Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) When a friend calls to me from the roadAnd slows his horse to a meaning walk,I don’t stand still and look aroundOn all the hills I haven’t hoed,And shout from where I am, ‘What is it?’No, not as there is a time to talk.I thrust …
Rebecca Rainof – Spring
Rebecca Rainof We broke so many glasses that spring,fingers made slippery with grief.The cheap ones cracked into cosmic array,made cuts too small to see.My father apologizes as he spillshis wine again and waiters scurry.It’s no big deal, he says, then waveshis hands, as if to hide the tremorthat inhabits each of us.We are like infants,newly …
Mark Jarman – Interesting Times
Mark Jarman (1952 -) Everything’s happening on the cusp of tragedy, the tip of comedy, the pivot of event.You want a placid life, find another planet. This one is occupied with the story’s arc:About to happen, on the verge, horizontal. You want another planet, try the moon.Try any of the eight, try Planet X. It’s out there somewhere, …
Jeffrey McDaniel – Wooden Bench
Jeffrey McDaniel I was sitting on a wooden benchwhen six men wheeled her on a gurney right past me,except she was inside a wooden boxand the lid was closed. She was on her wayto becoming a skeleton. My fatheris definitely a skeleton at this point.Death is confusing. Is my father the bonesthat sit inside a …
Natalie Diaz – Lake-Loop
Natalie Diaz (September 4, 1978 -) because there was yet no lake into many nights we made the lake a labor, and its necessary laboringsto find the basin not yet openedin my body, yet my body — any bodywet or water from the start, to fill a clay, start being what it ever means, a beginning …
Marge Piercy – The Low Road
Marge Piercy (March 31, 1936 -) What can they doto you? Whatever they want.They can set you up, they canbust you, they can breakyour fingers, they canburn your brain with electricity,blur you with drugs till youcan't walk, can't remember, they cantake your child, wall upyour lover. They can do anythingyou can't stop themfrom doing. How …
Robert Frost – Meeting and Passing
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) As I went down the hill along the wallThere was a gate I had leaned at for the viewAnd had just turned from when I first saw youAs you came up the hill. We met. But allWe did that day was mingle great and smallFootprints …
Walt Whitman – When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns beforeme,When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divideand measure them,When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured withmuch applause in the lecture-room,How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,Till rising and gliding out I wander' d off …
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Lisel Mueller – Late Hours
Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) On summer nights the worldmoves within earshoton the interstate with its swishand growl, an occasional sirenthat sends chills through us.Sometimes, on clear, still nights,voices float into our bedroom,lunar and fragmented,as if the sky had let them golong before our birth. In winter we close the windowsand …
Joyce Sutphen – Tango for Ellie
Joyce Sutphen (August 10, 1949 -) The music begins—string bass and drums,then saxophoneand a piano.The steps go like this:slow, slow, quick-quick, slow.For now, your partneris the moon, andjust for this night your hairis black and full of stars.The melody is steady asrain, sweet as birdsong—aa little somethingyou will carry in your earwhen you leave usfor …
Jane Hirshfield – For What Binds Us
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) There are names for what binds us:strong forces, weak forces.Look around, you can see them:the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,nails rusting into the places they join,joints dovetailed on their own weight.The way things stay so solidlywherever they've been set down—and gravity, scientists say, is weak.And see how …
Margaret Atwood – Dearly
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (November 18, 1939 -) It’s an old word, fading now. Dearly did I wish. Dearly did I long for. I loved him dearly. I make my way along the sidewalk mindfully, because of my wrecked knees about which I give less of a shit than you may imagine since there are other …
Letitia Elizabeth Landon – Home
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (August 14, 1802 – October 15, 1838) Aye, here, dear love, is just a home, Like what our home should be;A home of peace—a home of love— As made for thee and me. A cottage with its roof of thatch, Its porch of the red rose,Its white walls hidden by the wreath …
WS Di Piero – Aubade
WS Di Piero Good morning to what’s left and what has gone.No more of my dense cries and heavy songsabout time’s hardships, my mood, gunfights in schools,our murderous American sunshine.I want a looser grip, a sweeter lightnessand grace and mercy around us, plainer talkwhile my neighborhood’s wild parrots squawkand flash their smart immigrant fineryand acute …
Mark Strand – Dreams
Mark Strand (April 11, 1934 – November 29, 2014) Trying to recall the plotAnd characters we dreamed, What life was likeBefore the morning came,We are seldom satisfied, And even thenThere is no way of knowingIf what we know is true. Something namelessHums us into sleep,Withdraws, and leaves us in A place …
Lisel Mueller – In Passing
Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) How swiftly the strained honeyof afternoon lightflows into darknessand the closed bud shrugs offits special mysteryin order to break into blossom:as if what exists, existsso that it can be lostand become precious.
Linda Pastan – The Gardener
Linda Pastan (May 27, 1932 -) He’s out rescuing his fallen holliesafter the renegade snowstorm,sawing their wounded limbs offquite mercilessly (I think of the scenein “Kings Row,” the young soldier wakingto find his legs gone).He’s tying up young bamboo—their delicate tresses litter the driveway—shovelling a door through the snowto free the imprisoned azaleas.I half expect …
Henri Cole – Daffodils
Henri Cole (1956 -) Sometimes I arrive with my buds closed,and I am mistaken for scallions,but if you cut a half inch from my stemsand put me in water, I open up and releaseyellow dust from my petal cups,like talcum sprinkled on her shouldersafter she bathes and swallows herthird tranquillizer to erase herself,the sedative piercing …
Kim Addonizio – Sestina: Writing
Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) I spent an entire day at my desk writingvapid effluvia like I’m so sick of writingpages of drivel, not feeling like a writerat all even though “A writer writesand doesn’t just talk about writing”was drilled into me by a writing instructor years ago. “Writingbegets writing”was another lesson I learned …
Walt Whitman – When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer
Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) When I heard the learn’d astronomer,When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,How soon unaccountable I …
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Adrienne Rich – What Kind Of Times Are These
Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929–March 27, 2012) There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphilland the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadowsnear a meeting-house abandoned by the persecutedwho disappeared into those shadows.I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooledthis isn’t a Russian poem, …
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Andrea Hollander – Premonition
Andrea Hollander (April 28, 1947 -) Dusk, and the trees barely visibleon either side of the two-lane,west through the Rockiesin our secondhand Ramblerthat growled through the landscapelike some hulking animal. Our first trip together,my husband’s attention more on methan on the darkening road,our newness a kingdomof only two. From the forest edge a deer flashedtoward …
Donald Hall – Bangers and Mash
Donald Hall (September 20, 1928 – June 23, 2018) We flew the Atlantic all night, your headwith its first streak of gray leaningagainst my shoulder, and took a cabto our bed-and-breakfast. We napped,woke up at noon, and rode the tubefrom Russell Square to Piccadilly Circus,where we asked a stranger to takea photograph of us standing …
Joyce Sutphen – The Art of Revision
Joyce Sutphen (August 10, 1949 -) In the morning I take outmost of what I put in last night.I cross out everything that seemsexcessive, every frill and fandango,anything fluffy—a word that shouldnever again appear in a poem,along with blossom and awesome.Once I have deleted everythingexcept the title—which now seemsto have been written by a poetwho …
Marge Piercy – Limited But Fertile Possibilities
Marge Piercy (March 31, 1936 -) We cannot have monogrammed towelsor matches with our names on. We cannothave children. We cannot share jointtax returns. We don’t have a past.Our future is a striped unicorn, fragile,shy, the first of a newspecies born without kindto hostile kin. We can work togethersnarling and giggling and grunting.Every few years …
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Ted Kooser – Splitting An Order
Ted Kooser (April 25, 1939 -) I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steadyby placing his forearms firm on the edge of the tableand using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in …
Anne Sexton – Song For A Lady
Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) On the day of breasts and small hipsthe window pocked with bad rainrain coming on like a minister,we coupled, so sane and insane.We lay like spoons while the sinisterrain dropped like flies on our lipsand our glad eyes and our small hips.“The room is so cold …
Emily Brontë – Remembrance
Emily Jane Brontë (July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848) Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hoverOver the mountains, on that northern shore,Resting …
Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Sonnet 43
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 06, 1806 – June 29, 1861) How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of being an ideal Grace.I love thee to the level of everyday'sMost quiet need, by sun …
Tao Writer – Don’t Get Old
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) In memory of my friend Bob McGuinn Be careful of growing old, he tells me.It happens so suddenly over the years.One day you are young, in love, full of energythe next day you are old, loveless, lackingboth muscle mass and strength.The legs are the first to go, he continues,but …
Jo McDougall – Straightpins
Jo McDougall Growing up in a small town,we didn't noticethe background figures of our lives,gray men, gnarled women,dropping from us silentlylike straightpins to a dressmaker's floor.The old did not diebut simply vanishedlike discs of snow on our tongues.We knew nothing then of nothingnessor pain or loss--our days filled with open fields,football,turtles and cows.One day we …
Vijay Seshadri – Visiting San Francisco
Vijay Seshadri (February 13, 1954 -) I wanted to curl upin the comfortable cosmic melancholy of my past,in the sadness of my past being passed.I wanted to tour the museum of my antiquitiesand look at the sarcophagi there.I wanted to wallow like a water buffalo in the cool,sagacious mud of my past,so I wrote you …
Louis Jenkins – The Couple
Louis Burke Jenkins (October 28, 1942 – December 21, 2019) They no longer sleep quite as well as they didwhen they were younger. He lies awakethinking of things that happened years ago, turning uncomfortably from time to time, pulling on theblankets. She worries about money. First oneand then the other is awake during the night,in …
