Goodbye...

The Summer Ends

by Wendell Berry

The summer ends, and it is time
To face another way. Our theme
Reversed, we harvest the last row
To store against the cold, undo
The garden that will be undone.
We grieve under the weakened sun
To see all earth's green fountains dried,
And fallen all the works of light.
You do not speak, and I regret
This downfall of the good we sought
As though the fault were mine. I bring
The plow to turn the shattering
Leaves and bent stems into the dark,
From which they may return. At work,
I see you leaving our bright land,
The last cut flowers in your hand.

All things spare and strange

Pied Beauty

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things—
    For skies of cople-colour as a brindled cow;
        For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
    Landsape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
        And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
    Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
        With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

The Dreamer

by Djuna Barnes

 

 

The night comes down, in ever-darkening shapes that seem-- 

To grope, with eerie fingers for the window--then-- 

To rest to sleep, enfolding me, as in a dream 

Faith--might I awaken! 

And drips the rain with seeming sad, insistent beat. 

Shivering across the pane, drooping tear-wise, 

And softly patters by, like little fearing feet. 

Faith--this weather! 

The feathery ash is fluttered; there upon the pane,-- 

The dying fire casts a flickering ghostly beam,-- 

Then closes in the night and gently falling rain. 

Faith--what darkness!

Belief

In This Season of Waiting

by Linda Pastan

Under certain conditions,
when the moon in the western sky
seems frozen there, for instance

even as the sun is rising in the east,
so that soon two sides of the coin
will be facing each other;

or when the snow
which is a stranger here
fills our trees with its cold flowers;

when the single
bluejay at the feeder
is so still

it could be enameled there,
then the earth becomes an emblem
for whatever we believe.

singing sad and beautiful

Mountain Pines

by Robinson Jeffers

 

In scornful upright loneliness they stand, 

Counting themselves no kin of anything 

Whether of earth or sky. Their gnarled roots cling 

Like wasted fingers of a clutching hand 

In the grim rock. A silent spectral band 

They watch the old sky, but hold no communing 

With aught. Only, when some lone eagle's wing 

Flaps past above their grey and desolate land, 

Or when the wind pants up a rough-hewn glen, 

Bending them down as with an age of thought, 

Or when, 'mid flying clouds that can not dull 

Her constant light, the moon shines silver, then 

They find a soul, and their dim moan is wrought 

Into a singing sad and beautiful.

Secret Sleigh Ride

It had been long dark, though still an hour before supper-time

by Charles Reznikoff

 

 

It had been long dark, though still an hour before supper-time.
The boy stood at the window behind the curtain.
The street under the black sky was bluish white with snow.
Across the street, where the lot sloped to the pavement,
boys and girls were going down on sleds.
The boys were after him because he was a Jew.

At last his father and mother slept. He got up and dressed.
In the hall he took out his sled and went out on tiptoe.
No one was in the street. The slide was worn smooth and 

slippery--just right.

He laid himself down on his sled and shot away. He went down 

only twice.

He stood knee-deep in snow:
no one was in the street, the windows were darkened;
those near the street-lamps were ashine, but the rooms inside 

were dark;

on the street were long shadows of clods of snow.
He took his sled and went back into the house.

Austerity

Austerity

by Janet Loxley Lewis

 

 

From "Cold Hills" 

  

 

I have lived so long

On the cold hills alone ...

I loved the rock

And the lean pine trees,

Hated the life in the turfy meadow, 

Hated the heavy, sensuous bees.

I have lived so long

Under the high monotony of starry skies,

I am so cased about

With the clean wind and the cold nights, 

People will not let me in

To their warm gardens

Full of bees. 

Emily D's Lover

At Emily's In Amherst

by David Ray

On this day of our visit they are spraying the attic
for spiders, hoping to kill a black widow or two,
and I know she would not like that.

Outside, standing between cypresses, I imagine her
as a girl, playing in cool shadows, little Emily
struck through the heart with an icicle of loneliness.

Upstairs, her tiny bed, the white dress with pearl buttons,
and the bureau where she left the poems
folded, each with a stitch or two of blue thread.

I look across the field to where they carried her
on a door, as if to a bed with wrought iron railings.
There she lies silent while we fall to our knees, speak to her.

Sipping wine from the dandelions of her yard, I ask her
about the lover, if there was one. And I feel certain
I am that lover, all she could look forward to.

Yet I am not such a bad choice. I sit devoted for hours,
loving her well, sharing the wine, the growing darkness,
and I promise to come back, to think of her always.

Seduction in the heat of summer

Prague

by Khadijah Queen

 

 

Yes as thievery, except if saved for
a fantasy in which I in a backless
dress encounter

you on a typical balcony
overlooking Vltava, gripping the latticework,
metal, a barrier to leaping

into an esoteric night, fixed and ornate
enough, like my penchant for the infinite
within the singular, encounter you

as tributary, serpentine, the heat of your fingers
on my spine, my head turning
as you bend to catch the yes

I'd held latent, a mine you trigger with
your tongue, neither of us
mean to stop exploding.

Birding at the Dairy  

by Sidney Wade

 

 

We're searching
for the single

yellow-headed
blackbird

we've heard
commingles

with thousands
of starlings

and brown-headed
cowbirds,

when the many-
headed body

arises
and undulates,

a sudden congress
of wings

in a maneuvering
wave that veers

and wheels, a fleet
and schooling swarm

in synchronous alarm,
a bloom radiating

in ribbons, in sheets,
in waterfall,

a murmuration
of birds

that turns
liquid in air,

that whooshes
like waves

on the shore,
or the breath

of a great
seething prayer.

Each morning

Welcome Morning by Anne Sexton There is joy in all: in the hair I brush each morning, in the Cannon towel, newly washed, that I rub my body with each morning, in the chapel of eggs I cook each morning, in the outcry from the kettle that heats my coffee each morning, in the spoon and the chair that cry "hello there, Anne" each morning, in the godhead of the table that I set my silver, plate, cup upon each morning. All this is God, right here in my pea-green house each morning and I mean, though often forget, to give thanks, to faint down by the kitchen table in a prayer of rejoicing as the holy birds at the kitchen window peck into their marriage of seeds. So while I think of it, let me paint a thank-you on my palm for this God, this laughter of the morning, lest it go unspoken. The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard, dies young.

plum trees in the breakdown lane

Walking in the Breakdown Lane

by Louise Erdrich

Wind has stripped
the young plum trees
to a thin howl.
They are planted in squares
to keep the loose dirt from wandering.
Everything around me is crying to be gone.
The fields, the crops humming to be cut and done with.

Walking in the breakdown lane, margin of gravel,
between the cut swaths and the road to Fargo,
I want to stop, to lie down
in standing wheat or standing water.

Behind me thunder mounts as trucks of cattle
roar over, faces pressed to slats for air.
They go on, they go on without me.
They pound, pound and bawl,
until the road closes over them farther on.

there is nothing you won't do

fury
          for mama


by Lucille Clifton

remember this. 
she is standing by 
the furnace. 
the coals 
glisten like rubies. 
her hand is crying. 
her hand is clutching 
a sheaf of papers. 
poems. 
she gives them up. 
they burn 
jewels into jewels. 
her eyes are animals. 
each hank of her hair 
is a serpent's obedient 
wife. 
she will never recover. 
remember. there is nothing 
you will not bear 
for this woman's sake.

Thank You

Variation on a Theme

by W. S. Merwin

Thank you my life long afternoon
late in this spring that has no age
my window above the river
for the woman you led me to
when it was time at last the words
coming to me out of mid-air
that carried me through the clear day
and come even now to find me
for old friends and echoes of them
those mistakes only I could make
homesickness that guides the plovers
from somewhere they had loved before
they knew they loved it to somewhere
they had loved before they saw it
thank you good body hand and eye
and the places and moments known
only to me revisiting
once more complete just as they are
and the morning stars I have seen
and the dogs who are guiding me

glint of the sun off a spider web

Full Moon, Key West

by Elizabeth Bishop

The town is paper-white:
the moonlight is so bright.
Flake on flake
of wood and paint
the buildings faint.
The tin roofs break
into a sweat
of heavy dew
dripping steadily
down the gutters
click click.
Listen!
All over town
from black gaps
in bedroom gables
from little tables
behind the shutters
big alarm clocks
tick tick.
A spider's web
glints blue, glints red,
the mirrors glisten
and the knobs on the bed.

The island starts to hum
like music in a dream.
Paper-white, drunk,
the sailors come
stumbling, fighting,
mumbling threats
in children's voices,
stopping, lighting
cigarettes
with pink dull fires,
in groups like hands
and fingers on
the narrow sidewalks
of cement
that carry sounds
like tampered wires,
—the long strings of
an instrument
laid on the stream,
a zither laid
upon the flood
of the glittering Gulf.

Wishing

Wishes

by Ted Berrigan

Now I wish I were asleep, to see my dreams taking place
I wish I were more awake
I wish a sweet rush of tears to my eyes
Wish a nose like an eagle
I wish blue sky in the afternoon
Bigger windows, & a panorama—light, buildings & people in street air
Wish my teeth were white and sparkled
Wish my legs were not where they are—where they are
I wish the days warmly cool & clothes I like to be inside of
Wish I were walking around in Chelsea (NY) & it was 5:15 a.m., the
           sun coming up, alone, you asleep at home
I wish red rage came easier
I wish death, but not just now
I wish I were driving alone across America in a gold Cadillac
           toward California, & my best friend
I wish I were in love, & you here

Heavy Flight

A Sighting

by Connie Wanek

The gray owl had seen us and had fled
but not far. We followed noiselessly,
driving him from pine to pine:
I will not let thee go except thou bless me.

He flew as though it gave him no pleasure,
forcing himself from the bough,
falling until his wings caught him:
they had to stroke hard, like heavy oars.

He must have just eaten
something that had, itself, just eaten.
Finally he crossed the swamp and vanished
as into a new day, hours before us,

and we stood near the chest-high reeds,
our feet sinking, and felt
we'd been dropped suddenly from midair
back into our lives.

Unexpected rhythm

Hard Music

by Tom Chandler

The hammers of the builders
of the house across the street

sometimes fall by accident inside
the same beat, as if the rhythm

of our separate work can
melt without our knowing

into something far sleeker
than our laboring lives

and I wonder if the carpenters
are happy in themselves when

they realize how they improvise,
how the nails bite the wood

to such natural jazz, the house
rising tall in grace because of hard

music, lifting up its chimneyed head
and shoulders to the sky.

The Peace of Wild Things

With thanks to my friend Jenna for posting this on her blog today.

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

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.

Sonnet for Minimalists
by Mona Van Duyn

From a new peony,
my last anthem,
a squirrel in glee
broke the budded stem.
I thought, Where is joy
without fresh bloom,
that old hearts' ploy
to mask the tomb?

Then a volunteer
stalk sprung from sour
bird-drop this year
burst in frantic flower.

The world's perverse,
but it could be worse.