by Mary Oliver My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird— equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand. Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me keep my […]
by Gwendolyn Brooks And if sun comes How shall we greet him? Shall we not dread him, Shall we not fear him After so lengthy a Session with shade? Though we have wept for him, Though we have prayed All through the night-years— What if we wake one shimmering morning to Hear the fierce hammering […]
FLOOD-TIDE below me! I watch you face to face; Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face. Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me! On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more […]
by Said lord pray pray loudly against the noise of the human hand which seeks to drown you out and appear on quiet soles so that we might understand your footsteps exert yourself in order to recognize our prayers even when they appear in a different garment because no prayer ever looses itself from the […]
by Constance Urdang If I am in the house beams posts planks siding slate protect us Wall guard us against the night-terrors Floor shore us up above the void below cover us roof enclose us from the void above door keep out the angry stranger Hearth cherish the fire windows be beacons […]
by Kay Ryan As though the river were a floor, we position our table and chairs upon it, eat, and have conversation. As it moves along, we notice—as calmly as though dining room paintings were being replaced— the changing scenes along the shore. We do know, we do know this is the Niagara River, but […]
by Wallace Stevens The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page, […]
Sometimes from this hillside just after sunset The rim of the sky takes on a tinge Of the palest green, like the flesh of a cucumber When you peel it carefully. * In Crete once, in the summer, When it was still hot at midnight, We sat in a taverna by the water […]
by Ruth Stone The shock comes slowly as an afterthought. First you hear the words and they are like all other words, ordinary, breathing out of lips, moving toward you in a straight line. Later they shatter and rearrange themselves. They spell something else hidden in the muscles of the face, […]
by Scott Cairns For near is where you’ll meet what you have wandered far to find. And near is where you’ll very likely see how far the near obtains. In the dark katholikon the lighted candles lent their gold to give the eye a more than common sense of what lay flickering just beyond the ken, […]