Todd Friedman: Two Poems
Israel, you have become like Joseph’s brothers
who abandoned him in an empty cistern
and then sat down to a feast.
Mary B. Moore: Gloria, Arbored
The foliage simmers or shivers,
airs itself out, and the round
leaf-scales, which join and branch,
make each stem a flat little tree:
a tree of trees.
Michael Simms: Sunstar
The mist that covers our mountain
Evaporates and becomes a feeling
That lasts all morning. You lift the spoon
From the sauce and feel the texture
Of the aroma.
Jack Gilbert: A Brief for the Defense
We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
Deborah DeNicola: Millennium Jubilee
We were called to attend the fake alien invasion. The subpoena arrived in a blue vellum envelope with a stamp of clouds and empty sky and a watermark hologram of a dove. They gave the date and time but Jim noticed the venue was missing.
Moudi Sbeity: Something Rather Than Nothing
What can be more holy than this?
The ground beneath our feet,
the stories we carry from one day to the next,
the fluency of rivers as a reminder of something
rather than nothing.
Wallace Stevens: Sunday Morning
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights
Ma Yongbo: Three poems translated from Chinese
The horse drawn cart hasn’t gone far, it will carry away
the love of the land, and one or two shy grasshoppers.
At this moment, her hanging sickle
reflects the white light of winter arising in the distance.
James Crews: Losing Heart | Poem and reflection
You might be
driving to work one stormy morning,
scowling at every car that passes you
when it happens again—that sudden
leap in the chest as you see the rain
“Walking in Beauty”: Closing Prayer from the Navajo Blessing Way Ceremony
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
David Kirby: Sex and Candy
Candy is to children what sex is to us, because when
you were a child, candy is what you thought about every
waking moment.
Chard deNiord: On Such An Evening
everything just gets sweeter as I sit under
the maple after working all day in the garden
and listen to the music of silence disguised
as birdsong and breeze in the overstory
Rachel Hadas: Two Poems
One sight that sticks with me is the tail
of a blue phoenix soaring on a tile
from fifteenth-century Turkey. I couldn’t draw it
worth a damn, but gazed until I knew it.
I used the pencil in my hand to see.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Doors Where I Have Knocked
Door of forgiveness that’s never locked.
Door of dreams. Door of god.
Door of contentment without a knob
that can only be entered with empty hands.
