley Kunitz

The Garden of Love

2011-08-08T03:00:00.000-05:00

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I had never seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of the Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys & desires.

~ by William Blake

Vacuuming Spiders

2011-08-01T03:00:00.001-05:00

I admire their geometrical patience,
the tidy way they wrap up leftovers,
their willingness to be the earth's
most diligent consumers of small bitternesses.

Sometimes at night I hear them
casting silk threads, clicking their spinnerets,
plucking their webs like blind Irish harpists.
I can almost taste the fruit of the fly
like sucking the pulp from a grape.

But when their webs on the ceiling
begin to converge, and the floor
glitters with shards of insect wings
I drag out the vacuum
and poke its terrible snout under the sofa,
behind the radio—everywhere,

for this is the home of a human being
and I must act like one
or the whole picture goes haywire.

~ by Charles Goodrich

Busy Signal!

2011-07-30T09:24:00.000-05:00

I have been very busy at work lately and am having a hard time keeping up with my responsibilities here. So, I am going back to the Poem-a-Week format for now. I will be posting on Mondays for the rest of the year, to get us all on a good, poetic foot for the week.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

2011-07-29T03:00:00.001-05:00

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

~ by e.e. cummings

After Love

2011-07-28T03:00:00.001-05:00

There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea—
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.

But though the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.

~ by Sara Teasdale

Blue

2011-07-27T03:00:00.001-05:00

Blue, but you are Rose, too,
and buttermilk, but with blood
dots showing through.
A little salty your white
nape boy-wide. Glinting hairs
shoot back of your ears' Rose
that tongues like to feel
the maze of, slip into the funnel,
tell a thunder-whisper to.
When I kiss, your eyes' straight
lashes down crisp go like doll's
blond straws. Glazed iris Roses,
your lids unclose to Blue-ringed
targets, their dark sheen-spokes
almost green. I sink in Blue-
black Rose-heart holes until you
blink. Pink lips, the serrate
folds taste smooth, and Rosehip-
round, the center bud I suck.
I milknip your two Blue-skeined
blown Rose beauties, too, to sniff
their berries' blood, up stiff
pink tips. You're white in
patches, only mostly Rose,
buckskin and saltly, speckled
like a sky. I love your spots,
your white neck, Rose, your hair's
wild straw splash, silk spools
for your ears. But where white
spouts out, spills on your brow
to clear eyepools, wheel shafts
of light, Rose, you are Blue.

~ by May Swenson

A Psalm of Life

2011-07-26T03:00:00.000-05:00

What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Finds us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing
Learn to labor and to wait.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What the Seed Knows

2011-07-25T03:00:00.001-05:00

winter plods on like a Russian novel, spring
hints, haiku

tight blouses unbutton, jackets unzip,
skin is not just skin

rich soil proliferates
in the heart, in the hand
that can never let go

rivers flow unseen, underground, unfettered
unfathomable

some dig down, some rise up
some survive

sleep is not dreamless:
how else the orange, the dogwood?
the phalanx of asparagus?

coddled in the pod,
all the seed needs:

darkness, more snug
than light

grit splits the rock, raises
a tiny fist, screams
the world into profusion
of petaled racket

to uncurl and unfurl
to unhusk from the crust

to inhale, exhale
turn toward what's bright

~ by Anita Skeen

Seen Through a Window

2011-07-24T03:00:00.000-05:00

A man and a woman are sitting at a table.

It is supper time. The air is green. The walls

Are white in the green air, as rocks under water

Retain their own true color, though washed in green.

I do not know either the man or the woman,

Nor do I know whatever they know of each other.

Though washed in my eye they keep their own true color.

The man is all his own hunched strength, the body’s

Self and strength, that bears, like weariness,

Itself upon itself, as a stone’s weight

Bears heavily on itself to be itself.

Heavy the strength that bears the body down.

And the way he feeds is like a dreamless sleep.

The dreaming of a stone is how he feeds.

The woman’s arms are plump, mottled a little

The flesh, like standing milk, and on one arm

A blue bruise, got in some household labor or other,

Flowering in the white. Her staring eye,

Like some bird’s cry called from some deepest wood,

Says nothing of what it is but what it is.

Such silence is the bird’s cry of the stone.

~ by David Ferry

From a Bridge

2011-07-23T03:00:00.000-05:00

I saw my mother standing there below me

On the narrow bank just looking out over the river

Looking at something just beyond the taut middle rope

Of the braided swirling currents

Then she looked up quite suddenly to the far bank

Where the densely twined limbs of the cypress

Twisted violently toward the storm-struck sky

There are some things we know before we know

Also some things we wish we would not ever know

Even if as children we already knew & so

Standing above her on that bridge that shuddered

Each time the river ripped at its wooden pilings

I knew I could never even fate willing ever

Get to her in time

~ by David St. John

Talking Blues

2011-07-22T03:00:00.001-05:00

Raccoon you better be cool

Thought I saw you on Broadway

Eating King Fish’s barbecue

Some people claim raccoon you pretty

Swear raccoon tame like a kitty

But raccoon bites you if you get too close

I saw raccoon on Lenox Avenue

Stealing milk from a baby

Thought I saw a black cat on the corner

But it was nothing but old raccoon

Raccoon let me school you

Raccoon you know you too country

You better leave the city

Raccoon they got rats in New York City

Big as you and just as ornery

Nobody in Harlem studying you raccoon

So you better go about your business

Raccoon you better get wise

Look what playing possum got the possum

~ by Calvin Forbes

The Flowers

2011-07-21T03:00:00.000-05:00

From golden showers of the ancient skies,

On the first day, and the eternal snow of stars,

You once unfastened giant calyxes

For the young earth still innocent of scars:

Young gladioli with the necks of swans,

Laurels divine, of exiled souls the dream,

Vermilion as the modesty of dawns

Trod by the footsteps of the seraphim;

The hyacinth, the myrtle gleaming bright,

And, like the flesh of woman, the cruel rose,

Hérodiade blooming in the garden light,

She that from wild and radiant blood arose!

And made the sobbing whiteness of the lily

That skims a sea of sighs, and as it wends

Through the blue incense of horizons, palely

Toward the weeping moon in dreams ascends!

Hosanna on the lute and in the censers,

Lady, and of our purgatorial groves!

Through heavenly evenings let the echoes answer,

Sparkling haloes, glances of rapturous love!

Mother, who in your strong and righteous bosom,

Formed calyxes balancing the future flask,

Capacious flowers with the deadly balsam

For the weary poet withering on the husk.

~ by Stephane Mallarme

First Men on the Moon

2011-07-20T03:00:00.000-05:00

That afternoon in mid-July,

Two pilgrims watched from distant space

The moon ballooning in the sky.

They rose to meet it face-to-face.

Their spidery spaceship, Eagle, dropped

Down gently on the lunar sand.

And when the module's engines stopped,

Rapt silence fell across the land.

The first man down the ladder, Neil,

Spoke words that we remember now—

“One small step...” It made us feel

As if we were there too, somehow.

When Neil planted the flag and Buzz

Collected lunar rocks and dust,

They hopped like kangaroos because

Of gravity. Or wanderlust?

A quarter million miles away,

One small blue planet watched in awe.

And no one who was there that day

Will soon forget the sight they saw.

~ by J. Patrick Lewis

Still Life

2011-07-19T03:00:00.000-05:00

We’d often

been included in

the weather, whose

changes (as in the

still, portending

darknesses or after

noon) were hardly

evident, if even

manifest at all.

The August rain

over Mixcoac

& the deadening

of all aspect

at a distance:

yet our sudden

wet bodies, firm

swelling divested

finally of shirts

& trousers, left

beside turbid

footprints on

the tiled floor;

this tongue, these

lips the lightning

over the unchartered

landscape of your

thigh: successive

terra nova to

resist the still

life of the body

~ by Roberto Tejada

Wind on the Hill

2011-07-18T03:00:00.001-05:00

No one can tell me,

Nobody knows,

Where the wind comes from,

Where the wind goes.

It’s flying from somewhere

As fast as it can,

I couldn’t keep up with it,

Not if I ran.

But if I stopped holding

The string of my kite,

It would blow with the wind

For a day and a night.

And then when I found it,

Wherever it blew,

I should know that the wind

Had been going there too.

So then I could tell them

Where the wind goes . . .

But where the wind comes from

Nobody knows.

~ by A.A. Milne

The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb

2011-07-17T03:00:00.000-05:00

Whatever he needs, he has or doesn't
have by now.
Whatever the world is going to do to him
it has started to do. With a pencil and two
Hardy Boys and a peanut butter sandwich and
grapes he is on his way, there is nothing
more we can do for him. Whatever is
stored in his heart, he can use, now.
Whatever he has laid up in his mind
he can call on. What he does not have
he can lack. The bus gets smaller and smaller, as one
folds a flag at the end of a ceremony,
onto itself, and onto itself, until
only a heavy wedge remains.
Whatever his exuberant soul
can do for him, it is doing right now.
Whatever his arrogance can do
it is doing to him. Everything
that's been done to him, he will now do.
Everything that's been placed in him
will come out, now, the contents of a trunk
unpacked and lined up on a bunk in the underpine light.

~ by Sharon Olds

Listening to the Garden

2011-07-16T03:00:00.000-05:00

Look at it this way: under the brass fanfare
of their blossoms, all those zucchinis
are really incipient oompahs.
And the pea-vine tremolos? Middle C
rubbed out of a rhubarb stalk?
Now you're beginning to hear it: that line
of radishes ostinato, bean paradiddles,
a beefsteak tomato redballing its cadenza.
Aren't the parts of these vegetables—the phloem,
the calyx and carina—names of woodwinds
you'd love to hear, in counterpoint
with the garden's valves and bells?
Remember that morning you drove
into the main street of a town—Colorado Springs,
was it? - on no holiday you could name?
Nevertheless, the high-school band was passing,
majorettes in their short, flippant skirts
frilled like the inner linings of lettuce,
and shakos, corn-tassel plumed, remember,
and the frogging on jackets—cucumber vines
scrolled on themselves. The whole garden's
flash and patootle was moving off
toward a snowed-upon peak
down at the end of that street.

Big Rock Candy Mountain

2011-07-15T03:00:00.000-05:00

On a summer day in the month of May,
A burly little bum come a hikin',
He was travelin' down the lonesome road,
A-lookin' for his likin'.
He was headed for a land that's far away,
Beside those crystal fountains,
'I'll see you all, this comin' fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.'
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks,
And the little streams of alkyhol
Come a-tricklin' down the rocks.
Where the shacks all have to tip their hats,
And the railroad bulls are blind,
There's a lake of stew, and whiskey, too,
And you can paddle all around 'em in your big canoe,
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There's a land that's fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes,
And you sleep out every night.
Where the box cars are all empty
And the sun shines every day,
I'm bound to go, where there ain't no snow,
Where the rain don't fall and the wind don't blow,
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin,
And you can bust right out again
As soon as they put you in.
The farmers' trees are full of fruit,
The barns are full of hay,
I'm goin' to stay where you sleep all day,
Where they boiled in oil the inventor of toil,
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
O the buzzin' of the bees
In the cigarette trees,
Round the sodawater fountains,
Near the lemonade springs
Where the whangdoodle signs
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

~ by Anonymous

Packing Mother's Things

2011-07-14T03:00:00.000-05:00

I put into a carton the unstrung doll
wrapped in a baby quilt
whose eyes open and shut with a thunk
as the lids strike the molded brow
with the resonance of a hammer inside a clock.
I also put in an old radio,
shaped like the grille of a late-model car
whose singers sang O Careless Love
and Lulu's Back in Town.
Then I put in the inedible cake
and the tiny wax couple all in black.
Then the cameo. In the cameo a woman is etched
in shell, four folds to her skirt,
and she is holding one fold as she steps
and waves goodbye. The sky is abalone.
The two faintly Chinese buildings have a window
for looking out and a door for welcome.
But the woman, white as a cemetery in snow,
inaudible as a saved letter in a secret compartment
of a desk, is bidding good-bye.
I call the Goodwill and say
that they can have everything else.
But they won't take the windows, the doors,
the bathroom and the lawn;
they slide the mattresses down the stairs.
They are incredulous that I would leave
her shag rug red as cabbage, an aviary,
a homemade bookcase.
One of them finds a piece of scrap paper
and says, This is someone's,
don't you want it, I think it's a poem.

Requiescat

2011-07-13T03:00:00.001-05:00

Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone
She is at rest.
Peace, peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.

~ by Oscar Wilde

She Walks in Beauty

2011-07-12T03:00:00.000-05:00

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies
One shade the more, one ray the less,
had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven trees,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, that tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

~ by George Gordon Byron

It's a Sickness, Y'all!

2011-07-11T10:21:00.000-05:00

I have a new blog! I have christened it Barefoot in the Snark - come over and visit me. It's still in it's infancy, and I'm not sure about the colors or formatting yet, but I have published my first post - a book review of Sherrilyn Kenyon's Fantasy Lover. Let me know what you think!

Lost

2011-07-11T03:00:00.000-05:00

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

~ by David Wagoner

Warm Summer Sun

2011-07-10T03:00:00.000-05:00

Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.

~ by Mark Twain

Summer Song

2011-07-09T03:00:00.000-05:00

Wanderer moon
smiling a
faintly ironical smile
at this
brilliant, dew-moistened
summer morning,—
a detached
sleepily indifferent
smile, a
wanderer's smile,—
if I should
buy a shirt
your color and
put on a necktie
sky-blue
where would they carry me?

~ William Carlos Williams

Not Dead

2011-07-08T03:00:00.000-05:00

Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain,
I know that David’s with me here again.
All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.
Caressingly I stroke
Rough bark of the friendly oak.
A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his.
Turf burns with pleasant smoke;
I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses.
All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.
Over the whole wood in a little while
Breaks his slow smile.

~ by Robert Graves

Poppies

2011-07-07T03:00:00.001-05:00

Waking from comalike sleep, I saw the poppies,
with their limp necks and unregimented beauty.
Pause, I thought, say something true: It was night,
I wanted to kiss your lips, which remained supple,
but all the water in them had been replaced
with embalming compound. So I was angry.
I loved the poppies, with their wide-open faces,
how they carried themselves, beckoning to me
instead of pushing away. The way in and the way out
are the same, essentially: emotions disrupting thought,
proximity to God, the pain of separation.
I loved the poppies, with their effortless existence,
like grief and fate, but tempered and formalized.
Your hair was black and curly; I combed it.

~ by Henri Cole

Dry Spell

2011-07-06T03:00:00.000-05:00

Waking early
with the warming house
my grandmother knew what to do
taking care not to wake
Da Da she cooked up a storm
in darkness adding silent spices
and hot sauce

to stay cool. She ate later, alone
after the children had been gathered
and made to eat
her red eggs. Da Da rose
late, long after
the roosters had crowed
his name, clearing
an ashy throat
pulling on long
wooly underwear
to make him sweat

even more. The fields have gone
long enough without water
he liked to say, so can I
and when he returned
pounds heavier
from those thirsty fields
he was even cooler
losing each soaked
woolen skin
to the floor, dropping
naked rain in his
wife’s earthen arms.

~ by Kevin Young

The Fish

2011-07-05T03:00:00.001-05:00

wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side
of the wave, cannot hide
there for the submerged shafts of the

sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices—
in and out, illuminating

the
turquoise sea
of bodies. The water drives a wedge
of iron through the iron edge
of the cliff; whereupon the stars,

pink
rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green
lilies, and submarine
toadstools, slide each on the other.

All
external
marks of abuse are present on this
defiant edifice—
all the physical features of

ac-
cident—lack
of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
hatchet strokes, these things stand
out on it; the chasm-side is

dead.
Repeated
evidence has proved that it can live
on what can not revive
its youth. The sea grows old in it.

~ by Marianne Moore

Day of the Refugios

2011-07-04T03:00:00.001-05:00

I was born in Nogales, Arizona,
On the border between
Mexico and the United States.

The places in between places
They are like little countries
Themselves, with their own holidays

Taken a little from everywhere.
My Fourth of July is from childhood,
Childhood itself a kind of country, too.

It's a place that's far from me now,
A place I'd like to visit again.
The Fourth of July takes me there.

In that childhood place and border place
The Fourth of July, like everything else,
It meant more than just one thing.

In the United States the Fourth of July
It was the United States.
In Mexico it was the día de los Refugios,

The saint's day of people named Refugio.
I come from a family of people with names,
Real names, not-afraid names, with colors

Like the fireworks: Refugio,
Margarito, Matilde, Alvaro, Consuelo,
Humberto, Olga, Celina, Gilberto.

Names that take a moment to say,
Names you have to practice.
These were the names of saints, serious ones,

And it was right to take a moment with them.
I guess that's what my family thought.
The connection to saints was strong:

My grandmother's name--here it comes--
Her name was Refugio,
And my great-grandmother's name was Refugio,

And my mother-in-law's name now,
It's another Refugio, Refugios everywhere,
Refugios and shrimp cocktails and sodas.

Fourth of July was a birthday party
For all the women in my family
Going way back, a party

For everything Mexico, where they came from,
For the other words and the green
Tinted glasses my great-grandmother wore.

These women were me,
What I was before me,
So that birthday fireworks in the evening,

All for them,
This seemed right.
In that way the fireworks were for me, too.

Still, we were in the United States now,
And the Fourth of July,
Well, it was the Fourth of July.

But just what that meant,
In this border place and time,
it was a matter of opinion in my family.

~ by Alberto Ríos

The Garden Year

2011-07-03T03:00:00.000-05:00

January brings the snow,
Makes our feet and fingers glow.

February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.

March brings breezes, loud and shrill,
To stir the dancing daffodil.

April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daisies at our feet.

May brings flocks of pretty lambs
Skipping by their fleecy dams.

June brings tulips, lilies, roses,
Fills the children's hands with posies.

Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots, and gillyflowers.

August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.

Warm September brings the fruit;
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.

Fresh October brings the pheasant;
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

Dull November brings the blast;
Then the leaves are whirling fast.

Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.

~ by Sara Coleridge

Madrigal

2011-07-02T16:01:00.000-05:00

How the tenor warbles in April!
He thrushes, he nightingales, 0 he's a lark.
He cuts the cinquefoil air into snippets
With his love's scissors in the shape of a stork.

Hear the alto's glissando, October.
She drapes blue air on her love's shoulders,
On his velvet jerkin the color of crows.
Her cape of felt & old pearls enfolds her.

How the baritone roots out in May!
His depths reach even the silence inside
The worms moving level, the worms moving up,
The pike plunging under the noisy tide.

Hear the soprano's vibrato,
November, Water surface trembles, cold in the troughs.
She transforms blowing hedges into fences,
She transforms scarlet leaves into moths.

~ by Mary Leader

Sharks in the Rivers

2011-07-01T03:00:00.001-05:00

We'll say unbelievable things
to each other in the early morning—

our blue coming up from our roots,
our water rising in our extraordinary limbs.

All night I dreamt of bonfires and burn piles
and ghosts of men, and spirits
behind those birds of flame.

I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes,
I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through.

It is a short walkway—
into another bedroom.

Consider the handle. Consider the key.

I say to a friend, how scared I am of sharks.

How I thought I saw them in the creek
across from my street.

I once watched for them, holding a bundle
of rattlesnake grass in my hand,
shaking like a weak-leaf girl.

She sends me an article from a recent National Geographic that says,

Sharks bite fewer people each year than
New Yorkers do, according to Health Department records.

Then she sends me on my way. Into the City of Sharks.

Through another doorway, I walk to the East River saying,

Sharks are people too.
Sharks are people too.
Sharks are people too.

I write all the things I need on the bottom
of my tennis shoes. I say, Let's walk together.

The sun behind me is like a fire.
Tiny flames in the river's ripples.

I say something to God, but he's not a living thing,
so I say it to the river, I say,

I want to walk through this doorway
But without all those ghosts on the edge,
I want them to stay here.
I want them to go on without me.

I want them to burn in the water.

~by Ada Limón

A Book Said Dream and I Do

2011-06-30T03:00:00.000-05:00

There were feathers and the light that passed through feathers.

There were birds that made the feathers and the sun that made the light.

The feathers of the birds made the air soft, softer

than the quiet in a cocoon waiting for wings,

stiller than the stare of a hooded falcon.

But no falcons in this green made by the passage of parents.

No, not parents, parrots flying through slow sleep

casting green rays to light the long dream.

If skin, dew would have drenched it, but dust

hung in space like the stoppage of

time itself, which, after dancing with parrots,

had said, Thank you. I'll rest now.

It's not too late to say the parrot light was thick

enough to part with a hand, and the feathers softening

the path, fallen after so much touching of cheeks,

were red, hibiscus red split by veins of flight

now at the end of flying.

Despite the halt of time, the feathers trusted red

and believed indolence would fill the long dream,

until the book shut and time began again to hurt.

~ by Barbara Ras

Beach Glass

2011-06-29T03:00:00.000-05:00

While you walk the water's edge,
turning over concepts
I can't envision, the honking buoy
serves notice that at any time
the wind may change,
the reef-bell clatters
its treble monotone, deaf as Cassandra
to any note but warning. The ocean,
cumbered by no business more urgent
than keeping open old accounts
that never balanced,
goes on shuffling its millenniums
of quartz, granite, and basalt.
It behaves
toward the permutations of novelty--
driftwood and shipwreck, last night's
beer cans, spilt oil, the coughed-up
residue of plastic--with random
impartiality, playing catch or tag
or touch-last like a terrier,
turning the same thing over and over,
over and over. For the ocean, nothing
is beneath consideration.
The houses
of so many mussels and periwinkles
have been abandoned here, it's hopeless
to know which to salvage. Instead
I keep a lookout for beach glass--
amber of Budweiser, chrysoprase
of Almadén and Gallo, lapis
by way of (no getting around it,
I'm afraid) Phillips'
Milk of Magnesia, with now and then a rare
translucent turquoise or blurred amethyst
of no known origin.
The process
goes on forever: they came from sand,
they go back to gravel,
along with treasuries
of Murano, the buttressed
astonishments of Chartres,
which even now are readying
for being turned over and over as gravely
and gradually as an intellect
engaged in the hazardous
redefinition of structures
no one has yet looked at.

~ by Amy Clampitt

For Once, Then, Something

2011-06-28T03:00:00.000-05:00

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

~ by Robert Frost

Tree Marriage

2011-06-27T03:00:00.000-05:00

In Chota Nagpur and Bengal
the betrothed are tied with threads to
mango trees, they marry the trees
as well as one another, and
the two trees marry each other.
Could we do that some time with oaks
or beeches? This gossamer we
hold each other with, this web
of love and habit is not enough.
In mistrust of heavier ties,
I would like tree-siblings for us,
standing together somewhere, two
trees married with us, lightly, their
fingers barely touching in sleep,
our threads invisible but holding.

~ by William Meredith

Cowboy Is His Name

2011-06-26T03:00:00.002-05:00

There's a hundred years of history
and a hundred before that
All gathered in the thinkin'
Goin' on beneath this hat.
The cold flame burns within him
'Til his skin's as cold as ice
And the dues he paid to get here
Are worth every sacrifice.
All the miles spent sleepy drivin'
All the money down the drain,
All the 'if I's' and 'nearly's, '
All the bandages and pain,
All the female tears left dryin',
All the fever and the fight
Are just a small down payment
On the ride he makes tonight.
It's guts and love and glory,
One mortal's chance at fame.
His legacy is rodeo
And cowboy is his name.

~ by Cody Williams

Art Class

2011-06-25T03:00:00.001-05:00

Let us begin with a simple line,
Drawn as a child would draw it,
To indicate the horizon,

More real than the real horizon,
Which is less than line,
Which is visible abstraction, a ratio.

The line ravishes the page with implications
Of white earth, white sky!

The horizon moves as we move,
Making us feel central.
But the horizon is an empty shell—

Strange radius whose center is peripheral.
As the horizon draws us on, withdrawing,
The line draws us in,

Requiring further lines,
Engendering curves, verticals, diagonals,
Urging shades, shapes, figures…

What should we place, in all good faith,
On the horizon? A stone?
An empty chair? A submarine?

Take your time. Take it easy.
The horizon will not stop abstracting us.

~ by James Galvin

The Spirit Is Too Blunt an Instrument

2011-06-24T03:00:00.000-05:00

The spirit is too blunt an instrument
to have made this baby.
Nothing so unskilful as human passions
could have managed the intricate
exacting particulars: the tiny
blind bones with their manipulating tendons,
the knee and the knucklebones, the resilient
fine meshings of ganglia and vertebrae,
the chain of the difficult spine.

Observe the distinct eyelashes and sharp crescent
fingernails, the shell-like complexity
of the ear, with its firm involutions
concentric in miniature to minute
ossicles. Imagine the
infinitesimal capillaries, the flawless connections
of the lungs, the invisible neural filaments
through which the completed body
already answers to the brain.

Then name any passion or sentiment
possessed of the simplest accuracy.
No, no desire or affection could have done
with practice what habit
has done perfectly, indifferently,
through the body's ignorant precision.
It is left to the vagaries of the mind to invent
love and despair and anxiety
and their pain.

~ by Anne Stevenson

The Broken String

2011-06-23T03:00:00.002-05:00

Nuing-kuiten my father’s friend
was a lion sorcerer
and walked on feet of hair.
People saw his spoor and said:
“The sorcerer has visited us.
He is the one who treads on hair.
This big animal prowling
was Nuing-kuiten.”

He used to travel by night—
he did not want to be seen
for people might shoot at him
and he might maul someone.
At night he could go unseen,
after other lion sorcerers
who slink into our dwellings
and drag out men.

The sorcerer lived with us
hunting in a lion’s form
until an ox fell prey to him.
Then the Boers rode out
and shot my father’s friend,
but he fought those people off
and came home to tell father
how Boers had wounded him.

He thought father did not know
he was wounded in his lion form.
Soon he would have to go
for he lay in extreme pain.
If only he could take father
and teach him his magic and songs,
father would walk in his craft,
sing his songs, and remember him.
He died, and my father sang:

“Men broke the string for me
and made my dwelling like this.
Men broke the string for me
and now
my dwelling is strange to me.

My dwelling stands empty
because the string has broken,
and now
my dwelling is a hardship for me.”

~ by Diakwain, translated by Harold Farmer

The Fairies

2011-06-22T03:00:00.002-05:00

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He’s nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
If any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!

~ by William Allingham

Call To The Four Sacred Winds

2011-06-21T03:00:00.001-05:00

I call to the East, where the Father ascends
to all Mother Earth where life begins.
I fly through the cedars, pines, willows, and birch
as animals below me wander and search.
I call to the South, to the land down below.
Turtle stands silent, as man strings his bow
to hunt food and fur for his kin before snow.
A life will end so others will grow.
I call to the North, that yansa once knew.
I follow their path til it disappears from view.
Once vast in number, there stand but a few.
I hear only ghost thunder of millions of hooves.
I call to the West, to the ends of the lands,
to the Tsalagi, Kiowa, Comanche ... all bands.
Unite for the strength. Teach the young and demand
that you are Native Americans. Learn your tongue and stand.
My name is Freedom... I fly through this land.
I call to the Four Sacred Winds of Turtle Island.

~ by Pat Poland

The Swan

2011-06-20T03:00:00.000-05:00

I'll leave the mortal world behind,
Take wing in an flight fantastical,
With singing, my eternal soul
Will rise up swan-like in the air.

Possessing two immortal traits,
In Purgatory I won't not linger,
But rising over jealousy
I'll leave behind me kingdoms' shine.

'Tis so! Though not renowned by birth,
I am the muses favorite,
From other notables a world apart-
I'll be preferred by death itself.

The tomb will not confine me,
I will not turn to dust among the stars,
But like a heavenly set of pipes,
My voice will ring out from the sky.

And now I see that feathered skin
My figure covers all around.
My breast is downy and my back is winged,
I shine with pearly swan-like white.

I fly, I soar-and see below
The world entire-- oceans, woods.
Like mountains they lift up their heads
To hear my lofty hymn to God.

From Kuril Islands to the river Bug,
From White Sea to the Caspian,
Peoples from half the world
Of whom the Russian race's comprised,

Will hear of me in time:
Slavs, Huns, the Scythians, and Finns,
And others locked today in battle,
Will point at me and they'll pronounce:

"There flies the one who tuned his lyre
To speak the language of the heart,
And preaching peace to the whole world,
Enjoyed the happiness of all."

Forget a big and stately funeral,
My friends! Cease singing, muses' choir!
My wife! With patience gird yourself!
Don't keen upon what seems a corpse.

~ Gavril Derzhavin

Phenomenal Woman

2011-06-19T03:00:00.000-05:00

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

~ by Maya Angelou

The Flowers

2011-06-18T03:00:00.001-05:00

From golden showers of the ancient skies,
On the first day, and the eternal snow of stars,
You once unfastened giant calyxes
For the young earth still innocent of scars:

Young gladioli with the necks of swans,
Laurels divine, of exiled souls the dream,
Vermilion as the modesty of dawns
Trod by the footsteps of the seraphim;

The hyacinth, the myrtle gleaming bright,
And, like the flesh of woman, the cruel rose,
Hérodiade blooming in the garden light,
She that from wild and radiant blood arose!

And made the sobbing whiteness of the lily
That skims a sea of sighs, and as it wends
Through the blue incense of horizons, palely
Toward the weeping moon in dreams ascends!

Hosanna on the lute and in the censers,
Lady, and of our purgatorial groves!
Through heavenly evenings let the echoes answer,
Sparkling haloes, glances of rapturous love!

Mother, who in your strong and righteous bosom,
Formed calyxes balancing the future flask,
Capacious flowers with the deadly balsam
For the weary poet withering on the husk.

~ by Stéphane Mallarmé, translated By Henry Weinfield

City Moon

2011-06-17T03:00:00.000-05:00

Perfect disc of moon, huge
and simmering
low on the capital’s filthy horizon— ¡Ay,
qué luna más hermosa! she says
pushing the stroller slowly down Atocha.
And gorgeous too the firm-thighed

boys from Lisbon
a block away, who work
Kilometer Zero’s sidewalk, the neon
shoestore they lean against
cupping the flames
of passing strangers.

The sky above Puerta del Sol turns
a darker shade of blue. Who says
it doesn’t become night’s
one eye
as it scales the heavens, paling
and shrinking before it moves

across a late June sky? And below,
men persist and circle
the plaza, twin fountains brimming
over their brilliant waters. Hours
from now with the heat
waning, the same moon will spot

the figure of him
making past Neptune, the Ritz
the orange jumpsuits
hopping off trucks to sweep
and spray, hosing
down those electric streets.

~ by Francisco Aragón

Ragged Sonnet: When in a Deep Depression

2011-06-16T03:00:00.002-05:00

When in a deep depression of the self,
I see on every side, on every hill,
like the lit mansions of the rich, success
of others, hear the echoes loudly praise
my rivals, feel my plodding soles sink deeper
in the cold ashes of hope, and feel
the tepid drizzle of self-pity stain
my cheeks, I think of you, dear friend, who scorned
the Valium prescribed because you thought
sadness was our wise companion, shadow
of later years and not good to deny;
and then, my heart, all but reconciled
to gravity, like a wing evolved for such
short flights, beats up again. But not too high.

~ by Leonard Nathan

A Basket of Buttons

2011-06-15T03:00:00.000-05:00

Lost eyes, whose sight

will not be restored.
What was there to see, anyway?
You saw how the days
undid you.
You saw wear wear you out
and let down, and how knots,
told to hold you, didn't.
It may be a disappointment,
but nothing turns out
as planned.

Perhaps the buttonhole you
left found another mate,
or the shirt itself
was torn up and now is
a rag that cleans the dusty floors.

That is, nothing turns
out as planned.

Even blind now, you can
see that the needle will not
come back for you,
or stitch hope back
into your dreams. You
will sleep now in that basket
with the others who
do not belong anymore
to this world of work and play.

That is,
nothing, not even the fate
of one small
button, turns out as planned.

~ by Sue Owen

The Last Night That She Lived

2011-06-14T03:00:00.000-05:00

The last night that she lived,
It was a common night,
Except the dying; this to us
Made nature different.

We noticed smallest things,—
Things overlooked before,
By this great light upon our minds
Italicized, as 'twere.

That other could exist
While she must finish quite,
A jealousy for her arose
So nearly infinite.

We waited while she passed;
It was a narrow time,
Too jostled were our souls to speak,
At length the notice came.

She mentioned, and forgot;
Then lightly as a reed
Bent to the water, shivered scarce,
Consented, and was dead.

And we, we placed the hair,
And drew the head erect;
And then an awful leisure was,
Our faith to regulate.

~ by Emily Dickinson

Questions

2011-06-13T03:00:00.001-05:00

If on a summer afternoon a man should find himself
in love with only one woman
in a sea of women, all the others mere half-naked
swimmers and floaters, and if that one woman
therefore is clad in radiance
while the mere others are burdened by their bikinis,
then what does he do with a world
suddenly so small, the once unbiased sun
shining solely on her? And if that afternoon
turns dark, fat clouds like critics dampening
the already wet sea, does the man run—
he normally would—for cover, or does he dive
deeper in, get so wet he is beyond wetness
in all underworld utterly hers? And when
he comes up for air, as he must,
when he dries off and dresses up, as he must,
how will the pedestrian streets feel?
What will the street lamps illuminate? How exactly
will he hold her so that everyone can see
she doesn't belong to him, and he won't let go?

~ by Stephen Dunn

In The Forest

2011-06-12T03:00:00.002-05:00

Out of the mid-wood's twilight
Into the meadow's dawn,
Ivory limbed and brown-eyed,
Flashes my Faun!

He skips through the copses singing,
And his shadow dances along,
And I know not which I should follow,
Shadow or song!

O Hunter, snare me his shadow!
O Nightingale, catch me his strain!
Else moonstruck with music and madness
I track him in vain!

~ by Oscar Wilde

Fast Rode the Knight

2011-06-11T03:00:00.002-05:00

Fast rode the knight
With spurs, hot and reeking,
Ever waving an eager sword,
"To save my lady!"
Fast rode the knIght,
And leaped from saddle to war.
Men of steel flickered and gleamed
Like riot of silver lights,
And the gold of the knight's good banner
Still waved on a castle wall.
. . . . .
A horse,
Blowing, staggering, bloody thing,
Forgotten at foot of castle wall.
A horse
Dead at foot of castle wall.

~ by Stephen Crane

Aftermath

2011-06-10T03:00:00.000-05:00

When the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,
Once again the fields we mow
And gather in the aftermath.

Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
In the silence and the gloom.

~ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A Farewell to False Love

2011-06-09T03:00:00.000-05:00

Farewell false love, the oracle of lies,
A mortal foe and enemy to rest,
An envious boy, from whom all cares arise,
A bastard vile, a beast with rage possessed,
A way of error, a temple full of treason,
In all effects contrary unto reason.

A poisoned serpent covered all with flowers,
Mother of sighs, and murderer of repose,
A sea of sorrows whence are drawn such showers
As moisture lend to every grief that grows;
A school of guile, a net of deep deceit,
A gilded hook that holds a poisoned bait.

A fortress foiled, which reason did defend,
A siren song, a fever of the mind,
A maze wherein affection finds no end,
A raging cloud that runs before the wind,
A substance like the shadow of the sun,
A goal of grief for which the wisest run.

A quenchless fire, a nurse of trembling fear,
A path that leads to peril and mishap,
A true retreat of sorrow and despair,
An idle boy that sleeps in pleasure's lap,
A deep mistrust of that which certain seems,
A hope of that which reason doubtful deems.

Sith* then thy trains my younger years betrayed,[since]
And for my faith ingratitude I find;
And sith repentance hath my wrongs bewrayed*,[revealed]
Whose course was ever contrary to kind*:[nature]
False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu.
Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew.

~ by Sir Walter Raleigh

I Dream of Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair

2011-06-08T03:00:00.000-05:00

I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair,
Borne, like a vapor, on the summer air;
I see her tripping where the bright streams play,
Happy as the daisies that dance on her way.
Many were the wild notes her merry voice would pour,
Many were the blithe birds that warbled them o'er:
Oh! I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair,
Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air.

I long for Jeanie with the daydawn smile,
Radiant in gladness, warm with winning guile;
I hear her melodies, like joys gone by,
Sighing round my heart o'er the fond hopes that die:
Sighing like the night wind and sobbing like the rain,
Wailing for the lost one that comes not again:
Oh! I long for Jeanie, and my heart bows low,
Never more to find her where the bright waters flow.

I sigh for Jeanie, but her light form strayed
Far from the fond hearts round her native glade;
Her smiles have vanished and her sweet songs flown,
Flitting like the dreams that have cheered us and gone.
Now the nodding wild flowers may wither on the shore
While her gentle fingers will cull them no more:
Oh! I sigh for Jeanie with the light brown hair,
Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air.

~ by Stephen Foster

A Song from the Suds

2011-06-07T03:00:00.000-05:00

Queen of my tub, I merrily sing,
While the white foam raises high,
And sturdily wash, and rinse, and wring,
And fasten the clothes to dry;
Then out in the free fresh air they swing,
Under the sunny sky.

I wish we could wash from our hearts and our souls
The stains of the week away,
And let water and air by their magic make
Ourselves as pure as they;
Then on the earth there would be indeed
A glorious washing day!

Along the path of a useful life
Will heart's-ease ever bloom;
The busy mind has no time to think
Of sorrow, or care, or gloom;
And anxious thoughts may be swept away
As we busily wield a broom.

I am glad a task to me is given
To labor at day by day;
For it brings me health, and strength, and hope,
And I cheerfully learn to say-
"Head, you may think; heart, you may feel;
But hand, you shall work always!"

~ by Louisa May Alcott

Raven

2011-06-06T03:00:00.000-05:00

First on the road, stripping flesh,
then on my shoulder, squeezing;
it appeared, no larger than my palm and blind,
when I was young, uniformed,
and driven to Saint Sebastian's School.

With me most days, it smells life.
I find small digs in my skin,
and sometimes feathers brush my ear.
Outside chapel black birds laugh
and make war. They find each other in the sky,
form cities, raise generations of shadows
while I squirm on the worn bench.

At night the wind comes through sashes
and makes my dry house sing against its will;
my shutters shake like weak elbows. It's then,
tiny enough to fit in my pill box, the raven sleeps.

I would give this small pinching thing to you,
then smoke salmon caught from the river
as it left the sea. Hang the shining flesh
over green wood, so together, you, and I, and the raven
could eat the body of the old soul that swam so far,
then its roe, its tiny stars, the possibilities.

~ by DM Gordon

Adjectives of Order

2011-06-05T03:00:00.000-05:00

That summer, she had a student who was obsessed
with the order of adjectives. A soldier in the South
Vietnamese army, he had been taken prisoner when

Saigon fell. He wanted to know why the order
could not be altered. The sweltering city streets shook
with rockets and helicopters. The city sweltering

streets. On the dusty brown field of the chalkboard,
she wrote: The mother took warm homemade bread
from the oven. City is essential to streets as homemade

is essential to bread. He copied this down, but
he wanted to know if his brothers were lost before
older, if he worked security at a twenty-story modern

downtown bank or downtown twenty-story modern.
When he first arrived, he did not know enough English
to order a sandwich. He asked her to explain each part

of Lovely big rectangular old red English Catholic
leather Bible. Evaluation before size. Age before color.
Nationality before religion. Time before length. Adding

and, one could determine if two adjectives were equal.
After Saigon fell, he had survived nine long years
of torture. Nine and long. He knew no other way to say this.

~ by Alexandra Teague

The Wounded Cupid Song

2011-06-04T03:00:00.000-05:00

Cupid as he lay among
Roses, by a Bee was stung.
Whereupon in anger flying
To his Mother, said thus crying;
Help! O help! your Boy’s a dying.
And why, my pretty Lad, said she?
Then blubbering, replied he,
A winged Snake has bitten me,
Which Country people call a Bee.
At which she smil’d; then with her hairs
And kisses drying up his tears:
Alas! said she, my Wag! if this
Such a pernicious torment is:
Come tell me then, how great’s the smart
Of those, thou woundest with thy Dart!

~ by Anacreon, Translated By Robert Herrick

Handshake Histories

2011-06-03T03:00:00.000-05:00

Summer, 1983

They're locked together outside a gift shop outside
the Badlands: a statue Indian shaking hands
with a statue cowboy. The Indian's head feathers

hang down, subdued; the cowboy's hat tilts up at the front—
invitation, forgiveness. His six-shooter, holstered, juts out
from the wood, and I trace it, guiding two fingers

along a well-worn stream that ends at the Indian's leather
vest tassels: When I touch them they should be soft
but are not. My family floats somewhere apart from me;

I do not think of my family. The Indian
creeps into the mist of a forest, lifts his hatchet
toward a rustle in the distance. The cowboy kicks

the ribs of his horse, wrecks onward through a blizzard
of dust. And far away the speck of Rushmore's faces
scoured—by sun, by wind—one layer more lean.

~ by Jeff Hoffman

Marcus Millsap: School Day Afternoon

2011-06-02T03:00:00.000-05:00

I climb the steps of the yellow school bus,
move to a seat in back, and we're off,
bouncing along the bumpy blacktop.
What am I going to do when I get home?
I'm going to make myself a sugar sandwich
and go outdoors and look at the birds
and the gigantic blue silo
they put up across the road at Motts'.
This weekend we're going to the farm show.
I like roosters and pigs, but farming's no fun.
When I get old enough to do something big,
I'd like to grow orange trees in a greenhouse.
Or maybe I'll drive a school bus
and yell at the kids when I feel mad:
"Shut up back there, you hear me?"
At last, my house, and I grab my science book
and hurry down the steps into the sun.
There's Mr. Mott, staring at his tractor.
He's wearing his DeKalb cap
with the crazy winged ear of corn on it.
He wouldn't wave over here to me
if I was handing out hundred dollar bills.
I'll put brown sugar on my bread this time,
then go lie around by the water pump,
where the grass is very green and soft,
soft as the body of a red-winged blackbird.
Imagine, a blue silo to stare at,
and Mother not coming home till dark!

~ by Dave Etter

Let America be America Again

2011-06-01T03:00:00.000-05:00

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

~ by Langston Hughes

Canada

2011-05-31T03:00:00.000-05:00

I am writing this on a strip of white birch bark
that I cut from a tree with a penknife.
There is no other way to express adequately
the immensity of the clouds that are passing over the farms
and wooded lakes of Ontario and the endless visibility
that hands you the horizon on a platter.

I am also writing this in a wooden canoe,
a point of balance in the middle of Lake Couchiching,
resting the birch bark against my knees.
I can feel the sun’s hands on my bare back,
but I am thinking of winter,
snow piled up in all the provinces
and the solemnity of the long grain-ships
that pass the cold months moored at Owen Sound.

O Canada, as the anthem goes,
scene of my boyhood summers,
you are the pack of Sweet Caporals on the table,
you are the dove-soft train whistle in the night,
you are the empty chair at the end of an empty dock.
You are the shelves of books in a lakeside cottage:
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh,
A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson,
Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery,
So You’re Going to Paris! by Clara E. Laughlin,
and Peril Over the Airport, one
of the Vicky Barr Flight Stewardess series
by Helen Wills whom some will remember
as the author of the Cherry Ames Nurse stories.
What has become of the languorous girls
who would pass the long limp summer evenings reading
Cherry Ames, Student Nurse, Cherry Ames, Senior Nurse,
Cherry Ames, Chief Nurse, and Cherry Ames, Flight Nurse?
Where are they now, the ones who shared her adventures
as a veterans’ nurse, private duty nurse, visiting nurse,
cruise nurse, night supervisor, mountaineer nurse,
dude ranch nurse (there is little she has not done),
rest home nurse, department store nurse,
boarding school nurse, and country doctor's nurse?

O Canada, I have not forgotten you,
and as I kneel in my canoe, beholding this vision
of a bookcase, I pray that I remain in your vast,
polar, North American memory.
You are the paddle, the snowshoe, the cabin in the pines.
You are Jean de Brébeuf with his martyr’s necklace of hatchet heads.
You are the moose in the clearing and the moosehead on the wall.
You are the rapids, the propeller, the kerosene lamp.
You are the dust that coats the roadside berries.
But not only that.
You are the two boys with pails walking along that road,
and one of them, the taller one minus the straw hat, is me.

~ by Billy Collins

The Star-Spangled Banner

2011-05-30T03:00:00.001-05:00

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming;
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream;
'Tis the star-spangled banner; O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight and the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land,
Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just.
And this be our motto— "In God is our trust; "
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

~ by Francis Scott Key

Music Swims Back to Me

2011-05-29T03:00:00.000-05:00

Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.

Imagine it. A radio playing
and everyone here was crazy.
I liked it and danced in a circle.
Music pours over the sense
and in a funny way
music sees more than I.
I mean it remembers better;
remembers the first night here.
It was the strangled cold of November;
even the stars were strapped in the sky
and that moon too bright
forking through the bars to stick me
with a singing in the head.
I have forgotten all the rest.

They lock me in this chair at eight a.m.
and there are no signs to tell the way,
just the radio beating to itself
and the song that remembers
more than I. Oh, la la la,
this music swims back to me.
The night I came I danced a circle
and was not afraid.
Mister?

~ by Anne Sexton

The China Painters

2011-05-28T03:00:00.000-05:00

They have set aside their black tin boxes,
scratched and dented,
spattered with drops of pink and blue;
and their dried-up, rolled-up tubes
of alizarin crimson, chrome green,
zinc white, and ultramarine;
their vials half full of gold powder;
stubs of wax pencils;
frayed brushes with tooth-bitten shafts;
and have gone in fashion and with grace
into the clouds of loose, lush roses,
narcissus, pansies, columbine,
on teapots, chocolate pots,
saucers and cups, the good Haviland dishes
spread like a garden
on the white lace Sunday cloth,
as if their souls were bees
and the world had been nothing but flowers.

~ by Ted Kooser

Grass

2011-05-27T03:00:00.000-05:00

I grow in places

others can’t,

where wind is high

and water scant.

I drink the rain,

I eat the sun;

before the prairie winds

I run.

I see, I sprout,

I grow, I creep,

and in the ice

and snow, I sleep.

On steppe or veld

or pampas dry,

beneath the grand,

enormous sky,

I make my humble,

bladed bed.

And where there’s level ground,

I spread.

~ by Joyce Sidman

Toasting Marshmallows

2011-05-26T03:00:00.000-05:00

I am a careful marshmallow toaster,
a patient marshmallow roaster,
turning my stick oh-so-slowly,
taking my time, checking often.
This is art---
a time of serious reflection
as my pillowed confection
slowly reaches golden perfection.

My brother
grabs ‘em with grubby hands
shoves ‘em on the stick
burns ‘em to a crisp
cools ‘em off
flicks soot
eats quick.

I’m still turning my stick.
He’s already eaten six.

~ by Kristine O'Connell George

The Honey Bear

2011-05-25T03:00:00.000-05:00

Billie Holiday was on the radio
I was standing in the kitchen
smoking my cigarette of this
pack I plan to finish tonight
last night of smoking youth.
I made a cup of this funny
kind of tea I’ve had hanging
around. A little too sweet
an odd mix. My only impulse
was to make it sweeter.
Ivy Anderson was singing
pretty late tonight
in my very bright kitchen.
I’m standing by the tub
feeling a little older
nearly thirty in my very
bright kitchen tonight.
I’m not a bad looking woman
I suppose O it’s very quiet
in my kitchen tonight I’m squeezing
this plastic honey bear a noodle
of honey dripping into the odd sweet
tea. It’s pretty late
Honey bear’s cover was loose
and somehow honey dripping down
the bear’s face catching
in the crevices beneath
the bear’s eyes O very sad and sweet
I’m standing in my kitchen O honey
I’m staring at the honey bear’s face.

~ by Eileen Myles

A Poison Tree

2011-05-24T03:00:00.000-05:00

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,--

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

~ by William Blake

The Instruction Manual

2011-05-23T03:00:00.000-05:00

As I sit looking out of a window of the building
I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.
I look down into the street and see people, each walking with an inner peace,
And envy them—they are so far away from me!
Not one of them has to worry about getting out this manual on schedule.
And, as my way is, I begin to dream, resting my elbows on the desk and leaning out of the window a little,
Of dim Guadalajara! City of rose-colored flowers!
City I wanted most to see, and most did not see, in Mexico!
But I fancy I see, under the press of having to write the instruction manual,
Your public square, city, with its elaborate little bandstand!
The band is playing Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov.
Around stand the flower girls, handing out rose- and lemon-colored flowers,
Each attractive in her rose-and-blue striped dress (Oh! such shades of rose and blue),
And nearby is the little white booth where women in green serve you green and yellow fruit.
The couples are parading; everyone is in a holiday mood.
First, leading the parade, is a dapper fellow
Clothed in deep blue. On his head sits a white hat
And he wears a mustache, which has been trimmed for the occasion.
His dear one, his wife, is young and pretty; her shawl is rose, pink, and white.
Her slippers are patent leather, in the American fashion,
And she carries a fan, for she is modest, and does not want the crowd to see her face too often.
But everybody is so busy with his wife or loved one
I doubt they would notice the mustachioed man’s wife.
Here come the boys! They are skipping and throwing little things on the sidewalk
Which is made of gray tile. One of them, a little older, has a toothpick in his teeth.
He is silenter than the rest, and affects not to notice the pretty young girls in white.
But his friends notice them, and shout their jeers at the laughing girls.
Yet soon all this will cease, with the deepening of their years,
And love bring each to the parade grounds for another reason.
But I have lost sight of the young fellow with the toothpick.
Wait—there he is—on the other side of the bandstand,
Secluded from his friends, in earnest talk with a young girl
Of fourteen or fifteen. I try to hear what they are saying
But it seems they are just mumbling something—shy words of love, probably.
She is slightly taller than he, and looks quietly down into his sincere eyes.
She is wearing white. The breeze ruffles her long fine black hair against her olive cheek.
Obviously she is in love. The boy, the young boy with the toothpick, he is in love too;
His eyes show it. Turning from this couple,
I see there is an intermission in the concert.
The paraders are resting and sipping drinks through straws
(The drinks are dispensed from a large glass crock by a lady in dark blue),
And the musicians mingle among them, in their creamy white uniforms, and talk
About the weather, perhaps, or how their kids are doing at school.

Let us take this opportunity to tiptoe into one of the side streets.
Here you may see one of those white houses with green trim
That are so popular here. Look—I told you!
It is cool and dim inside, but the patio is sunny.
An old woman in gray sits there, fanning herself with a palm leaf fan.
She welcomes us to her patio, and offers us a cooling drink.
“My son is in Mexico City,” she says. “He would welcome you too
If he were here. But his job is with a bank there.
Look, here is a photograph of him.”
And a dark-skinned lad with pearly teeth grins out at us from the worn leather frame.
We thank her for her hospitality, for it is getting late
And we must catch a view of the city, before we leave, from a good high place.
That church tower will do—the faded pink one, there against the fierce blue of the sky. Slowly we enter.
The caretaker, an old man dressed in brown and gray, asks us how long we have been in the city, and how we like it here.
His daughter is scrubbing the steps—she nods to us as we pass into the tower.
Soon we have reached the top, and the whole network of the city extends before us.
There is the rich quarter, with its houses of pink and white, and its crumbling, leafy terraces.
There is the poorer quarter, its homes a deep blue.
There is the market, where men are selling hats and swatting flies
And there is the public library, painted several shades of pale green and beige.
Look! There is the square we just came from, with the promenaders.
There are fewer of them, now that the heat of the day has increased,
But the young boy and girl still lurk in the shadows of the bandstand.
And there is the home of the little old lady—
She is still sitting in the patio, fanning herself.
How limited, but how complete withal, has been our experience of Guadalajara!
We have seen young love, married love, and the love of an aged mother for her son.
We have heard the music, tasted the drinks, and looked at colored houses.
What more is there to do, except stay? And that we cannot do.
And as a last breeze freshens the top of the weathered old tower, I turn my
gaze
Back to the instruction manual which has made me dream of Guadalajara.

~ by John Ashbery

The Peace of Wild Things

2011-05-22T03:00:00.000-05:00

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~ by Wendell Berry

When a Woman Loves a Man

2011-05-21T03:00:00.000-05:00

When she says margarita she means daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."

He's supposed to know that.

When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he
is raking leaves in Ithaca
or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very warm.

When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks.
When she says, "We're talking about me now,"
he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says,
"Did somebody die?"

When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water rushing over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.

Ripe apples fall about them.
What else can they do but eat?

When he says, "Ours is a transitional era,"
"that's very original of you," she replies,
dry as the martini he is sipping.

They fight all the time
It's fun
What do I owe you?
Let's start with an apology
Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead.
A sign is held up saying "Laughter."
It's a silent picture.
"I've been fucked without a kiss," she says,
"and you can quote me on that,"
which sounds great in an English accent.

One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it
another nine times.

When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the
airport in a foreign country with a jeep.
When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that
she's two hours late
and there's nothing in the refrigerator.

When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake.
She's like a child crying
at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end.

When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking:
as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved.
A thousand fireflies wink at him.
The frogs sound like the string section
of the orchestra warming up.
The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.

~ by David Lehman

Crying

2011-05-20T03:00:00.000-05:00

Crying only a little bit
is no use. You must cry
until your pillow is soaked!
Then you can get up and laugh.
Then you can jump in the shower
and splash-splash-splash!
Then you can throw open your window
and, "Ha ha! ha ha!"
And if people say, "Hey
what's going on up there?"
"Ha ha!" sing back, "Happiness
was hiding in the last tear!
I wept it! Ha ha!"

~ by Galway Kinnell

You Also, Nightingale

2011-05-19T03:00:00.000-05:00

Petrarch dreams of pebbles
on the tongue, he loves me
at a distance, black polished stone
skipping the lake that swallows

worn-down words, a kind of drown
and drench and quench and very kind
to what I would've said. Light marries
water and what else (unfit

for drinking purposes), light lavishes
my skin on intermittent sun. (I am weather
and unreasonable, out of all
season. Petrarch loves my lies

of laurel leaves, ripped sprigs of
deciduous evergreen.) A creek is lying
in my cement-walled bed, slurring
through the center of small

town; the current's brown and
turbid (muddy, turbulent
with recent torrents), silt rushing
toward the reservoir. A Sonata

passes by too close (I have to jump)
and yes I do hear music here. It's blue, or
turquoise, aquamarine, some synonym
on wheels, note down that note. It's Petrarch

singing with his back to me (delivering
himself to voice), his fingers
filled with jonquil, daffodils, mistaken
narcissus. (I surprised him

between the pages of a book,
looked up the flowers I misnamed.)
Forsythia and magnolia bring me
spring, when he walks into the house

he has wings. Song is a temporary thing
(attempt), he wants to own his music.

~ by Reginald Shepherd

Curse Of The Cat Woman

2011-05-18T03:00:00.000-05:00

It sometimes happens
that the woman you meet and fall in love with
is of that strange Transylvanian people
with an affinity for cats.

You take her to a restaurant, say, or a show,
on an ordinary date, being attracted
by the glitter in her slitty eyes and her catlike walk,
and afterwards of course you take her in your arms
and she turns into a black panther
and bites you to death.

Or perhaps you are saved in the nick of time
and she is tormented by the knowledge of her tendency:
That she daren't hug a man
unless she wants to risk clawing him up.
This puts you both in a difficult position— panting lovers who are prevented from touching

not by bars but by circumstance:
You have terrible fights and say cruel things
for having the hots does not give you a sweet temper.

One night you are walking down a dark street
And hear the pad-pad of a panther following you,
but when you turn around there are only shadows,
or perhaps one shadow too many.

You approach, calling, "Who's there?"
and it leaps on you.
Luckily you have brought along your sword
and you stab it to death.

And before your eyes it turns into the woman you love,
her breast impaled on your sword,
her mouth dribbling blood saying she loved you
but couldn't help her tendency.

So death released her from the curse at last,
and you knew from the angelic smile on her dead face
that in spite of a life the devil owned,
love had won, and heaven pardoned her.

~ by Edward Field

Dream Home

2011-05-17T03:00:00.000-05:00

It's south of here because, mostly,

everything is; what is north is smaller,

thicker, more compact to keep out
the cold. Down there, where it's

warmer, it spreads out luxuriously
across a flattened mountain top.

There's a lake below, more mountains
beyond. The scenery is guaranteed.

Down there, our lives would be
something to marvel at: breakfast

on the terrace every day, a swim
in the afternoon, dinner by candlelight

every night. Down there, life would be
just like it is in the movies, the old movies,

at least: elegant yet simple, in an age
that must remain unquestioned.

Up here, it's much more complicated.
Or, it's just not so clear. Or classy.

Dinner is served in front of the television,
and most of the year, you can't

eat outside. Enter every day for your
chance to win! cries the television promotion.

And we do, oh Lord. Yes we do.

~ by William Reichard

I Stop Writing the Poem

2011-05-16T03:00:00.002-05:00

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I'm still a woman.
I'll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I'll get back
to the poem. I'll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there's a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it's done.

~ by Tess Gallagher

The Prayer

2011-05-15T03:00:00.000-05:00

Blessed be the year climbing its cliffs, the month crossing the fields
of hours and days, the bridges of minutes, the grass where we stood
that first moment, the festival music keeping our time, the hood
of the season's sky above us, the moment's fictive shield
against history, her tattered glance, her broken smile, everything real
or imagined, bless the rivers I invented to carry us, the woods
I planted as our own, bless even the sweet hurt, even the herd
of stars that trample my real heart which she has taught to heal.
Blessed be these trackless words running downstream
following the remote valleys she has cut through my life,
and blessed be the sounds they cannot make, but mean,
and blessed be all these pages watermarked with her name,
these thoughts that wander the unmapped roads of strife
and love, her blessed world whose dream is always a dream.

~ by Richard Jackson

Anniversary

2011-05-14T03:00:00.000-05:00

That you and I, I and you,
this twenty-fifth year after
you stamped your foot, shattered
the glass, and friends, so many dead
or forgotten, applauded in a ballroom
long abandoned, twenty-five years
of Monday good-byes, monthly wars
with stacks of bills, bags of garbage,
frozen gutters, nights filled
with pink medicines, fevered cheeks
on shoulders, the other hand reaching
for the pediatrician's call, termites
chewing, and hours waiting
for the door to open, holding
our own daughter's head vomiting
beer into our own leaking toilet,
that now, as mirrors mark the descent
of breasts, the tub catches silvered
pubic hair and our eyes wear pouches
and hoods, as though expecting rain,
that you and I could smell the salt
of each other, coming together after
long absence, silent, still, staring up
at the darkening ceiling, naked in a house
with empty, orderly bedrooms, the last
of dead roses and discarded boyfriends
tossed out, your hand touching mine,
our breathing slowing,
the wonder of it all.

~ by Davi Walders

Next of Kin

2011-05-13T03:00:00.000-05:00

Next of Kin

your name the one
I wrote down when asked

your name the one I carried
around just in case

your phone number I knew
better than my own

your's never did change
as I moved around

way back from jump
always the same eventually

no matter the friends I found
you were next of kin

~ by Calvin Forbes

What Happened When Bobby Jack Cockrum Tried To Bring Home A Pit Bulldog

2011-05-12T03:00:00.001-05:00

Son
let me tell you the story
of the man who saved
a baby grizzly bear
from a forest fire
and brought it home
nursed it
fed it
kept it like his own

And how the last thing
that man ever learned on earth
when it grown up
and he tried to keep it
out of the hog pen one morning
was the lesson
of what a grizzly bear
is at last

And it had
a final exam
he couldn't help
but pass

~ by David Lee

it's all right

2011-05-11T03:00:00.001-05:00

it's all right

small cheap rooms where you walk
down the hall to the
bathroom can seem romantic to
a young writer.
even the rejection slips are
amusing because you are sure that
you are
one of the best.

but while sitting there
looking across the room
at the portable typer
waiting for you on the table
you are really
in a sense
insane

as you wait for
one more night to arrive to sit and
type Immortal Words—but now you
just sit and think about it
on your first afternoon in a strange city.

looking over at the door you
almost
expect a beautiful woman to walk in.

being young
helps get you through
many senseless and terrible
days.

being old
does
too.

~ by Charles Bukowski

Epitaths

2011-05-10T03:00:00.000-05:00

*found on The Writer's Almanac

William Butler Yeats

No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

John Gay

Life is a jest, and all things show it,
I thought so once; but now I know it.

Richard Hind

Here lies the body of Richard Hind,
who was neither ingenious, sober or kind.

H.J. Daniel's epitaph for his wife

To follow you I'm not content.
How do I know which way you went?

Samuel Butler

The Poet's Fate is here in Emblem shown:
He asked for Bread and he received a Stone.

Aphra Behn

Here lies proof that wit can never be
Defense against mortality.

Mary Ford

Here lyes MARY the Wife of JOHN FORD,
We hope her soul is gone to the LORD;
But if for Hell she has chang'd this life,
She had better be there than be John Ford's wife.

~ taken from various famous headstones

Venetian Air

2011-05-09T03:00:00.000-05:00

Row gently here, my gondolier; so softly wake the tide,
That not an ear on earth may hear, but hers to whom we glide.
Had Heaven but tongues to speak, as well as starry eyes to see,
Oh! think what tales 'twould have to tell of wandering youths
like me!
Now rest thee here, my gondolier; hush, hush, for up I go,
To climb yon light balcòny's height, while thou keep'st watch
below.
Ah! did we take for Heaven above but half such pains as we
Take day and night for woman's love, what angels we should
be!

~ by Thomas Moore

The Visionary

2011-05-08T03:00:00.000-05:00

Silent is the house: all are laid asleep:
One alone looks out o'er the snow-wreaths deep,
Watching every cloud, dreading every breeze
That whirls the wildering drift, and bends the groaning trees.
Cheerful is the hearth, soft the matted floor;
Not one shivering gust creeps through pane or door;
The little lamp burns straight, its rays shoot strong and far:
I trim it well, to be the wanderer's guiding-star.

Frown, my haughty sire! chide, my angry dame;
Set your slaves to spy; threaten me with shame:
But neither sire nor dame, nor prying serf shall know,
What angel nightly tracks that waste of frozen snow.

What I love shall come like visitation of air,
Safe in secret power from lurking human snare;
What loves me, no word of mine shall e'er betray,
Though for faith unstained my life must forfeit pay.

Burn, then, little lamp; glimmering straight and clear -
Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air:
He for whom I wait, thus ever comes to me;
Strange Power! I trust thy might; trust thou my constancy.

~ by Emily Brontë

Four Poems in One

2011-05-07T03:00:00.000-05:00

One

At six o'clock this morning
I saw the rising sun
Resting on the ground like a boulder
In the thicket back of the school,
A single great ember
About the height of a man.

Two
Night has gone like a sickness,
the sky is pure and whole.
Our Lady of Poland spire
Is rosy with first light,
Starlings above it shatter their dark flock.
Notes of the Angelus
Leave their great iron cup
And slowly, three by three
Visit the Polish gardens round about,
Dahlias shaggy with frost
Sheds with their leaning tools
Rosebushes wrapped in burlap
Skiffs upside down on trestles
Like dishes after supper.

Three

These are the poems I'd show you
But you're no longer alive.
The cables creaked and shook
Lowering the heavy box.
The rented artificial grass
Still left exposed
That gritty gash of earth
Yellow and mixed with stones
Taking your body
That never in this world
Will we see again, or touch.

Four
We know little
We can tell less
But one thing I know
One thing I can tell
I will see you again in Jerusalem
Which is of such beauty
No matter what country you come from
You will be more at home there
Than ever with father or mother
Than even with lover or friend
And once we're within her borders
Death will hunt us in vain.

~ by Anne Porter

The Agamemnon Rag

2011-05-06T03:00:00.000-05:00

Atlas, you’re Homer. I am so glad you’re Hera.
Thera so many things to tell you. I went on that
minotaur of the museum. The new display centaurs
on how you can contract Sisyphus if you don’t use
a Trojan on your Dictys. It was all Greek to me, see.
When I was Roman around,
I rubbed Midas against someone. “Medea, you look like a Goddess,”
he said. The Minerva him! I told him to
Frigg off, oracle the cops. “Loki here,” I said.
“In Odin times men had better manners.” It’s best to try
and nymph that sort of thing in the bud. He said he knew
Athena two about women like me, then tried to Bacchus
into a corner. Dryads I could, he wouldn’t stop.
“Don’t Troy with my affections,” he said.
“I’m already going to Helen a hand basket.”
I pretended to be completely Apollo by his behavior.
If something like that Mars your day, it Styx with you
forever. “I’m not Bragi,” he said. “But Idon better.”
Some people will never Lerna. Juno what I did?
Valhalla for help. I knew the police would
Pegasus to the wall. The Sirens went off.
Are you or Argonaut guilty, they asked.
He told the cops he was Iliad bad clams.
He said he accidentally Electra Cupid himself
trying to adjust a lamp shade. This job has its
pluses and Minos. The cops figured he was Fulla it.
He nearly Runic for me. I’m telling you,
it was quite an Odyssey, but I knew things would
Pan out. And oh, by the way, here’s all his gold.
I was able to Fleece him before the museum closed.

~ by Jack Conway

Packing Mother's Things

2011-05-05T03:00:00.000-05:00

Place and Time

2011-05-04T03:00:00.000-05:00

Last night a man on the radio,
a still young man, said the business district
of his hometown had been plowed under.
The town was in North Dakota.
Grass, where the red-and-gold
Woolworth sign used to be,
where the revolving doors
took him inside Sears;
gone the sweaty seats
of the Roxy—or was it the Princess—
of countless Friday nights
that whipped his heart to a gallop
when a girl touched him, as the gun
on the screen flashed in the moonlight.
Grass, that egalitarian green,
pulling its sheet over rubble,
over his barely cold childhood,
on which he walks as others walk
over a buried Mayan temple
or a Roman aqueduct beneath
a remote sheep pasture
in the British Isles. Yet his voice,
the modest voice on the radio,
was almost apologetic,
as if to say, what’s one small town,
even if it is one’s own,
in an age of mass destruction,
and never mind the streets and stones
of a grown man’s childhood—
as if to say, the lives we live
before the present moment
are graves we walk away from.

Except we don’t. We’re all
pillars of salt. My life began
with Beethoven and Schubert
on my mother’s grand piano,
the shiny Bechstein on which she played
the famous symphonies
in piano reductions. But they were no
reductions for me, the child
who now remembers nothing
earlier than that music,
a weather I was born into,
a jubilant light or dusky sadness
struck up by my mother’s hands.
Where does music come from
and where does it go when it’s over—
the child’s unanswered question
about more than music.

My mother is dead, and the piano
she could not take with her into exile
burned with our city in World War II.
That is the half-truth. The other half
is that it’s still her black Bechstein
each concert pianist plays for me
and that her self-taught fingers
are behind each virtuoso performance
on the stereo, giving me back
my prewar childhood city
intact and real. I don’t know
if the man from North Dakota has
some music that brings back
his town to him, but something does,
and whatever he remembers
is durable and instantly
retrievable and lit
by a sky or streetlight
which does not change. That must be why
he sounded casual about
the mindless wreckage, clumsy
as an empty threat.

~ by Lisel Mueller

Night Feeding

2011-05-03T03:00:00.002-05:00

Deeper than sleep but not so deep as death
I lay there dreaming and my magic head
remembered and forgot. On first cry I
remembered and forgot and did believe.
I knew love and I knew evil:
woke to the burning song and the tree burning blind,
despair of our days and the calm milk-giver who
knows sleep, knows growth, the sex of fire and grass,
renewal of all waters and the time of the stars
and the black snake with gold bones.

Black sleeps, gold burns; on second cry I woke
fully and gave to feed and fed on feeding.
Gold seed, green pain, my wizards in the earth
walked through the house, black in the morning dark.
Shadows grew in my veins, my bright belief,
my head of dreams deeper than night and sleep.
Voices of all black animals cry to drink,
cries of all birth arise, simple as we,
found in the leaves, in clouds and dark, in dream,
deep as this hour, ready again to sleep.

~ by Muriel Rukeyser

A Book Of Music

2011-05-02T03:00:00.000-05:00

Coming at an end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where
Did it end? There is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons. Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.

~ by Jack Spicer

Upon a Time

2011-05-01T03:00:00.002-05:00

If ever the sweet spring comes,
I’ll put aside these dead books
And try to feel the herbage freshen
Along the withered boughs of old dry thoughts.

I’ll walk out somewhere where a garden grows,
And there I’ll stand some summer evening,
Hat beside elbows on the gray stone wall,
And the wind will stir, coming from behind the hill.

Afterward I’ll walk home, hands behind me,
And pause a moment before going in,
Half fancying some one has called my name,
Or been awakened to a flutter as I passed.

Of course, I’ll enter, but leave the door ajar,
For someone might come in, you know,
Expectantly I’ll sit to fancy the long evening through
That a pair of eyes in the summer night

Might light a candle in the dull world,
So softly that none might see to smile at,
Yet ardently enough—like a vestal candle burning—
For a little heat in a cold house.

~ by Jonathan David

Just Because It's Fun!

2011-04-30T18:00:00.001-05:00

Just because I love poetry so much, I am going to continue this poem-a-day business for awhile. You have no idea how easy it is for me to find hundreds of poems to fall in love with, and I want to keep sharing them here. I don't know how long this will last, but I am prepared to keep it up until I no longer have fun finding new poems and picking the best of the best to introduce to my readers. I hope that you will continue to enjoy my selections and maybe even find some favorites of your own.

Flying at Night

2011-04-30T03:00:00.000-05:00

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like
his.

~ by Ted Kooser

Always on the Train

2011-04-29T03:00:00.000-05:00

Writing poems about writing poems
is like rolling bales of hay in Texas.
Nothing but the horizon to stop you.

But consider the railroad's edge of metal trash;
bird perches, miles of telephone wires.
What is so innocent as grazing cattle?
If you think about it, it turns into words.

Trash is so cheerful; flying up
like grasshoppers in front of the reaper.
The dust devil whirls it aloft; bronze candy wrappers,
squares of clear plastic--windows on a house of air.

Below the weedy edge in last year's mat,
red and silver beer cans.
In bits blown equally everywhere,
the gaiety of flying paper
and the black high flung patterns of flocking birds.

~ by Ruth Stone

Idyll

2011-04-28T03:00:00.000-05:00

In the grey summer garden I shall find you
With day-break and the morning hills behind you.
There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings;
And down the wood a thrush that wakes and sings.
Not from the past you'll come, but from that deep
Where beauty murmurs to the soul asleep:
And I shall know the sense of life re-born
From dreams into the mystery of morn
Where gloom and brightness meet. And standing there
Till that calm song is done, at last we'll share
The league-spread, quiring symphonies that are
Joy in the world, and peace, and dawn’s one star.

~ by Siegfried Sassoon

A Green Crab's Shell

2011-04-27T03:00:00.001-05:00

Not, exactly, green:
closer to bronze
preserved in kind brine,

something retrieved
from a Greco-Roman wreck,
patinated and oddly

muscular. We cannot
know what his fantastic
legs were like--

though evidence
suggests eight
complexly folded

scuttling works
of armament, crowned
by the foreclaws'

gesture of menace
and power. A gull's
gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber
--size of a demitasse--
open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,

this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing

surrounded by
the brilliant rinse
of summer's firmament.

What color is
the underside of skin?
Not so bad, to die,

if we could be opened
into this--
if the smallest chambers

of ourselves,
similarly,
revealed some sky.

~ by Mark Doty