Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (July 12, 1904 – September 23 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda And it was at that age . . . poetry arrived in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don’t …
John L. Stanizzi – Cardinals
John L. Stanizzi I had seen them in the tree, and heard they mate for life, so I hung a bird feeder and waited. By the third day, sparrows and purple finches hovered and jockeyed like a swarm of bees fighting over one flower. So I hung another feeder, but the squabbling continued and the …
WS Merwin – Just Now
William Stanley Merwin (September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019) In the morning as the storm begins to blow away the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me that there has been something simpler than I could ever believe simpler than I could have begun to find words for not patient …
Anne Sexton – Welcome Morning
Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) 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 …
Billy Collins – Aimless Love
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) This morning as I walked along the lakeshore, I fell in love with a wren and later in the day with a mouse the cat had dropped under the dining room table. In the shadows of an autumn evening, I fell for a seamstress still at her machine in …
Barbara Ras – Washing The Elephant
Barbara Ras (1949 -) This peaceful world of ours is ready for destruction— And still the sun shines, the sparrows come Each morning to the bakery for crumbs. Next door, two men deliver a bed for a pair of newlyweds And stop to admire a bicycle chained to a parking meter. Its owner is making …
Barbara Crooker – Tomorrow
Barbara Crooker there will be sun, scalloped by clouds, ushered in by a waterfall of birdsong. It will be a temperate seventy-five, low humidity. For twenty-four hours, all politicians will be silent. Reality programs will vanish from TV, replaced by the “snow” that used to decorate our screens when reception wasn’t working. Soldiers will toss …
Richard Wilbur – Ecclesiastes 11:1
This peaceful world of ours is ready for destruction— And still the sun shines, the sparrows come Each morning to the bakery for crumbs. Next door, two men deliver a bed for a pair of newlyweds And stop to admire a bicycle chained to a parking meter. Its owner is making lunch for his ailing …
Ruby Archer – In Cloudy Weather
Ruby Archer (January 28, 1873 - January 23, 1961) Where is my halcyon blue? The grudging sky is overcast. Where is my dowering sun? A glory past. Nay, soul, thy daily sky Unfading spirit light must win, Dark days thy sunshine glow Ah bright within!
Jane Kenyon – At A Motel Near O’Hare Airport
Jane Kenyon (May 23, 1947 – April 22, 1995) I sit by the window all morning watching the planes make final approaches. Each of them gathers and steadies itself like a horse clearing a jump. I look up to see them pass, so close I can see the rivets on their bellies, and under their …
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Raymond Carver – Loafing
Raymond Carver (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) I looked into the room a moment ago, and this is what I saw — my chair in its place by the window, the book turned facedown on the table. And on the sill, the cigarette left burning in its ashtray. Malingerer! my uncle yelled at …
Danez Smith – Poem Where I Be & You Just Might
Danez Smith I am sitting next to you & you are not there you're a frameless heat, mass of ruptured air. to be clear, you are the spit & liver it takes to be human & I want it & I think you want me to have it all, but I know what it's like …
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Allen Ginsberg – Five A.M.
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) Elan that lifts me above the clouds into pure space, timeless, yea eternal Breath transmuted into words Transmuted back to breath in one hundred two hundred years nearly Immortal, Sappho's 26 centuries of cadenced breathing -- beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars, chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, …
Kurt Vonnegut – Joe Heller
Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) True story, Word of Honor: Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made …
Jackleen Holton – A Hard Lump
Jackleen Holton sprung up on the right side of my neck so I went to the doctor, who patted around the mass, told me it was probably nothing, a cluster of pissed-off cells, a mini-revolt. I started to say the word I feared. No, he said, probably not that, but we’ll run some tests. Just …
Wisława Szymborska – The Moment
Wisława Szymborska (July 02, 1923- February 01, 2012) I walk on the slope of a hill gone green. Grass, little flowers in the grass, as in a children’s illustration. The misty sky’s already turning blue. A view of other hills unfolds in silence. As if there’d never been any Cambrians, Silurians, rocks snarling at crags, …
Tao Writer – Moments
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) If I could master just one art, it would be the art of letting go: of people I have known and loved, of places I’ve traveled to and lived of sunsets and full moons I’ve witnessed. I would let go of this moment as quickly as it appears, faster …
Rachel Hadas – Only So Much
Rachel Hadas (November 08, 1948 -) I bend to the open notebook; distracted, turn my head. Tiny brown ants are climbing up a stalk of goldenrod. It isn’t clear what goal they hope to reach. I pick up a sharpened pencil, start to sketch. A passing cloud; the sky goes dull. I shut the notebook …
