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9 |
Small Woman on Swallow Street
|
Four feet up, under the bruise-blue
Fingered hat-felt, the eyes begin. The sly brim
Slips over the sky, street after street, and nobody
Knows, to stop it. It will cover
The whole world, if there is time. Fifty years’
Start in gray the eyes have; you will never
Catch up to where they are, too ... | W. S. Merwin | Living,Death,Growing Old,The Body,Nature |
10 |
A Muse of Water
|
We who must act as handmaidens
To our own goddess, turn too fast,
Trip on our hems, to glimpse the muse
Gliding below her lake or sea,
Are left, long-staring after her,
Narcissists by necessity;
Or water-carriers of our young
Till waters burst, and white streams flow
Artesian, from the lifted breast:... | Carolyn Kizer | Living,Parenthood,Relationships,Men & Women |
11 |
We Real Cool
|
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
... | Gwendolyn Brooks | Living,Philosophy,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality,Race & Ethnicity |
12 |
How We Heard the Name
|
The river brought down
dead horses, dead men
and military debris,
indicative of war
or official acts upstream,
but it went by, it all
goes by, that is the thing
about the river. Then
a soldier on a log
went by. He seemed drunk
and we asked him Why
had he and this junk
come down to us so
from the past upstream.
“F... | Alan Dugan | Nature,Seas, Rivers, & Streams,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,War & Conflict |
13 |
Separation
|
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
| W. S. Merwin | Living,Separation & Divorce,Sorrow & Grieving,Love,Realistic & Complicated,Romantic Love,Relationships |
14 |
The Stump
|
1.
Today they cut down the oak.
Strong men climbed with ropes
in the brittle tree.
The exhaust of a gasoline saw
was blue in the branches.
The oak had been dead a year.
I remember the great sails of its branches
rolling out green, a hundred and twenty feet up,
and acorns thick on the lawn.
Nine c... | Donald Hall | Living,Death,Time & Brevity,Nature,Trees & Flowers |
15 |
Some Last Questions
|
What is the head
a. Ash
What are the eyes
a. The wells have fallen in and have
Inhabitants
What are the feet
a. Thumbs left after the auction
No what are the feet
a. Under... | W. S. Merwin | The Body,Nature |
16 |
Things We Dreamt We Died For
|
Flags of all sorts.
The literary life.
Each time we dreamt we’d done
the gentlemanly thing,
covering our causes
in closets full of bones
to remove ourselves forever
from dearest possibilities,
the old weapons re-injured us,
the old armies conscripted us,
and we gave in to getting even... | Marvin Bell | Living,Death,Activities,School & Learning,Arts & Sciences,Reading & Books,Social Commentaries,Heroes & Patriotism |
17 |
Monuments for a Friendly Girl at a Tenth Grade Party
|
The only relics left are those long
spangled seconds our school clock chipped out
when you crossed the social hall
and we found each other alive,
by our glances never to accept our town's
ways, torture for advancement,
nor ever again be prisoners by choice.
Now I learn you died
serving among the nati... | William E. Stafford | Living,Death,Activities,School & Learning,Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Philosophy |
18 |
Seaweeds
|
I know a little what it is like, once here at high tide
Stranded, for them to be so attached to the bottom’s
Sarcophagus lids, up to their brown green gold wine
Bottle necks in the prevailing booze, riding, as far
As we can see, like a picnic on a blanket.
Whatever plucks them from below the red horizon
... | Sandra McPherson | Nature,Animals,Landscapes & Pastorals,Seas, Rivers, & Streams |
19 |
Triolet
|
She was in love with the same danger
everybody is. Dangerous
as it is to love a stranger,
she was in love. With that same danger
an adulteress risks a husband’s anger.
Stealthily death enters a house:
she was in love with that danger.
Everybody is dangerous.
| Sandra McPherson | Living,Death,Marriage & Companionship,Love,Realistic & Complicated,Relationships |
20 |
Pig Song
|
This is what you changed me to:
a greypink vegetable with slug
eyes, buttock
incarnate, spreading like a slow turnip,
a skin you stuff so you may feed
in your turn, a stinking wart
of flesh, a large tuber
of blood which munches
and bloats. Very well then. Meanwhile
I have the sky, which is only hal... | Margaret Atwood | Relationships,Pets,Nature,Mythology & Folklore,Heroes & Patriotism |
21 |
Rat Song
|
When you hear me singing
you get the rifle down
and the flashlight, aiming for my brain,
but you always miss
and when you set out the poison
I piss on it
to warn the others.
You think: That one’s too clever,
she’s dangerous, | Margaret Atwood | Relationships,Pets |
22 |
Vowel Movements
|
Take a statement, the same as yesterday’s dictation:
Lately pain has been there waiting when I awake.
Creative despair and failure have made their patient.
Anyway, I’m afraid I have nothing to say.
Those crazy phrases I desecrated the paper
With against the grain ... Taste has tu... | Daryl Hine | Living,Time & Brevity,Social Commentaries |
23 |
Learning the Trees
|
Before you can learn the trees, you have to learn
The language of the trees. That’s done indoors,
Out of a book, which now you think of it
Is one of the transformations of a tree.
The words themselves are a delight to learn,
You might be in a foreign land of terms
Like samara, capsule, drupe, legume and ... | Howard Nemerov | Activities,School & Learning,Nature,Trees & Flowers,Arts & Sciences,Reading & Books |
24 |
Late Echo
|
Alone with our madness and favorite flower
We see that there really is nothing left to write about.
Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things
In the same way, repeating the same things over and over
For love to continue and be gradually different.
Beehives and ants have to be re-examine... | John Ashbery | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Arts & Sciences,Language & Linguistics,Poetry & Poets |
25 |
The Three-Legged Dog at the Heart of Our Home
|
She dances to the wheeze of my lungs. Were she taller,
or had she both hind legs, she would lick my aching knees.
There’s nothing like practice I firmly believe. Practice
makes the heart grow fond. When the graft heals,
you’ve apples on a cherry tree, delicious domestic freaks.
I had a splendid grandmother... | Linda Gregerson | Living,Growing Old,Health & Illness,The Body,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Nature |
26 |
In a U-Haul North of Damascus
|
1
Lord, what are the sins
I have tried to leave behind me? The bad checks,
the workless days, the scotch bottles thrown across the fence
and into the woods, the cruelty of silence,
the cruelty of lies, the jealousy,
the indifference?
What are these on the scale of sin
or failure
that they sho... | David Bottoms | Living,Separation & Divorce,Activities,Travels & Journeys |
27 |
The Voyage Home
|
The social instincts ...
naturally lead to the golden rule.
—CHARLES DARWIN, The Descent of Man
1
Holding her steady, into the pitch and roll,
in raw Midwestern hands ten thousand tons
of winter wheat for the fall of Rome,
still swallowing the hunger of the war:
the binnacle glows... | Philip Appleman | Activities,Travels & Journeys,Nature,Arts & Sciences,Sciences,Social Commentaries,Race & Ethnicity,War & Conflict |
28 |
In the Black Camaro
|
Through the orange glow of taillights,
I crossed the dirt road, entered
the half-mile of darkness and owl screech,
tangled briar and fallen trunk, followed
the yellow beam of Billy Parker's flashlight
down the slick needle-hill,
half crawling, half sliding and kicking
for footholds, tearing... | David Bottoms | Life Choices,Social Commentaries |
0 |
The Trickle-down Theory of Happiness
|
Out of heaven, to bless the high places,
it falls on the penthouses, drizzling
at first, then a pelting allegro,
and Dick and Jane skip to the terrace
and go boogieing through the azaleas,
while mommy and daddy come running
with pots and pans, glasses, and basins
and try to hold all of it up there,
b... | Philip Appleman | Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Social Commentaries,Class,Money & Economics |
1 |
The Month of June: 13 1/2
|
As our daughter approaches graduation and
puberty at the same time, at her
own, calm, deliberate, serious rate,
she begins to kick up her heels, jazz out her
hands, thrust out her hipbones, chantI’m great! I’m great! She feels 8th grade coming
open around her, a chrysalis cracking and
letting... | Sharon Olds | Living,Coming of Age,Parenthood,Activities,School & Learning,Philosophy |
0 |
Northern Exposures
|
for Richard Hugo
You hear the roadhouse before you see it,
Its four-beat country tunes
Amplified like surf through the woods,
Silencing bullfrog and red-tailed hawk,
Setting beards of moss dancing
On dim, indeterminate trees
That border two-lane blacktop.
Docked tonight, yo... | G. E. Murray | Activities,Travels & Journeys,Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets |
0 |
Listening
|
You wept in your mother's arms
and I knew that from then on
I was to forget myself.
Listening to your sobs,
I was resolved against my will
to do well by us
and so I said, without thinking,
in great panic, To do wrong
in one's own judgment,
though others thrive by it,
is the right road to blessedn... | David Ignatow | Living,Parenthood,Love,Realistic & Complicated,Romantic Love,Relationships,Birth,Birthdays |
0 |
An Xmas Murder
|
He sits at the table, cloudlight of March
One tone with his hair, gray-silver on silver.
Midday fare in Vermont is basic enough.
In West Newbury, eggs and toast will do—
Though our doctor’s had his sips of wine as well.
“Just don’t be fooled. They’re not as nice as you
Think they are. Live here a few mor... | Alfred Corn | Social Commentaries,Crime & Punishment,Christmas |
1 |
Ice
|
In the warming house, children lace their skates,
bending, choked, over their thick jackets.
A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy
it’s hard to imagine why anyone would leave,
clumping across the frozen beach to the river.
December’s always the same at Ware’s Cove,
the first sheer ice, black, th... | Gail Mazur | Living,Activities,Sports & Outdoor Activities,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Nature,Winter,Philosophy |
0 |
Nabokov’s Blues
|
The wallful of quoted passages from his work,
with the requisite specimens pinned next
to their literary cameo appearances, was too good
a temptation to resist, and if the curator couldn’t,
why should we? The prose dipped and shimmered
and the “flies,” as I heard a buff call them, stood
at lurid attentio... | William Matthews | Love,Realistic & Complicated,Relationships,Nature,Animals,Arts & Sciences,Reading & Books |
0 |
Morning
|
Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?
This is the best—
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso—
maybe a splash of wa... | Billy Collins | Activities,Eating & Drinking,Relationships,Home Life |
0 |
THE ODD LAST THING SHE DID
|
A car is idling on the cliff. Its top is down. Its headlights throw A faint, bright ghost-shadow glow On the pale air. On the shore, so far Below that the waves' push and drag Is dwindled to a hush—a kind Of oceanic idle—the sea Among the boulders plays a blind- Fold game of hide and seek, Or capture the flag. The f... | Brad Leithauser | Living,Death,Nature,Seas, Rivers, & Streams,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets |
1 |
At the Poetry Reading
|
I can’t keep my eyes off the poet’s wife’s legs—they’re so much more beautiful than anything he might be saying, though I’m no longer in a position really to judge, having stopped listening some time ago. He’s from the Iowa Writers Workshop and can therefore get along fine without my attention. He started in reading... | John Brehm | The Body,Love,Desire,Relationships,Men & Women,Nature,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets |
2 |
American Future
|
In 1963 the morning probably seemed harmless enough
to sign on the dotted line as the insurance man
talked to my parents for over an hour
around a coffee table about our future.
This roof wasn't designed to withstand meteors
he told my father, who back then had a brush haircut
that made his ears stick ou... | Peter Bethanis | Living,Midlife,Social Commentaries,Money & Economics |
3 |
Swifts
|
Bing Crosby died in Spain while playing golf with Franco but who could care less, and at this writing only a few of my dear ones are gone—ah I could make a sad list—the swifts, as if to prove a point, fly into the light and make a mockery out of our darkness. They scream for food but in the world of shadows they onl... | Gerald Stern | Living,Death,Nature,Animals,Social Commentaries,War & Conflict |
0 |
Noah’s Wife
|
is doing her usual for comic relief.
She doesn’t
see why she should get on the boat, etc.,
etc., while life as we know it hangs by a thread.
Even God
has had one or two great deadpan lines:Who told you (this was back at the start... | Linda Gregerson | Religion,Christianity,Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality |
1 |
Natural Selection
|
proceeds by chance
and necessity
becomes nonrandom
through randomness
builds complexity
from simplicity
nurtures consciousness
unconsciously
evolves purposelessly
creatures who demand
purpose
and discover
natural selection
| Alan R. Shapiro | Nature,Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Philosophy,Sciences |
2 |
The Afterlife: Letter to Sam Hamill
|
You may think it strange, Sam, that I'm writing a letter in these circumstances. I thought it strange too—the first time. But there's a misconception I was laboring under, and you are too, viz. that the imagination in your vicinity is free and powerful. After all, you say, you've been creating yourself all along ima... | Hayden Carruth | Living,Death,Religion,Buddhism,Christianity,Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Mythology & Folklore,Ghosts & the Supernatural |
3 |
Iceberg Lettuce
|
What vegetable leviathan
extends beneath the dinner table,
an unseen, monstrous green that pulls
the chair out from under our faith
in appearances: see a mere tuft
of leaf on the plate like a wing,
but if it flies away, it undoubtedly
will disturb the continental drift
asleep under the salad ... | Joanie Mackowski | null |
4 |
The Visit
|
A flashlight rolls over the walls of a cave,
searching, until the transducer comes to a halt
low on my still-flat belly.
The doctor says, "There's definitely a kid in there."
Easy for her to say—she sees this all day.
But it took us years to get to this point.
Years in the dark. Months of nothing and nev... | Carole Bernstein | Living,Parenthood,Relationships,Family & Ancestors |
5 |
One Angel: Palazzo Arian
|
At San Raffaele Arcangelo
One angel got it all wrong.
She plopped into this
sad century feet first
in her dark clothes.
There wasn't much water
that winter—just a few
puddles really—
to break her fall.
Mud-splattered, she rose
and shook like a canine.
It didn't take long
to ... | Ann Snodgrass | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Religion,Faith & Doubt,Social Commentaries,History & Politics |
6 |
Count Down
|
Survival is the final offer
that arrives at the eleventh hour
just when pain to the tenth power
would kill you with another ninth degree.
By then, relief strikes you brief as an eighth note;
you wear doom proudly; it's your seventh seal.
But life whispers through your sixth sense
of what might await yo... | Robin Morgan | Living,Growing Old,Health & Illness |
7 |
Before the Rain
|
Minutes before the rain begins
I always waken, listening
to the world hold its breath,
as if a phone had rung once in a far
room or a door had creaked
in the darkness.
Perhaps the genes of some forebear
startle in me, some tribal warrior
keeping watch on a crag beside a loch,
miserable in the cold,... | Lianne Spidel | Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Nature,Weather,Social Commentaries,History & Politics |
8 |
On the Road
|
Those dutiful dogtrots down airport corridors
while gnawing at a Dunkin' Donuts cruller,
those hotel rooms where the TV remote
waits by the bed like a suicide pistol,
those hours in the air amid white shirts
whose wearers sleep-read through thick staid thrillers,
those breakfast buffets in prairie Marrio... | John Updike | Living,Activities,Travels & Journeys,Arts & Sciences,Philosophy |
0 |
Truly Pathetic
|
Lately, the weather aches;
the air is short of breath,
and morning stumbles in, stiff-jointed.
Day by day, the sun bores the sky,
until the moon begins
its tiresome disappearing act,
making the oceans yawn.
Even the seasons change
with a throb of weariness—
bud, bloom, leaf, fall.
If it would hel... | Neal Bowers | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Nature,Stars, Planets, Heavens,Weather,Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire |
1 |
Immigrant Picnic
|
It's the Fourth of July, the flags
are painting the town,
the plastic forks and knives
are laid out like a parade.
And I'm grilling, I've got my apron,
I've got potato salad, macaroni, relish,
I've got a hat shaped
like the state of Pennsylvania.
I ask my father what's his pleasure
and he says, ... | Gregory Djanikian | Independence Day |
2 |
Tea-Strainer
|
Leaf-keep, un-sibyl; if the soul Has the weight of a swallow, what less Has the weight of a sip? You equal This riddle, unposed in your dish As a hand at rest in a lap. Held to, You hold back what can't be Prevented, what's no more palatable For that: the unfine; formerly, our future.
| Joyelle McSweeney | Activities,Eating & Drinking,Arts & Sciences,Philosophy |
3 |
Nimis Compos Mentis
|
(Too sound of mind)
The paper table cloth was tastefully bleak,
The misty morning light shone on his cheek,
And made him look alone and masculine.
He talked of Seneca and bad translations,
Of modern critics' lightweight observations;
A bread crumb rested sweetly on his chin.
Behind hi... | Leslie Monsour | Love,Desire,Unrequited Love,Relationships,Arts & Sciences,Reading & Books |
4 |
Careless Perfection
|
According to Lin Yutang,
both Po Chuyi and Su Tungpo
"desperately admired" Tao Yuanming,
a poet of nature who wrote a single love poem,
a poem thought by Chinese dilettantes to be
the one "blemish in a white jade."
Can a poet be faulted for calling a womancarelessly perfect in beauty?
He chose to long ... | Daniel Halpern | Love,Realistic & Complicated,Relationships,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets |
5 |
The Tragedy of Hats
|
is that you can never see the one you're wearing,
that no one believes the lies they tell,
that they grow to be more famous than you,
that you could die in one but you won't be buried in it.
That we use them to create dogs
in our own image. That the dogs
in their mortarboards and baseball caps and veils
... | Clarinda Harriss | Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Social Commentaries,Popular Culture |
6 |
Dog Music
|
Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.
My big dog sang with me so purely,
puckering her ruffled lips into an O,
beginning with small, swallowing sounds
like Coltrane musing, then rising to power
and resonance, gulping air to continue—
her passion and sense of flawless form—
singing not with me, but fo... | Paul Zimmer | Relationships,Pets,Arts & Sciences,Music |
7 |
Letter of Recommendation
|
Miss A, who graduated six years back,
has air-expressed me an imposing stack
of forms in furtherance of her heart's desire:
a Ph.D. Not wishing to deny her,
I dredge around for something laudatory
to say that won't be simply a tall story;
in fact, I search for memories of her,
and draw a blank—or say, ... | Robert B. Shaw | Activities,School & Learning |
8 |
The Months
|
January
Contorted by wind,
mere armatures for ice or snow,
the trees resolve
to endure for now,
they will leaf out in April.
And I must be as patient
as the trees—
a winter resolution
I break all over again,
as the cold presses
its sharp blade
against my throat.February
After endless
hibe... | Linda Pastan | Nature,Fall,Winter |
9 |
Stalin's Library Card
|
A recent piece in PRAVDA gives the library books checked out by Stalin between April and December, 1926. Much has been made of their oddity...
Robert Conquest
I
THE ESSENCE OF HYPNOSIS
(Paris: LeGrande, 1902) | David Wojahn | Living,Health & Illness,Activities,Arts & Sciences,Reading & Books,Social Commentaries,History & Politics |
10 |
To My Father's Business
|
Leo bends over his desk Gazing at a memorandum While Stuart stands beside him With a smile, saying, "Leo, the order for those desks Came in today From Youngstown Needle and Thread!" C. Loth Inc., there you are Like Balboa the conqueror Of those who want to buy office furniture Or bar fi... | Kenneth Koch | Living,Coming of Age,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Philosophy |
11 |
The Heart's Archaeology
|
On some fundless expedition,
you discover it beneath
a pyracantha bush
carved from the hip bone
of a long-extinct herbivore
that walked the plains on legs
a story tall. An ocarina of bone
drilled and shaped laboriously
with tools too soft to be efficient
by one primitive musician
spending night after night... | Maudelle Driskell | Arts & Sciences,Music,Mythology & Folklore |
12 |
Beech
|
For a tree, you're the worst kind
of friend, remembering everything.
Pale-skinned, slightly brailled, blank
page of pre-adolescence. The way
the smallest knife-slice would darken
with time, rise and widen.
mark was here. Left his.
But these are the digs you're used to,
sufferer of mere presence,
scratched y... | Kevin McFadden | Nature,Trees & Flowers |
13 |
Scary Movies
|
Today the cloud shapes are terrifying,
and I keep expecting some enormous
black-and-white B-movie Cyclops
to appear at the edge of the horizon,
to come striding over the ocean
and drag me from my kitchen
to the deep cave that flickered
into my young brain one Saturday
at the Baronet... | Kim Addonizio | Living,Death,Growing Old,Philosophy,Social Commentaries,Popular Culture |
14 |
Your Clothes
|
Of course they are empty shells, without hope of animation. Of course they are artifacts. Even if my sister and I should wear some, or if we give others away, they will always be your clothes without you, as we will always be your daughters without you.
| Judith Kroll | Living,Death,Sorrow & Grieving,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Funerals,Mother's Day |
15 |
Pauline Is Falling
|
from the cliff's edge,
kicking her feet in panic and despair
as the circle of light contracts and blackness
takes the screen. And that
is how we leave her, hanging—though we know
she will be rescued, only to descend
into fresh harm, the story flowing on,
disaster and reprieve—systole, diastole—split
rhythm o... | Jean Nordhaus | Living,Death,Disappointment & Failure,Health & Illness,Relationships,Family & Ancestors |
16 |
Wake Me in South Galway
|
Wake me in South Galway, or better yet
In Clare. You'll know the pub I have in mind.
Improvise a hearse—one of those decrepit
Postal vans would suit me down to the ground—
A rust-addled Renault, Kelly green with a splash
Of Oscar Wilde yellow stirred in to clash
With the dazzling perfect meadows and limestone ... | Richard Tillinghast | Living,Death,Activities,Eating & Drinking,Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Arts & Sciences,Music,Poetry & Poets |
17 |
Today
|
If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze
that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house
and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,
a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peoni... | Billy Collins | Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Spring,Weather |
0 |
Suitcase Song
|
John-O was given a key to the apartment. The deal
was this: if Phil died suddenly, and John-O heard,
he would rush on over, enter the apartment, leave
unseen with Phil’s brown suitcase, and secretly pitch it
into the mounded deeps of the city dump.
Simply, there were things that Phil didn’t want
to hurt ... | Albert Goldbarth | Living,Death,Health & Illness,The Body,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals |
1 |
Ants
|
Two wandering across the porcelain
Siberia, one alone on the window sill,
four across the ceiling's senseless field
of pale yellow, one negotiating folds
in a towel: tiny, bronze-colored, antennae
'strongly elbowed,' crawling over Antony and Cleopatra, face down, unsurprised,
one dead in the mountainous bar o... | Joanie Mackowski | Relationships,Pets |
2 |
That Child
|
That child was dangerous. That just-born Newly washed and silent baby Wrapped in deerskin and held warm Against the side of its mother could understand The language of birds and animals Even when asleep. It knew why Bluejay Was scolding the bushes, what Hawk was explaining To the wind on... | David Wagoner | Living,Infancy,Nature,Animals,Mythology & Folklore |
3 |
A HOPKINS RUMBLE, 1999
|
For James Richardson
Gerard, juke-step Jerry, little wrestler, soul-mess
of sinew and mind-sight, fired spark, joyed Jesuit,
grief-clog too, but a Pan-flute in every Ave, you half-nelson
the syntax dandies, ram them to canvas, sit upon and pin
the god-fops, minions of ghost tomes, trite chime... | John Hazard | Religion,Christianity,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets |
4 |
HUDSON
|
unwavering noon, self-minus
sun flake on the levels of gold
there are names for these things: rose, brick, plate glass
the annunciation of the sparrow
a gene for anxiety
add hope, fear, greed, desire
no rest but the shade
to which a sun implodes
perhaps on other worlds others walk streets
muse on the weather
psy... | Hugh Seidman | null |
5 |
Missed Time
|
My notebook has remained blank for months thanks to the light you shower around me. I have no use for my pen, which lies languorously without grief. Nothing is better than to live a storyless life that needs no writing for meaning— when I am gone, let others say they lost a happy man, though no one can tell how happ... | Ha Jin | null |
6 |
Anthem
|
After the Fourth of July
On this night of the mid- summer festival of fire, where liquid explosives look like the arch and ache of the willow tree so near your grave, on this night of the awaiting mid- wife who lulled you in- to this world, the light all violet because the Earth ... | Susan Hahn | Living,Sorrow & Grieving,The Body,Nature |
7 |
Deaf Night at O'Donnell's
|
I happen in
from another unremarkable
Tuesday in the realm
of gratuitous sound, but here,
I can hear again
the quiet voices of the ontological,
the clink of ice cubes
in uplifted glasses,
the scrape of chairs,
the mournful lowing of floorboards,
the long history of blood
retold in my ears.
I scuffle to t... | Art Nahill | Activities,Eating & Drinking |
8 |
The Answering Machine
|
I call and hear your voice
on the answering machine
weeks after your death,
a fledgling ghost still longing
for human messages.
Shall I leave one, telling
how the fabric of our lives
has been ripped before
but that this sudden tear will not
be mended soon or easily?
In your emptying house, others... | Linda Pastan | Living,Death,Sorrow & Grieving |
9 |
Color in American History: An Essay
|
Did they enjoy this, those honorary ancestors
Of ours, whom we may not speak of as Indians now,
But, rather, as Native Americans? Did they, that is,
Have the opportunity to take in such views?
For there were no roads then, slicing through
The hills, opening vistas like this. Astonishing!
Unless, perhaps, they ... | Tom Disch | Nature,Fall,Landscapes & Pastorals,Seas, Rivers, & Streams,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,Race & Ethnicity |
10 |
Call It Music
|
Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song in my own breath. I'm alone here in Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky above the St. George Hotel clear, clear for New York, that is. The radio playing "Bird Flight," Parker in his California tragic voice fifty years ago, his faltering "Lover Man" just before he ... | Philip Levine | Living,Growing Old,Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Arts & Sciences,Music |
11 |
[IT'S BEEN TWO THOUSAND YEARS NOW]
|
It's been two thousand years now that, with a wounded leg, the god's amazing loves have dragged along. He has aged. Soon he won't be noticed except from way up in a plane in the markings of wheat that yield the trace of an ancient sanctuary. He solicits a language of caresses, open pasture, available bodies,... | Marie-Claire Bancquart | Living,Growing Old,Time & Brevity,Religion,Faith & Doubt,God & the Divine,The Spiritual |
12 |
[OFTEN WHEN HE WAS ADVANCING]
|
often
when he was advancing
feeling his way in the night
he was doubtful rebelled
wanted to climb back up
to the old light
but a force held him
enjoined him
to pursue
to venture
once more
once again
into the thickest darkness
of his shadow
one day
at the height of his distress
emptied of all force... | Charles Juliet | Religion,Faith & Doubt |
13 |
[Les plantes et les planètes]
|
Les plantes et les planètes
Au même ciel obáissent ;
Du même soleil les bêtes
Et les hommes se nourrissent ;
Et le mátal dans la mine
Couve l'astre minuscule,
Soufre dont la fleur si fine
Vit en chaque corpuscule.
Naines ou gáantes sont
Poudre et bran jetás loin
Qui sans chute ou frein s'en vont
... | Robert Marteau | Nature,Stars, Planets, Heavens |
14 |
Town Hall, Fifteenth Arrondissement (tr. by John Ashbery)
|
You should have heard the soldiers’ feet
wounding the swirls that the accordion waltz
left on the pavement like a mower’s swath
once the parade had passed
you should have kissed the soldiers’ feet
pulled out of their boots and licked the ankles
and climbed as far as the khaki
seven... | Pierre Martory | Living,Growing Old,Social Commentaries,Cities & Urban Life,History & Politics |
15 |
[Un Citadin / A City Dweller]
|
The street I walk along I often see As if I'd long since left the moving surface Of the world for the endless other side that disperses Us all some day without return but free Of care. I apply myself so well to this fragile proceeding That very quickly my gaze ceases to be Part of the cloudy clump of hope and ... | Jacques Réda | Living,Time & Brevity,Arts & Sciences,Philosophy,Social Commentaries,Cities & Urban Life |
0 |
Parmi beaucoup de poèmes / Among Many Poems
|
Parmi beaucoup de poèmes
Il y en avait un
Dont je ne parvenais pas à me souvenir
Sinon que je l'avais composé
Autrefois
En descendant cette rue
Du côté des numéros pairs de cette rue
Baignée d'une matinée limpide
Une rue de petites boutiques persistantes
Entre la Seine sinistrée et l'hôpital
Un poème écrit ... | Jacques Roubaud | Activities,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets,Social Commentaries,Cities & Urban Life |
1 |
No Time
|
In a rush this weekday morning,
I tap the horn as I speed past the cemetery
where my parents are buried
side by side beneath a slab of smooth granite.
Then, all day, I think of him rising up
to give me that look
of knowing disapproval
while my mother calmly tells him to lie back down.
| Billy Collins | Living,Death,Relationships,Family & Ancestors |
2 |
Lullaby for the Second Millennium
|
From the point of view of all time,
these recent changes signal
more a return to nature
than a departure, than degradation.
In the beginning, after all,
there was boiling rock.
Then waters arranging their bodies
around an era of softer forms:
lichen, grassland, swaying treetops.
Then creatures, movingly fle... | J. Allyn Rosser | Nature,Weather,Arts & Sciences,Sciences |
3 |
Stationed
|
It's the other ones, who soon enough return to being happy after the funeral, that are nearest to their own deaths—in their gaiety and everyday distraction, they're so open and unguarded . . . anything could enter them; could claim them. It's the ones who weep incessantly that are saved for now, the ones who ... | Albert Goldbarth | Living,Death,Sorrow & Grieving,Funerals |
4 |
Beginnings
|
National Museum of Scotland
On the ground floor called "Beginnings," a fertility stone is displayed in the diamond-hard blue halogen, a line etching of an erection with two equal circles, as one sees in graffitti in the Underground. The stone is attributed to the Picts, of whom history says... | Jeffrey Greene | Arts & Sciences,Painting & Sculpture,Social Commentaries,History & Politics |
5 |
Arrowhead
|
Where two streams joined, we met
By accident, sitting upon an outcropping of rock
With only the intent of watching
Water flow beneath unwinding water.
Facing up-stream, she held a flower
To the sun as I leaned back and found
An arrowhead inside a crevice, which lay there
As if someone had left it by inten... | Robert Pack | Relationships,Men & Women,Nature,Seas, Rivers, & Streams |
6 |
Love Poem for an Enemy
|
I, as sinned against as sinning,
take small pleasure from the winning
of our decades-long guerrilla war.
For from my job I've wanted more
than victory over one who'd tried
to punish me before he died,
and now, neither of us dead,
we haunt these halls in constant dread
of drifting past the other's life
while... | Richard Katrovas | Living,Midlife,Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Social Commentaries,War & Conflict |
7 |
To the Consolations of Philosophy
|
Thank you but
not just at the moment
I know you will say
I have said that before
I know you have been
there all along somewhere
in another time zone
I studied once
those beautiful instructions
when I was young and
far from here
they seemed distant then
they seem distant now
from everything I remember
I... | W. S. Merwin | Living,Growing Old,Sorrow & Grieving,Arts & Sciences,Philosophy |
8 |
Sugar Dada
|
Go home. It's never what you think it is,
The kiss, the diamond, the slamdance pulse in the wrist.
Nothing is true, my dear, not even this
Rumor of passion you'll doubtless insist
On perceiving in my glance. Please just
Go. Home is never what you think it is.
Meaning lies in meaning's absence. The mist
Is alw... | J. Allyn Rosser | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Marriage & Companionship,Relationships,Home Life |
9 |
Implements from the "Tomb of the Poet"
|
Piraeus Archeological Museum
On the journey to the mundane afterlife,
You travel equipped to carry on your trade:
A bronze, small-toothed saw to make repairs,
The stylus and the ink pot and the scraper,
Wax tablets bound into a little book.
Here is the tortoise shell for the cithara,
Bored ... | A. E. Stallings | null |
10 |
Li Hua's Messenger
|
In a hut far from the village Li Hua bends over his canvas like an insect. He is so deliberate, each stroke is a spider's legs fighting the current. There is a war in his veins, a battle of desires. He is jealous of Li Po whose pictures glide like the moon over dark water. I do not wish to disturb him a... | Peter Bethanis | Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Painting & Sculpture,Poetry & Poets |
11 |
Chord
|
A man steps out of sunlight,
sunlight that streams like grace,
still gaping at blue sky
staked across the emptiness of space,
into a history where shadows
assume a human face.
A man slips into silence
that began as a cry,
still trailing music
although reduced to the sigh
of an accordion
as it f... | Stuart Dybek | Arts & Sciences,Music |
12 |
Military Mind
|
I wanted to go to military school and march, I wanted to grow up and be composed and expert with a rifle, with tactics and fighting, to be safe and courageous among men in barracks and on the battlefield. I wanted to see my arms hairy and corded with muscle at the end of rolled up khaki sleeves. I wanted to ... | Charlie Smith | Social Commentaries,War & Conflict,Memorial Day |
13 |
Music
|
Han-Shan sits on a flat stone
In his garden and plays the flute,
Mimicking the birds singing among
The gourd vines or from the top
Of the blue pine tree.
Or he constructs a new trellis
For the rambling rose over his front
Gate or works at the great loom in his porch,
Weaving his own coverlets.
Sometimes, he... | George Scarbrough | Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Arts & Sciences,Music,Poetry & Poets |
14 |
Willowspout
|
Because someone thirsty enough
to trust Old Testament wisdom
followed the deepening greens
and found a spring, silver
in the shadow of blue ridges,
I can kneel beneath
this spill of willow
limbs a century later
and drink water
risen from roots
to enter the evening
through a spout, the way
Cherokee storie... | R. T. Smith | Activities,Travels & Journeys,Nature,Seas, Rivers, & Streams,Mythology & Folklore |
15 |
Layabout
|
Do nothing and everything will be done, that's what Mr. Lao Tzu said, who walked around talking 2,500 years ago and now his books practically grow on trees they're so popular and if he were alive today beautiful women would rush up to him like waves lapping at the shores of his wisdom. That's the way i... | John Brehm | Arts & Sciences,Philosophy,Social Commentaries |
16 |
Apostrophe to the Apostrophe
|
Small floater, you stay above the fray,
a wink at nothing's nod, a raised brow
watching p's and q's, a selfless mote
between I and m, a little horn of plenty
spilling plurals, disdaining the bottom line.
Unlike your twin relatives—groupies of wit
and wisdom, hangers on in the smallest talk—
you work alone, dar... | Eric Nelson | Arts & Sciences,Reading & Books |
17 |
Nine-Panel Yaak River Screen
|
Midmorning like a deserted room, apparition
Of armoire and table weights,
Oblongs of flat light,
the rosy eyelids of lovers
Raised in their ghostly insurrection,
Decay in the compassed corners beating its black wings,
Late June and the lilac just ajar.
Where the de... | Charles Wright | Living,Death,Time & Brevity,Nature,Animals,Landscapes & Pastorals,Trees & Flowers,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets |
18 |
Appetite
|
Pale gold and crumbling with crust
mottled dark, almost bronze,
pieces of honeycomb lie on a plate.
Flecked with the pale paper
of hive, their hexagonal cells
leak into the deepening pool
of amber. On your lips,
against palate, tooth and tongue,
the viscous sugar squeezes
from its chambers, sears sweetness ... | Paulann Petersen | Activities,Eating & Drinking |
19 |
The Parade
|
How exhilarating it was to march
along the great boulevards
in the sunflash of trumpets
and under all the waving flags—
the flag of ambition, the flag of love.
So many of us streaming along—
all of humanity, really—
moving in perfect step,
yet each lost in the room of a private dream.
How stimulating the scene... | Billy Collins | Living,Time & Brevity |
20 |
Touch
|
We speak of the pain of childbirth, referring,
of course, to the mother, but what is pain
to the mother, the one through whose body
the course unwinds? She understands already
what kind of world she must return to,
how it daily hones its many edges
against human skin, unlike the child whose
untried limbs inch... | Trevor West Knapp | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Sorrow & Grieving |
21 |
Chamber Thicket
|
As we sat at the feet of the string quartet, in their living room, on a winter night, through the hardwood floor spurts and gulps and tips and shudders came up, and the candle-scent air was thick-alive with pearwood, ebony, spruce, poplar, and horse howled, and cat skreeled, and then, when the Grösse Fugue wa... | Sharon Olds | Love,Realistic & Complicated,Romantic Love,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Arts & Sciences,Music |
22 |
Hartley Field
|
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place . . .
T. S. Eliot
The wind cooled as it crossed the open pond
and drove little waves toward us,
brisk, purposeful waves
that vanished at our feet, such energy
thwarted by so l... | Connie Wanek | null |
23 |
Mary Shelley in Brigantine
|
Because the ostracized experience the world
in ways peculiar to themselves, often seeing it
clearly yet with such anger and longing
that they sometimes enlarge what they see,
she at first saw Brigantine as a paradise for gulls.
She must be a horseshoe crab washed ashore.
How startling, though, no one knew abou... | Stephen Dunn | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Growing Old,Time & Brevity,Activities,Travels & Journeys,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets |
24 |
What Became
|
What became of the dear strands of hair pressed against the perspiration of your lover's brow after lovemaking as you gazed into the world of those eyes, now only yours? What became of any afternoon that was so vivid you forgot the present was up to its old trick of pretending it would be there always? ... | Wesley McNair | Living,Time & Brevity,Love,Realistic & Complicated,Romantic Love,Relationships |
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