Alice Dunbar-Nelson: Sonnet
I had no thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
James Davis May: Moonflowers
We praise the world by making
others see what we see. So now she points and feels
what must be pride when the bloom unlocks itself
from itself. And then she turns to look at me.
Carolyn Miller: Street Trees of San Francisco
despite everything
that keeps going wrong—the ginkgos,
opening tiny green fans.
Carolyn Miller: Rapture
When they said the world was coming to an end,
I thought about my brother, his long limbs,
his good shoulders and thick hair, his small
white teeth, his beautiful feet at the end
of the hospital bed.
Sandy Solomon: On a Visit to Friends
I’m drawn to the window where the hummingbirds
come; the shrill sound of wings precedes them;
then they hover at the red sugar water,
feeding before they’re gone.
Shannon K. Winston: Lilt
Lilt is the name of the woman you want to be—
someone who pumps her feet like a child on a swing set
and laughs and laughs and laughs into the sky.
H.D.: Evening
shadow seeks shadow,
then both leaf
and leaf-shadow are lost
Arlene Weiner: After the Emergence of the Periodical Cicadas
bouquets of cicada brides whose courtship
made the sky sing so in May.
The wedding music stopped, these are left,
to be caught by maidens in seventeen years.
Alan Soldofsky: Entitled
You know it’s hard to concentrate
when pear trees across the street
burst out overnight, flaunting their
astonishing plumes of white confetti.
Paul Christensen: We’re all waiting here
I smell the earth for the first time as I take a walk, my first in many months of being housebound.
John Clare: To John Clare
Well, honest John, how fare you now at home?
Peter Blair: Vernation
On the road by the arena,
puddles fill ditches
and flaxen rushes wave
in March rain.
M.A. Sinnhuber: In this Time
propel yourself forward—
as in airplane force
or Air Force or forceps
forcing a baby to be born
Paul Christensen: The Book of Eternity
The dark has stairs and doors that have never been opened. Who knows where they lead, or what impenetrable paradoxes await the person who turns a knob and presses against the infinite ignorance we cower from?
