Prairie Dawn by Willa Cather

A crimson fire that vanquishes the stars;
A pungent odor from the dusty sage;
A sudden stirring of the huddled herds;
A breaking of the distant table-lands
Through purple mists ascending, and the flare
Of water ditches silver in the light;
A swift, bright lance hurled low across the world;
A sudden sickness for the hills of home.

Willa Cather, public domain, as seen in Poem-a-Day, 

by the Academy of American Poets, September 6, 2014 

The Summer Ends by Wendell Berry

The summer ends, and it is time
To face another way. Our theme
Reversed, we harvest the last row
To store against the cold, undo
The garden that will be undone.
We grieve under the weakened sun
To see all earth's green fountains dried,
And fallen all the works of light.
You do not speak, and I regret
This downfall of the good we sought
As though the fault were mine. I bring
The plow to turn the shattering
Leaves and bent stems into the dark,
From which they may return. At work,
I see you leaving our bright land,
The last cut flowers in your hand. 

"The Summer Ends" by Wendell Berry, from A Timbered Choir. © Counterpoint Press, 1999, in the Writer's Almanac on September 2, 2014,  read by Garrison Keillor

Solitude, by Alexander Pope

Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
              In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
              In winter, fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away
In health of body, peace of mind;
              Quiet by day.

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mixed, sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please
              With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die,
Steal from the world, and not a stone
              Tell where I lie.

"Solitude" by Alexander Pope. Public Domain.

Extraordinary idealism, how sweet the sound, but....

VII.  by Wendell Berry

Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

Within the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.

                                       The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.

                      What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased. 

"VII" by Wendell Berry from This Day. © Counterpoint Press, 2013.

Excerpt from BODY AND SOUL    by Charles Wright

 

(for Coleman Hawkins)

I used to think the power of words was inexhaustible,
That how we said the world
            was how it was, and how it would be.
I used to imagine that word-sway and word-thunder
Would silence the Silence and all that,
That worlds were the Word,
That language could lead us inexplicably to grace,
As though it were geographical.
I used to think these things when I was young.
            I still do.

"Body and Soul” from “A Short History of the Shadow” 

by Charles Wright, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

 Night     by Louise Bogan

The cold remote islands
And the blue estuaries
Where what breathes, breathes
The restless wind of the inlets,
And what drinks, drinks
The incoming tide;

Where shell and weed
Wait upon the salt wash of the sea,
And the clear nights of stars
Swing their lights westward
To set behind the land;

Where the pulse clinging to the rocks
Renews itself forever;
Where, again on cloudless nights,
The water reflects
The firmament's partial setting;

—O remember
In your narrowing dark hours
That more things move
Than blood in the heart. 

"Night" by Louise Bogan from The Blue Estuaries. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968.

The war against euphemism and cliché matters not because we can guarantee that eliminating them will help us speak nothing but the truth but, rather, because eliminating them from our language is an act of courage that helps us get just a little closer to the truth. Clear speech takes courage. Every time we tell the truth about a subject that attracts a lot of lies, we advance the sanity of the nation. Plain speech matters because when we speak clearly we are more likely to speak truth than when we retreat into slogan and euphemism; avoiding euphemism takes courage because it almost always points plainly to responsibility. To say “torture” instead of “enhanced interrogation” is hard, because it means that someone we placed in power was a torturer. That’s a hard truth and a brutal responsibility to accept. But it’s so. 

Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker, "Clear Words About Mass Shootings" 
May 2014 

A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment

by Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

My head, my heart, mine eyes, my life, nay more,
My joy, my magazine, of earthly store,
If two be one, as surely thou and I,
How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lie?
So many steps, head from the heart to sever,
If but a neck, soon should we be together.
I, like the Earth this season, mourn in black,
My Sun is gone so far in's zodiac,
Whom whilst I 'joyed, nor storms, nor frost I felt,
His warmth such fridged colds did cause to melt.
My chilled limbs now numbed lie forlorn;
Return; return, sweet Sol, from Capricorn;
In this dead time, alas, what can I more
Than view those fruits which through thy heart I bore?
Which sweet contentment yield me for a space,
True living pictures of their father's face.
O strange effect! now thou art southward gone,
I weary grow the tedious day so long;
But when thou northward to me shalt return,
I wish my Sun may never set, but burn
Within the Cancer of my glowing breast,
The welcome house of him my dearest guest.
Where ever, ever stay, and go not thence,
Till nature's sad decree shall call thee hence;
Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone,
I here, thou there, yet both but one. 

Barter
by Sara Teasdale


Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder in a cup. 

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night. 

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstacy
Give all you have been, or could be.

I Happened To Be Standing
by Mary Oliver

 I don't know where prayers go,
      or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
      half-asleep in the sun?
Does the opossum pray as it
      crosses the street?
The sunflowers? The old black oak
      growing older every year?
I know I can walk through the world,
      along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things
      of little importance, in full
self-attendance. A condition I can't really
      call being alive.
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,
      or does it matter?
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that's their way.
Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.

While I was thinking this I happened to be standing
just outside my door, with my notebook open,
which is the way I begin every morning.
Then a wren in the privet began to sing.
He was positively drenched in enthusiasm,
I don't know why. And yet, why not.
I wouldn't persuade you from whatever you believe
or whatever you don't. That's your business.
But I thought, of the wren's singing, what could this be
      if it isn't a prayer?
So I just listened, my pen in the air. 

"I Happened To Be Standing" by Mary Oliver

 from A Thousand Mornings. © The Penguin Press, 2012.

Travel                 Edna St. Vincent Millay

The railroad track is miles away,
       And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day
       But I hear its whistle shrieking.

 

All night there isn’t a train goes by,
       Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
       And hear its engine steaming.

 

My heart is warm with friends I make,
       And better friends I'll not be knowing;
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
       No matter where it’s going.

Why Some People Do Not Read Poetry
--W. S. Merwin

Because they already know that it means
stopping and without stopping they know that
beyond stopping it will mean listening
listening without hearing and maybe
then hearing without hearing and what would
they hear then what good would it be to them
like some small animal crossing the road
suddenly there but not seeming to move
at night and they are late and may be on
the wrong road over the mountain with all
the others asleep and not hitting it
that time as though forgetting it again

(in The New York Review of Books, April 30, 2009)

I stopped to pick up the bagel
rolling away in the wind,
annoyed with myself
for having dropped it
as if it were a portent.
Faster and faster it rolled,
with me running after it
bent low, gritting my teeth,
and I found myself doubled over
and rolling down the street
head over heels, one complete somersault
after another like a bagel
and strangely happy with myself. 

"The Bagel" by David Ignatow from 

Against the Evidence.

© Wesleyan University Press, 1993.

“Cosmically, I seem to be of two minds,” John Updike wrote, a decade ago. “The power of materialist science to explain everything—from the behavior of the galaxies to that of molecules, atoms, and their sub-microscopic components—seems to be inarguable and the principal glory of the modern mind. On the other hand, the reality of subjective sensations, desires, and—may we even say—illusions composes the basic substance of our existence, and religion alone, in its many forms, attempts to address, organize, and placate these. I believe, then, that religious faith will continue to be an essential part of being human, as it has been for me.”

Quoted by Adam Gopnik in his New Yorker article, "Bigger than Phil:  When did faith begin to fade?" February 2014

Onomatomania by Thomas Lux    the word for the inability to find the right word, leads me to self-diagnose: onomatomaniac. It's not the 20 volume OED, I need, nor Dr. Roget's book, which offers equals only, never discovery. I accept the fallibility of language, its spastic elasticity, its jake-leg, as well as prima ballerina, dances. I accept that language can be manipulated towards deceit (ex.: The Mahatmapropaganda, i.e., Goebbels); I accept, and mourn, though not a lot, the loss of the dash/semi-colon pair. It's the sound of a pause unlike no other pause. And when the words are tedious and tedious also their order--sew me up in a rug and toss me in the sea! Language is dying, the novel is dying, poetry is a corpse colder than the Ice Man, they've all been dying for thousands of years, yet people still write, people still read, and everyone knows that nothing is really real until it is written. Until it is written! Even those who cannot read know that. Copyright © 2014 by Thomas Lux. "I was annoyed by one of the  occasional poetry-is-dead articles. Then I refute that notion."  from Poem-a-Day by the Academy of American Poets, 2-7-2014

"I must be willingly fallible
to deserve a place in the realm
where miracles happen."

William Stafford (1914-1993)

Token Loss   by Kay Ryan

To the dragon
any loss is 
total.  His rest
is disrupted
if a single 
jewel encrusted
goblet has
been stolen.
The  circle
of himself
in the nest
of his gold
has been
broken.  No
loss is token.


lkm:  Two thoughts on Token Loss:  Having recently seen the second installment of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, I'm thinking that this little poem is the perfect description of Smaug's loss.  And secondly, with most poetry these days feeling more like prose "jerryrigged" into stanza form, lacking metaphor, rhythm, rhyme and poetic spirit, what a breath of fresh, poetic air this is!  Below are Ryan's comments on the shape of the poem (from Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets, January 10, 2014):  

Ideally, this little poem would be printed as a circle and wouldn't start or end but rather would round upon itself like the seamless repose of the dragon.  

But, on second thought, since it's describing the disruption of the dragon's perfect circuit, I guess it makes sense that it's all chopped up."  --Kay Ryan