Waiting On Elvis, 1956

Waiting On Elvis, 1956
by Joyce Carol Oates

This place up in Charlotte called Chuck's where I
used to waitress and who came in one night
but Elvis and some of his friends before his concert
at the Arena, I was twenty-six married but still
waiting tables and we got to joking around like you
do, and he was fingering the lace edge of my slip
where it showed below my hemline and I hadn't even
seen it and I slapped at him a little saying, You
sure are the one aren't you feeling my face burn but
he was the kind of boy even meanness turned sweet in
his mouth.

Smiled at me and said, Yeah honey I guess I sure am.

April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Spring
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redress of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The Sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself
Is nothing
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs,
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

spring is making an appearance

Took some time yesterday to make the rounds at the Old Dingman Place to see what buds and blooms were showing up! Even the Star Magnolia is about to bloom.

blackbird singing

To One Dead
by Francis Ledwidge (1887-1917)

A blackbird singing
On a moss-upholstered stone,
Bluebells swinging,
Shadows wildly blown,
A ship on the sea.
The song was for you
And the ship was for me.

A blackbird singing
I hear in my troubled mind,
Bluebells swinging
I see in a distant wind.
But sorrow and silence
Are the wood’s threnody,
The silence for you
And the sorrow for me.

For what is moon, that it haunts us?

Half Moon, Small Cloud

by John Updike

Caught out in daylight, a rabbit’s

transparent pallor, the moon

is paired with a cloud of equal weight:

the heavenly congruence startles.

For what is the moon, that it haunts us,

this impudent companion immigrated

from the system’s less fortunate margins,

the realm of dust collected in orbs?

We grow up as children with it, a nursemaid

of a bonneted sort, round-faced and kind,

not burning too close like parents, or too far

to spare even a glance, like movie stars.

No star but in the zodiac of stars,

a stranger there, too big, it begs for love

(the man in it) and yet is diaphanous,

its thereness as mysterious as ours.