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25 |
Translation
|
Though there's no such thing as a "self," I missed it—
the fiction of it and how I felt believing in it mildly
like a book an old love sent with an inscription
in his hand, whatever it meant,
After such knowledge, what forgiveness . . . —the script of it like the way my self felt
learning German words by chance... | Deirdre O'Connor | Living,Coming of Age,Disappointment & Failure,Arts & Sciences,Philosophy,Reading & Books |
26 |
The Age of Dinosaurs
|
There are, of course, theories about the wide-eyed, drop-jawed fascination children have for them, about how, before he's learned his own phone number or address, a five-year-old can carry like a few small stones the Latin tonnage of those names, the prefixes and preferences for leaf or meat. My son recites the syll... | James Scruton | Living,Coming of Age,Parenthood,Time & Brevity,Nature,Animals,Philosophy |
27 |
Torcello
|
Offshore, the Apocalypse stays contained to one island and its church. Venice's ruler's out wedding himself to the ocean while I'm ankle deep in the Adriatic, eyes raised to a book unencumbered by words: A Bible that reads from East to West. Guidebooks want only to see it as ceiling—the Basilica San Marc... | Catherine Sasanov | Religion,Christianity,Faith & Doubt,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,Money & Economics |
28 |
In Time
|
As far as clocks—and it is time to think of them—I have one on my kitchen shelf and it is flat, with a machine-made flair, a perfect machine from 1948, at the latest, and made of shining plastic with the numbers sharp and clear and slightly magnified in that heartbreaking post-war style, the cord too short, though w... | Gerald Stern | null |
29 |
How We Made a New Art on Old Ground
|
A famous battle happened in this valley.
You never understood the nature poem.
Till now. Till this moment—if these statements
seem separate, unrelated, follow this
silence to its edge and you will hear
the history of air: the cri... | Eavan Boland | Arts & Sciences,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,War & Conflict |
30 |
My Century
|
The year I was born the atomic bomb went off.
Here I'd just begun, and someone
found the switch to turn off the world.
In the furnace-light, in the central solar fire
of that heat lamp, the future got very finite,
and it was possible to imagine time-travelers
failing to arrive, because there was no future.
In... | Alan Feldman | Living,Philosophy,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,War & Conflict |
31 |
Market Forecast
|
Adjectives continue their downward spiral, with adverbs likely to follow. Wisdom, grace, and beauty can be had three for a dollar, as they head for a recession. Diaphanous, filigree, pearlescent, and love are now available at wholesale prices. Verbs are still blue-chip investments, but not many are willing to sell. ... | Alexa Selph | Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Poetry & Poets,Social Commentaries,Money & Economics |
32 |
[Over a Cup of Coffee]
|
Over a cup of coffee or sitting on a park bench or
walking the dog, he would recall some incident
from his youth—nothing significant—climbing a tree
in his backyard, waiting in left field for a batter's
swing, sitting in a parked car with a girl whose face
he no longer remembered, his hand on her breast
and hi... | Stephen Dobyns | Living,Growing Old,Time & Brevity,Philosophy |
33 |
Christmas Tree Lots
|
Christmas trees lined like war refugees,
a fallen army made to stand in their greens.
Cut down at the foot, on their last leg,
they pull themselves up, arms raised.
We drop them like wood;
tied, they are driven through the streets,
dragged through the door, cornered
in a room, given a single blanket,
only wa... | Chris Green | Nature,Winter,Religion,Christianity,Christmas |
0 |
To Luck
|
In the cards and at the bend in the road we never saw you in the womb and in the crossfire in the numbers whatever you had your hand in which was everything we were told never to put our faith in you to bow to you humbly after all because in the end there was nothing else we could do but not to believe in... | W. S. Merwin | Arts & Sciences,Philosophy |
1 |
My Dog Practices Geometry
|
I do not understand the poets who tell me
that I should not personify. Every morning
the willow auditions for a new role
outside my bedroom window—today she is
Clytemnestra; yesterday a Southern Belle,
lost in her own melodrama, sinking on her skirts.
Nor do I like the mathematicians who tell me
I cannot say,... | Cathryn Essinger | Relationships,Pets,Nature,Animals,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets |
2 |
The Dignity of Ushers
|
Their authority did not unfold
from ironed white shirts and thin ties
or from the funereal seriousness that struck
their acne-splashed faces but because
they stood heir to our native faith in light.
So we followed the thin white waver
of beams they pointed down aisles
to seats we never thought of refusing.
I... | Al Maginnes | Living,Time & Brevity,Philosophy,Social Commentaries,Class,Popular Culture |
3 |
Tenderness and Rot
|
Tenderness and rot share a border. And rot is an aggressive neighbor whose iridescence keeps creeping over. No lessons can be drawn from this however. One is not two countries. One is not meat corrupting. It is important to stay sweet and loving.
| Kay Ryan | Love,Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Arts & Sciences,Philosophy |
4 |
Three Poets
|
1. THE PLAGIARIST Careless of his debts, he never credits submissions to the magazine he edits. 2. THE TAXIDERMIST Her father's dead at last, the lout— but now he's all she writes about. 3. THE ASSASSIN His verse means less to the world of letters than the bad reviews he gives his betters.
| Robert West | Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Poetry & Poets |
5 |
Cleaning an Attic
|
The day had finally come when everything there seemed misplaced or out of place as an ex's box of things. The unused beside the irreplaceable, the easy- to-assemble uncomplicated now by disuse. Some hand of randomness leaving behind its lampshades stained like ancient maps, its ladders still climbing upwar... | Brent Pallas | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Activities,Indoor Activities,Relationships,Home Life |
6 |
Unusually Warm March Day, Leading to Storms
|
Everything is half here,
like the marble head
of the Roman emperor
and the lean torso
of his favorite.
The way the funnel cloud
which doesn't seem
to touch ground does—
flips a few cars, a semi—
we learn to walk miles
above our bodies.
The pig farms dissolve,
then the small hills.
As in dreams fraught
... | Francesca Abbate | Nature,Weather |
7 |
Thought
|
To George Herbert
Aspiration's breath, millennial trance,
two-pointed ladder propped in a void;
busy buzzard claws, verbs on a leash,
slow blush of brain damage on a plate.
Stunned journey of dust. A holey sock.
Grind of an afternoon's axles, abandoned
juggernaut in a field; inhabited inter... | Thomas Pfau | Arts & Sciences,Philosophy,Poetry & Poets |
8 |
Bel Canto
|
The sun is high, the seaside air is sharp,
And salty light reveals the Mayan School.
The Irish hope their names are on the harp,
We see the sheep's advertisement for wool,
Boulders are here, to throw against a tarp,
From which comes bursting forth a puzzled mule.
Perceval seizes it and mounts it, then
The blo... | Kenneth Koch | Living,Growing Old,Relationships,Home Life,Religion,God & the Divine,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets,Reading & Books,Social Commentaries,History & Politics |
9 |
Candles
|
If on your grandmother's birthday you burn a candle To honor her memory, you might think of burning an extra To honor the memory of someone who never met her, A man who may have come to the town she lived in Looking for work and never found it. Picture him taking a stroll one morning, After a month of gr... | Carl Dennis | Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Men & Women |
10 |
Arrowhead Hunting
|
The land is full of what was lost. What's hidden
Rises to the surface after rain
In new-ploughed fields, and fields stubbled again:
The clay shards, foot and lip, that heaped the midden,
And here and there a blade or flakes of blade,
A patient art, knapped from a core of flint,
Most broken, few as coins new fr... | A. E. Stallings | Living,Time & Brevity,Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals |
11 |
Nomadology
|
In the beginning, a word, move;
then a plan and then the reasons,
which I do not remember exactly.
I remember clearly only the clothes
we were given for the journey
and the last, silent meal we ate.
We left the place as lightly as we
had come, so many years before.
From a sunlit state of innocence
where whi... | Alissa Leigh | Living,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Home Life,Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Philosophy |
12 |
Casanova's Bossa Nova
|
The dance shoes, seduction
and coercion, owned by male feet,
roam floors that beg for chandeliers.
In search of flat-footed beauty
and a bed, where ever they might be,
the handsome conversation attracts
female followers trading on the smiles
of curves. The next steps are dizzying
and leave dresses dipped and... | Rich Murphy | Relationships,Men & Women,Arts & Sciences,Theater & Dance |
13 |
Dear Mr. Merrill
|
I hope you'll pardon the informality of this letter, postmarked Olympia (Greece, not Washington), its task not simple: crossing lines you've crossed, time, mortality, to find you, who spent a lifetime crossing lines out, twisting, polishing them to shine cool and lustrous as the statue I fell in love w... | Moira Egan | Arts & Sciences,Painting & Sculpture,Poetry & Poets,Mythology & Folklore,Heroes & Patriotism |
14 |
Memorial Service
|
Forgiving the living is hard
enough, shrugging away all the wounds
delivered with kisses and curses,
the thousand and one petty slights
that bled me to an albino shade,
that shadow me even in dreams.
But the dead are altogether
another matter, not easily to be
enlightened and quite beyond regretting
anythin... | George Garrett | Living,Death,Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire |
15 |
Body and Soul
|
They grow up together
but they aren't even fraternal
twins, they quarrel a lot
about where to go and what
to do, the body complains
about having to carry
the soul everywhere as if
it were some helpless cripple,
and the soul snipes that it can go
places the body never dreamed of,
then they quarrel over whic... | Sharon Bryan | Living,The Body,Nature |
16 |
Subject to Change
|
A reflection on my students
They are so beautiful, and so very young
they seem almost to glitter with perfection,
these creatures that I briefly move among.
I never get to stay with them for long,
but even so, I view them with affection:
they are so beautiful, and so very young.
Poised or c... | Marilyn L. Taylor | Living,Coming of Age,Midlife,Activities,School & Learning,Philosophy |
17 |
Song of the Sea to the Shore
|
Unraveling velvet, wave after wave, driven by wind, unwinding by storm, by gravity thrown— however, heaving to reach you, to find you, I've striven undulant, erosive, blown— or lying flat as glass for your falling clear down: I can't swallow you. So why have I felt I've reached you—as two reflected stars, sur... | Robert Fanning | Love,Desire,Romantic Love,Relationships,Nature,Seas, Rivers, & Streams |
18 |
In Rubble
|
Right after the bomb, even before the ceiling And walls and floor are rearranging You and themselves into a different world, You must hold still, must wait for them To settle down in unpredictable ways, To bring their wars, shuddering, To an end, and only then should you begin Numbly to feel wha... | David Wagoner | null |
19 |
Thinking about the Enemy
|
In the beginning we could hear their swords cutting jewels
From the protected orchard while our children heard fine teeth
Dragging along empty granary floors. Between us and them
Stands the great wound, swallowing all tears, all voices.
Transfixed or transformed by this pain? We never know because
Who can slip ... | J. P. White | Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Social Commentaries,War & Conflict |
20 |
Update on the Last Judgment
|
There will be no deafening noise. No hornblow of thunder.
The small plants of the earth will not tremble on the hillside as grace is prepared.
The sky will neither drown us in its plenty, nor the ground crack and consume feet in its hunger.
No, bodies will not, in their last rags of flesh, creep from under the ea... | Ellen Hinsey | Living,Death,Time & Brevity,Religion,Christianity,Faith & Doubt |
21 |
Writing in the Afterlife
|
I imagined the atmosphere would be clear,
shot with pristine light,
not this sulphurous haze,
the air ionized as before a thunderstorm.
Many have pictured a river here,
but no one mentioned all the boats,
their benches crowded with naked passengers,
each bent over a writing tablet.
I knew I would not always ... | Billy Collins | Living,Death,Activities,School & Learning,Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Poetry & Poets |
22 |
I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land
|
Life's spell is so exquisite, everything conspires to break it. Emily Dickinson
It wasn't bliss. What was bliss but the ordinary life? She'd spend hours in patter, moving through whole days touching, sniffing, tasting . . . exquisite housekeeping in a charmed world. And yet there was alway... | Rita Dove | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Religion,Faith & Doubt,Mythology & Folklore,Heroes & Patriotism |
0 |
A Momentary Longing to Hear Sad Advice from One Long Dead
|
Who was my teacher at Harvard. Did not wear overcoat
Saying to me as we walked across the Yard
Cold brittle autumn is you should be wearing overcoat. I said
You are not wearing overcoat. He said,
You should do as I say not do as I do.
Just how American it was and how late Forties it was
Delmore, but not I, was... | Kenneth Koch | Living,Sorrow & Grieving,Arts & Sciences,Philosophy,Poetry & Poets |
1 |
To the Blank Spaces
|
For longer than by now I can believe
I assumed that you had nothing to do
with each other I thought you had arrived
whenever that had been
more solitary than single snowflakes
with no acquaintance or understanding
running among you guiding your footsteps
somewhere ahead of me
in you... | W. S. Merwin | Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets,Reading & Books |
2 |
White-Eyes
|
In winter all the singing is in the tops of the trees where the wind-bird with its white eyes shoves and pushes among the branches. Like any of us he wants to go to sleep, but he's restless— he has an idea, and slowly it unfolds from under... | Mary Oliver | Nature,Animals,Winter |
3 |
Paschal
|
Easter was the old North Goddess of the dawn. She rises daily in the East And yearly in spring for the great Paschal candle of the sun. Her name lingers like a spot Of gravy in the figured vestment Of the language of the Britains. Her totem the randy bunny. Our very Thursdays and Wednesdays Are s... | Robert Pinsky | Religion,Other Religions,The Spiritual,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,Mythology & Folklore,Easter |
4 |
Body
|
Map of terror and pleasure,
ardent junk, passionate congress
filled with the arguments of chemicals,
Echo chamber for the fanatical cries
of stubborn generations, all the quaint invisibles
death has grown a beard on,
labyrinth of desire, playing field of impulse,
factory where decay's silent armies clo... | Alissa Valles | The Body,Nature |
5 |
Crossing the Days
|
My son's been learning time: big hand
and little, powers of sixty
and of twenty-four, the slow semaphore
of days. He's brought home paper plates
from kindergarten, arrows pointing
at his favorite hours. So far
the face of every clock has smiled.
And before we read to sleep each night
he crosses off another s... | James Scruton | Living,Parenthood,Time & Brevity,Activities,School & Learning,Philosophy |
6 |
The Lake
|
Day and night, the lake dreams of sky.
A privacy as old as the mountains
And her up there, stuck among peaks. The whole eye
Fastened on hawk, gatherings of cloud or stars,
So little trespass. An airplane once
Crossed her brow; she searched but could not find
A face. Having lived with such strict beauty
... | Sophie Cabot Black | Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Seas, Rivers, & Streams |
7 |
0
|
Philosophic
in its complex, ovoid emptiness,
a skillful pundit coined it as a sort
of stopgap doorstop for those
quaint equations Romans never
dreamt of. In form completely clever
and discrete—a mirror come unsilvered, loose watch face without the works, ... | Hailey Leithauser | Arts & Sciences,Philosophy |
8 |
My Brother the Artist, at Seven
|
As a boy he played alone in the fields
behind our block, six frame houses
holding six immigrant families,
the parents speaking only gibberish
to their neighbors. Without the kids
they couldn't say "Good morning" and be
understood. Little wonder
he learned early to speak to himself,... | Philip Levine | Living,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Home Life,Nature,Summer,Philosophy |
9 |
Dio Ed Io
|
There is a heaviness between us, Nameless, raised from the void, that counts out the sprung hours. What ash has it come to purify? What disappearance, like water, does it lift up to the clouds? God of my fathers, but not of mine, You are a part, it is said, an afterthought, a scattered one. There is a di... | Charles Wright | Living,Coming of Age,Relationships,Religion,Faith & Doubt,God & the Divine,The Spiritual,Arts & Sciences,Photography & Film |
10 |
Dismantling the House
|
Rent a flatbed with a winch.
With the right leverage
anything can be hoisted, driven off.
Or the man with a Bobcat comes in,
then the hauler with his enormous truck.
A leveler or a lawyer does the rest;
experts always are willing to help.
The structure was old, rotten in spots.
Hadn't it already begu... | Stephen Dunn | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Separation & Divorce,Time & Brevity |
11 |
Kindness
|
For Carol Rigolot
When deeds splay before us
precious as gold & unused chances
stripped from the whine-bone,
we know the moment kindheartedness
walks in. Each praise be
echoes us back as the years uncount
themselves, eating salt. Though blood
first shaped us on the cli... | Yusef Komunyakaa | Relationships,Arts & Sciences,Philosophy |
12 |
Song
|
I make the drive, walk the corporate walk,
To do what I must and give what I got.
I turn the chrome knob and I fill my slot.
I talk and I joke, a regular guy
I input and output and rarely ask why.
It's pasta and wine at home in my flat.
It's voice mail and e-mail, then feed the stray cat.
Sometimes I go out a... | Mark Defoe | Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Social Commentaries,Money & Economics |
13 |
What I Know about Epistemology
|
As the light goes, go.
Be the rustling in the grass, the fall from
convention's good graces: learn, or someone
will have you filing files or writing writs,
demonstrating cutlery or selling knowledge
door to door; someone might even drop
your lovely life into a factory and have you
derusting rings on the coola... | John Surowiecki | Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Philosophy,Graduation |
14 |
Worms
|
Aren't you glad at least that the earthworms Under the grass are ignorant, as they eat the earth, Of the good they confer on us, that their silence Isn't a silent reproof for our bad manners, Our never casting earthward a crumb of thanks For their keeping the soil from packing so tight That no root, however de... | Carl Dennis | Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Nature,Animals,Gratitude & Apologies |
15 |
A Dog's Life
|
A stay of execution: one last day, your day, old Everydog, then, as they say, or as we say (a new trick to avoid finalities implicit in destroyed), you have to be put down, or put to sleep— the very dog who, once, would fight to keep from putting down, despite our shouts, a shoe until he gnawed it to the sole, and w... | Daniel Groves | Living,Death,Relationships,Pets |
16 |
Trust
|
Trust that there is a tiger, muscular
Tasmanian, and sly, which has never been
seen and never will be seen by any human
eye. Trust that thirty thousand sword-
fish will never near a ship, that far
from cameras or cars elephant herds live
long elephant lives. Believe that bees
by the billions find unidentified... | Susan Kinsolving | Nature,Animals |
17 |
The Crow
|
Was it because
at last
I cleaned the window
that he threw himself
against the glass?
I thought, poor crow—
he doesn't know
the evergreens
and blue sky
are behind him.
I turned back
to my page
but whumpp—
the bird attacked
the glass again.
His long claws
scuffled at the pane
and I yelled "Crow!
Go away!"
Again his bo... | Kunst Judith McCune | Nature,Animals |
18 |
Cozy Apologia
|
For Fred
I could pick anything and think of you— This lamp, the wind-still rain, the glossy blue My pen exudes, drying matte, upon the page. I could choose any hero, any cause or age And, sure as shooting arrows to the heart, Astride a dappled mare, legs braced as far apart As standing in s... | Rita Dove | Living,Coming of Age,Love,Infatuation & Crushes,Realistic & Complicated,Relationships,Social Commentaries,Money & Economics,Popular Culture |
19 |
An Equation for My Children
|
It may be esoteric and perverse
That I consult Pythagoras to hear
A music tuning in the universe.
My interest in his math of star and sphere
Has triggered theorems too far-fetched to solve.
They don't add up. But if I rack and toil
More in ether than a mortal coil,
It is to comprehend how you re... | Wilmer Mills | Arts & Sciences,Sciences |
20 |
Mapping the Genome
|
Geneticist as driver, down the gene
codes in, let's say, a topless coupe
and you keep expecting bends,
real tyre-testers on tight
mountain passes, but instead it's dead
straight, highway as runway,
helix unravelled as vista,
as vanishing point. Keep your foot
down. This is a finite desert.
You move... | Michael Symmons Roberts | Activities,Travels & Journeys,Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Arts & Sciences,Sciences,Farewells & Good Luck |
0 |
A Book on a Shelf
|
A history of some sort, one that made us,
a war and what the war had meant, or since
meaning eludes war, what it did to the look
of the trees and the sides of the buildings,
most of which survived, only to be torn down
later to widen the street or put up a new
office complex. There it was on the shelf.
I was ... | Roger Mitchell | Arts & Sciences,Reading & Books |
1 |
Just Another Paradigm Shift
|
Just a shadow. Hardly that. But audible. Coming out of the woods, whispering Happily Ever After. Even in that light— stars with the skeletons of animals and old friends— visible to the eye behind the one always left open on the east side of the house, downhill. Where ... | Paul Grant | null |
2 |
Breakage
|
I go down to the edge of the sea. How everything shines in the morning light! The cusp of the whelk, the broken cupboard of the clam, the opened, blue mussels, moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred— and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split, dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the mois... | Mary Oliver | Nature,Animals,Seas, Rivers, & Streams |
3 |
Why Are Your Poems so Dark?
|
Isn't the moon dark too, most of the time? And doesn't the white page seem unfinished without the dark stain of alphabets? When God demanded light, he didn't banish darkness. Instead he invented ebony and crows and that small mole on your left cheekbone. Or did you mean to ask "Why are you sad so often?... | Linda Pastan | Living,Sorrow & Grieving,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets |
4 |
My God
|
Protestants pray for grace, Scientists look to space. Jews find truth in the Torah, New Agers, in each other's aura. Catholics are blessed by a Pope, Yaquis enlightened by dope. Maoris use ritual chants, Navahos get up and dance. Muslims bow daily to Allah, Norsemen aspire to Valhalla. Feminists swear by a She, Quak... | Susan Rolston | Religion,Arts & Sciences,Humor & Satire,Philosophy,Sciences,Social Commentaries,War & Conflict |
5 |
Love Recidivus
|
Whatever it may be, we may suppose
it is not love, for love must leave its trace
like contraband seized and displayed in rows;
is not sufficient reason to erase
the careful lives we have so far lived through—
there is no call for us to undermine
the walls we've built; no need to think anew
of all the chains a... | Lisa Barnett | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Love,Desire,Realistic & Complicated,Relationships |
6 |
To the Light of September
|
When you are already here you appear to be only a name that tells of you whether you are present or not and for now it seems as though you are still summer still the high familiar endless summer yet with a glint of bronze in the chill mornings and the late yellow petals of the mullein fluttering on the stalks that l... | W. S. Merwin | Nature,Fall,Landscapes & Pastorals,Summer |
7 |
Nightwatchman's Song
|
After Heinrich I. F. Biber
I What’s unseen may not exist— Or so those secret powers insist That prowl past nightfall, Enabled by the brain’s blacklist To fester out of sight, So we streak from bad to worse, Through an expanding universe And see no... | W. D. Snodgrass | Activities,Jobs & Working,Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Arts & Sciences,Philosophy,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,Money & Economics |
8 |
BETTER DAYS
|
Never anymore in a wash of sweetness and awe does the summer when I was seventeen come back to mind against my will, like a bird crossing my vision. Summer of moist nights full of girls and boys ripened, holy drunkenness and violation of the comic boundaries, defiances that never failed or brought disaster. Da... | A. F. Moritz | Living,Coming of Age,Growing Old,Nature,Summer,Arts & Sciences,Painting & Sculpture |
9 |
LITTLE BLESSING FOR MY FLOATER
|
After George Herbert
This tiny ruin in my eye, small
flaw in the fabric, little speck
of blood in the egg, deep chip
in the windshield, north star,
polestar, floater that doesn't
float, spot where my hand is not,
even when I'm looking at my hand,
little piton that nails every rock
... | Jeanne Murray Walker | Religion,Faith & Doubt,God & the Divine |
10 |
A CAVE OF ANGELFISH HUDDLE AGAINST THE MOON
|
Put an ear to the light at fall
of dark and you will hear
nothing. This pale luminescence
that drifts in upon them
makes a blue bole of their caves,
a scare of their scything
tails. They tell
in the bubbling dark of images
that come in upon them
when light spreads like an oil slick
and sea fans
... | Ron De Maris | Nature,Animals,Seas, Rivers, & Streams,Stars, Planets, Heavens |
11 |
The Sun
|
There is one mind in all of us, one soul,
who parches the soil in some nations
but in others hides perpetually behind a veil;
he spills light everywhere, here he spilled
some on my tie, but it dried before dinner ended.
He is in charge of darkness also, also
in charge of crime, in charge of the ima... | Dan Chiasson | Nature,Stars, Planets, Heavens,Religion,Arts & Sciences,Philosophy |
12 |
To Judgment: An Assay
|
You change a life
as eating an artichoke changes the taste
of whatever is eaten after.
Yet you are not an artichoke, not a piano or cat—
not objectively present at all—
and what of you a cat possesses is essential but narrow:
to know if the distance between two things can be leapt.
The piano, that good... | Jane Hirshfield | Arts & Sciences,Philosophy |
13 |
N
|
has crawled out of the ocean to carry us from sleep, like sleep, the gray of outer Sunset portending the gray of inner Sunset. And so on. On the N, one should invent intricate fictions for the lives of the passengers: time is a game. Soon we will be underground. But first, the long lush green of Duboce Park... | Randall Mann | Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Social Commentaries,Cities & Urban Life |
14 |
Confession
|
Down in the blue-green water at nightfall some selving shapes float fluorescing, trance-dancing, trembling to the rhythm of theodoxical marching- music that they hear over the mere noise of the breaking tide. Above, stars in certain places; along the shore roads, cars carr... | Reginald Gibbons | Activities,Eating & Drinking,Social Commentaries,Money & Economics,Heroes & Patriotism |
15 |
Disgraceland
|
Before my first communion, I clung to doubt
as Satan spider-like stalked
the orb of dark surrounding Eden
for a wormhole into paradise.
God had formed me from gel in my mother’s womb,
injected by my dad’s smart shoot.
They swapped sighs until
I came, smaller than a ... | Mary Karr | Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Religion,Christianity |
16 |
Cabezón
|
I see you shuffle up Washington Street
whenever I am driving much too fast:
you, chub & bug-eyed, jaw like a loaf
hands in your pockets, a smoke dangling slack
from the slit of your pumpkin mouth,
humped over like the eel-man or geek,
the dummy paid to sweep out gutters,
drown the cats. Where are you g... | Amy Beeder | Relationships,Friends & Enemies |
17 |
Lions Are Interesting
|
Each morning in the little white cabin
by the river they woke to a raccoon
clawing under the floorboards or banging
in the wood stove. They did not discuss this.
Instead they said it was a perfect day
to pick blueberries on the hill, or that
a hike to the old glassworks sounded good.
They were beginnin... | Joel Brouwer | The Body,Relationships,Home Life,Nature,Animals,Landscapes & Pastorals |
18 |
Map
|
Daddy goes. Trolling and trawling and crawfishing and crabbing and bass-boating and trestle-jumping bare into rust-brackish water and cane-poling for bream and shallow-gigging too with a nail-pointy broomstick and creek-shrimping and cooler-dragging and coon-chasing and dove-dogging and duck-bagging and squ... | Atsuro Riley | Living,Parenthood,Love,Activities,Sports & Outdoor Activities,Relationships,Nature,Seas, Rivers, & Streams,Social Commentaries,Class,Popular Culture |
0 |
Bedtime Story
|
The generator hums like a distant ding an sich.
It's early evening, and time, like the dog it is,
is hungry for food,
And will be fed, don't doubt it, will be fed, my small one.
The forest begins to gather its silenc... | Charles Wright | Living,Midlife,Relationships,Home Life |
1 |
Then Too There Is This
|
joy in the day's being done, however
clumsily, and in the ticked-off lists,
the packages nestling together,
no one home waiting for dinner, for
you, no one impatient for your touch
or kind words to salve what nightly
rises like heartburn, the ghost-lump feeling
that one is really a... | J. Allyn Rosser | Relationships,Home Life |
2 |
Country Love Song
|
I try to think of the cup of a hand,
of legs in a tangle, and not the thistle
though even it, purpled, spiking away,
wants to be admired, wants to say, whistle
a little for me. O every little thing wants
to be loved, wants to be marked by the cry
that brings desire to it, even blue-eyed fly
to the bloat... | Melanie Almeder | The Body,Love,Desire,Realistic & Complicated,Romantic Love,Relationships,Nature |
3 |
Another Lullaby for Insomniacs
|
Sleep, she will not linger:
She turns her moon-cold shoulder.
With no ring on her finger,
You cannot hope to hold her.
She turns her moon-cold shoulder
And tosses off the cover.
You cannot hope to hold her:
She has another lover.
She tosses off the cover
And lays the darkness bare.
She has another lover.
Her heart i... | A. E. Stallings | Living,Marriage & Companionship,Love,Break-ups & Vexed Love,Realistic & Complicated,Relationships |
4 |
Obbligato
|
Late August was a pressure drop,
rain, a sob in the body,
a handful of air
with a dream in it,
summer was desperate
to paradise itself with blackberry
drupelets and swarms, everything
polychromed, glazed, sprinkler caps
gushing, the stars like sweat
on a boxer's skin. A voice
from the day say... | Bruce Smith | Nature,Summer,Arts & Sciences,Music |
5 |
Tutelary
|
What a fuckup you are.
What dumbshit you do.
Your father's voice
still whispers in you,
despite the joys
that sweeten each day.
Your Genius it isn't
until, dying away,
it worms back through
the sparkling dream
where you drown him
in an inch-deep stre... | Michael Ryan | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Relationships,Family & Ancestors |
6 |
Here
|
Ghost I house In this old flat— Your outpost— My aftermath
| Samuel Menashe | null |
7 |
Indiscriminate Kisses
|
Foreplay of obscene graffiti carved into trees—foot-long boners gouge the bark. Beaks and snouts on a restroom mirror. Slick lips. Succulent lips. I go out among them sometimes. So sweet how they pucker up out of pity. A practiced pathos in a saloon of woodsmen whose axes wait in trucks out back. Lips full o... | Nance Van Winckel | null |
8 |
Staying Power
|
In appreciation of Maxim Gorky at the International Convention of Atheists, 1929
Like Gorky, I sometimes follow my doubts
outside to the yard and question the sky,
longing to have the fight settled, thinking
I can't go on like this, and finally I say
all right, it is improbable, all right... | Jeanne Murray Walker | Religion,Faith & Doubt,God & the Divine |
9 |
Kind of Blue
|
Not Delft or
delphinium, not Wedgewood
among the knickknacks, not wide-eyed chicory
evangelizing in the devil strip—
But way on down in the moonless
octave below midnight, honey,
way down where you can't tell cerulean from teal.
Not Mason jars of moonshine, not... | Lynn Powell | Arts & Sciences,Music,Social Commentaries,Popular Culture |
10 |
Between Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night
|
Just then, encountering my ruddy face in the grand piano's cold black craquelure, it conjured the jack-o'-lantern moon dipping up over the roofs of the Tenderloin. Only when I have done with the myths— the inner spill that triggers us to flame, breasts so sensitive a moment's touch ... | Roddy Lumsden | The Body,Love,Desire,Relationships,Nature |
11 |
The Dipper
|
It was winter, near freezing,
I'd walked through a forest of firs
when I saw issue out of the waterfall
a solitary bird.
It lit on a damp rock,
and, as water swept stupidly on,
wrung from its own throat
supple, undammable song.
It isn't mine to give.
I can't coax this bird to my hand
that knows t... | Kathleen Jamie | Nature,Animals,Landscapes & Pastorals,Winter |
12 |
The Dead
|
Our business is with fruit and leaf and bloom; though they speak with more than just the season's tongue— the colours that they blaze from the dark loam all have something of the jealous tang of the dead about them. What do we know of their part in this, those secret brothers of the harrow, inv... | Don Paterson | Living,Death,Nature,Trees & Flowers,Social Commentaries,Class |
13 |
Magnificat
|
When he had suckled there, he began
to grow: first, he was an infant in her arms,
but soon, drinking and drinking at the sweet
milk she could not keep from filling her,
from pouring into his ravenous mouth,
and filling again, miraculous pitcher, mercy
feeding its own extinction . . . so... | Eleanor Wilner | Religion,Christianity,Faith & Doubt,Social Commentaries |
14 |
Lady Macbeth's Confession
|
Never mind thick night! Darkness move quick! Madness engulf me like Jacob's coat; colors tighten like sickness 'round me throat. Wha it is do already can't tek back but it still got me a wash me hand til they sour and callus, de visions plaguing de dark a me mind like locust. Me conscience no business dem day... | Neisha Tweed | null |
15 |
Suburban Pastoral
|
Twilight folds over houses on our street;
its hazy gold is gilding our front lawns,
delineating asphalt and concrete
driveways with shadows. Evening is coming on,
quietly, like a second drink, the beers
men hold while rising from their plastic chairs
to stand above their sprinklers, and approve.
Soon t... | Dave Lucas | Living,Coming of Age,Midlife,Relationships,Home Life,Social Commentaries,Cities & Urban Life,Gender & Sexuality |
16 |
Tricyclist and a Turtle
|
Minnesota
snapping turtles
clutched by little cities
are wet busts of moonstone
wreathed in scum,
the gray self sugared,
half a lot
of granite
phlegm stopped
upon a chaise longue,
that incoming
pod of him
dunked,
thorny hooves aswim.
Lichen licked him,
then he quivered
in the stem,
and didactic stoi... | Molly McQuade | Nature,Animals,Social Commentaries |
17 |
The Perfect Life
|
I have a perfect life. It isn't much, But it's enough for me. It keeps me alive And happy in a vague way: no disappointments On the near horizon, no pangs of doubt; Looking forward in anticipation, looking back In satisfaction at the conclusion of each day. I heed the promptings of my inner voice, ... | John Koethe | Living,Disappointment & Failure,Growing Old,Midlife |
18 |
Little God Origami
|
The number of corners in the soul can't
compare with the universe's dimensions folded
neatly into swans. In the soul's
space, one word on a thousand pieces
of paper the size of cookie fortunes falls
from the heavens. At last, the oracular
answer, you cry, pawing at the scraps that twirl
like seed-pod h... | Stefi Weisburd | Living,Death,Religion,Faith & Doubt,Arts & Sciences,Philosophy |
19 |
Toth Farry
|
In the back of the charm-box, in a sack, the baby canines and incisors are mostly chaff, by now, split kernels and acicular down, no whole utensils left: half an adz; half a shovel, in its broken handle a marrow well of the will to dig and bite. And the enamel hems are sharp as shell-tools, and the colors g... | Sharon Olds | Living,Infancy,Parenthood,Time & Brevity,Relationships,Home Life,Philosophy |
20 |
Undone Song at Neap Tide
|
When the sun and moon were in quadrature, when
the garden had become a wilderness and the clock refused to strike
When the old year died and the sand walked into
the sea with the neap tide
When you had been too long away and your old snowblue footprints
clotted and hesitated in the clay
When the worry of this ... | Kathryn Starbuck | Love,Heartache & Loss,Relationships,Nature,Seas, Rivers, & Streams,Stars, Planets, Heavens |
21 |
You That I Loved
|
You that I loved all my life long, you are not the one. You that I followed, my line or path or way, that I followed singing, and you earth and air of the world the way went through, and you who stood around it so it could be the way, you forests and cities, you deer and opossums struck by the lonely hunter and left... | A. F. Moritz | Living,Death,Time & Brevity,Love,Realistic & Complicated,Relationships,Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals |
22 |
Alone, Drinking with the Tickfaw River
|
Featherweight lawn chair, cooler for a footrest,
and me a squatter on the landlord's dock
where baitstealers teased a thousand times a day
until rowdy boats and summer scared them deep.
Day and night I snoozed on the porch
beneath a filthy orbit of fanblades
to the opera of my neighbors fighting
and reconciling in t... | Alison Pelegrin | Activities,Sports & Outdoor Activities,Nature,Seas, Rivers, & Streams |
23 |
Bernal Hill
|
Something has to give. We stand above it all. Below, the buildings' tall but tiny narrative. The water's always near, you say. And so are you, for now. It has to do. There's little left to fear. A wind so cold, one might forget that winter's gone. The city lights are on for us, to us, tonight.
| Randall Mann | Relationships,Gay, Lesbian, Queer,Social Commentaries,Cities & Urban Life |
24 |
You People
|
People, don't ask me again where my shoes are.
The valley I walked through was frozen to me
as I was to it. My heavy hide, my zinc
talisman—I'm fine, people. Don't stare
at my feet. And don't flash the sign of the cross
in my face. I carry the Blue Cross Card—
card among cards, card of my number
and gold seal. So sh... | Nance Van Winckel | Religion,Faith & Doubt,Social Commentaries |
25 |
Hour
|
Sleepless
in the cold dark,
I look
through the closed dim
door be-
fore me, which be-
comes an
abyss into
which my
memories have
fallen
past laughter or
horror,
passion or hard
work—my
memories of
our past
laughter, horror,
passion,
hard work. An ache
of be-
ing. An ache of
... | Reginald Gibbons | Living,Time & Brevity,Love,Break-ups & Vexed Love,Realistic & Complicated,Relationships |
26 |
Luciferin
|
"They won't attack us here in the Indian graveyard." I love that moment. And I love the moment when I climb into your warm you-smelling bed-dent after you've risen. And sunflowers, once a whole field and I almost crashed, the next year all pumpkins! Crop rotation, I love you. Dividing words between syl- lables! Dach... | Dean Young | Love,Realistic & Complicated,Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Nature,Animals,Seas, Rivers, & Streams,Social Commentaries |
27 |
The House Gift
|
Egg-white house, old
ache in the rafters,
small as a button but
yearning for zero:
a sparrow parts the chimney
and veers for my face.
I wanted my nevers
again, my immaculate
touch-down to the durable
granite of love too
heavy to move: this
gift, implacable
bird's-eye sorrow
reared from the ... | Joanie Mackowski | Relationships,Home Life,Nature,Animals |
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