Rita Dove: Parsley
It is fall, when thoughts turn
to love and death; the general thinks
of his mother, how she died in the fall
and he planted her walking cane at the grave
and it flowered
Tony Gloeggler: Sunday
Back in 1968 I always felt good
on a baseball field or basketball
court, listening to summer songs
on a transistor radio, head bowed
Ellen Austin-Li: Blushing & Rising
The kaleidoscope spins shards of shifting glass,
and I emerge wearing this hot pink sweat-
shirt with zippers. Come inside where it’s wet
and I’m alive, fire eyes.
Robinson Jeffers: Ocean
The gray whales are going south: I see their fountains
Rise from black sea: great dark bulks of hot blood
Plowing the deep cold sea to their trysting-place
James Crews: It’s Good to Be Here,
I say out loud, to give the words
the physical presence they deserve
in the warm bakery with us, this place
we’ve been coming for years now.
Penelope Moffet: Simple As / Inexplicable / Moondust
I want rescue
but also wonder
what I’ll see
if I stay out to dawn.
Sean Sexton: No cause to count on mercies of the Earth
Yet a heifer finds a hollow,
penumbra of shade where the cold
couldn’t reach. She forages there
a little while, prospers.
Christine Rhein: Poem for Lisel Mueller
I’ve turned toward dream again, endless steps,
sky without voice, as though the music of birds,
or my mother singing, never happened.
William Butler Yeats: Easter, 1916
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
Rose Mary Boehm: The Matthew Passion
How I once cried with the crucified Christ,
how I suffered the agonized night of Gethsemane,
how I waved that palm leaf,
how I felt the betrayal of Judas
and the foreboding of the last supper.
Jose Padua: What I Keep Coming Back To
watching her lean forward,
tilted like a bell about to ring,
to shake hands with the man
who always panhandled there
Elizabeth Bishop: A Cold Spring
Beneath the light, against your white front door,
the smallest moths, like Chinese fans,
flatten themselves, silver and silver-gilt
over pale yellow, orange, or gray.
Jianqing Zheng: Flamenco in Four Parts
Hands clapping, fingers snapping, heels clicking—the dancer in a red trumpet dress swirls in a flow of vitality, stomping the wooden floor to percuss the bargoers’ hearts.
Linda Parsons: The Other Side
To unlock my Akashic records, I speak my name three times to the psychic, echo the spell that flew Dorothy over the rainbow, farther still, home to sepia Kansas.
