Sean Sexton: Not Yet the Rise
Those five trees across the way I named Pleiades—till
one more fell to earth
H.D: Sheltered Garden
Every way ends, every road,
every foot-path leads at last
to the hill-crest
Wendy Mnookin: The Public Garden
The sun is shining and I’m content
to be myself, walking across the Common
as families queue up by the Swan Boats,
real swans parting the water
in elegant wakes.
Dawn Potter: Late April
Ghosts shimmered on the broken doorstep,
rising through dust to become my own new skin
James Crews: I Keep the Window Open
Life’s too fragile
to waste on money or importance,
handing over the hours that will never
be returned to us.
Mary Jane White: Axe
Always the trapped smell of sunlight
& the oiled axe to split the last of the kindling
& the bank’s rippled edge & the heavy suckerfish
Robinson Jeffers: The Treasure
That silence is the thing, this noise a found word for it;
interjection, a jump of the breath at that silence
Kim Ports Parsons: May the Particles of My Body Travel the Endless Conduits
When I die, lay me in the loam under the big oak
on the path through the woods, deep down in the endless
flow of talk among the trees there…
Video: Urban Oasis – a love letter to San Francisco
A journey through the contrasting urban and natural spaces within San Francisco’s 49 square miles.
Rachel Hadas: That Patch of Warmth
August. Midday. Look up: flawless sky
until a cloud sprouts; sidles; suddenly
blots out the sun. Wind troubles the trees
Paul Christensen: In the Icy Womb of Winter
My wife noted this morning that the temperature gauge outside our kitchen widow read minus 9 degrees. The windows in the bedroom were frosted over with a thick rime, so … Continue reading
Mark Twain: Two Ways of Seeing the River
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too.
Denise Levertov: Clouds
as if death had lit a pale light
in your flesh, your flesh
was cold to my touch, or not cold
but cool, cooling
Ed Bieber: Cleverness
Nature is the master here: boundless, unpredictable,
full of astonishments. The children come next. I follow.
