Elizabeth Romero: This is me without you
I cannot be with the birds
With their mites and their feathers
And their hot little bodies
Their impassioned but inscrutable
Comments on their world
David Hassler: Intensive Care
Children under the age of fourteen weren’t allowed in the ICU. I was eleven, and my brother was thirteen, but no nurse or doctor was going to stop us from seeing our mother.
Audio: Robert Frost reads ‘West-Running Brook’ and ‘The Death of the Hired Man’ (with texts)
‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’
Jose Padua: Nirvana
enjoying the
path I’m taking
and the unobscured view
of blue mountains
as my hair
slowly turns
gray
Mike Vargo: Ancient Footprints and Bighorns
The Valley of Fire, northeast of Vegas, is a maze of canyons and towering rock formations in hues from yellow to red…. And on some of those, Indigenous people 2,000 to 4,000 years ago scraped figures and shapes into the varnish.
Arlene Weiner: Another Art
Put it on eBay, ka-ching, ka-ching—
keep nothing but the things that give you cheer.
But so many objects seem to want to cling
Edward Harkness: Pelicans Diving
They skim so close to waves
they must themselves be waves.