Those Hours
by Joyce Sutphen

There were moments, hours even,
when it was clear what I

was meant to do, as if
a landscape had revealed itself

in the morning light.
I could see the road

plainly now, imagining myself
walking towards the distant mountains

like a pilgrim in the old stories—
ready to take on any danger,

hapless but always hopeful,
certain that my simple belief

in the light
would be enough.

Advice
by Ted Kooser

We go out of our way to get home,
getting lost in a rack of old clothing,
fainting in stairwells,
our pulses fluttering like moths.
We will always be
leaving our loves like old stoves
in abandoned apartments. Early in life
there are signals of how it will be—
we throw up the window one spring
and the window weights break from their ropes
and fall deep in the wall.

"Advice" from Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985 by Ted Kooser

 

Seeing for a Moment

By Denise Levertov

 

I thought I was growing wings—

it was a cocoon.

I thought, now is the time to step   

into the fire—

it was deep water.

Eschatology is a word I learned

as a child: the study of Last Things;

facing my mirror—no longer young,

       the news—always of death,

       the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoring   

            and howling, howling,

nevertheless

I see for a moment   

that's not it: it is   

the First Things.

Word after word

floats through the glass.   

Towards me.

 

"Seeing for a Moment" from Oblique Prayers, by Denise Levertov

Mind Wanting More, by Holly J. Hughes 

Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade
pulled not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.

But the mind always
wants more than it has—
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses—as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren't enough,
as if joy weren't strewn all around.

Holly J. Hughes, from Hold Fast (Empty Bowl Press, 2019)

Champion the Enemy’s Need
by Kim Stafford

Ask about your enemy's wounds and scars.
Seek his hidden cause of trouble.
Feed your enemy's children.
Learn their word for home.

Repair their well.
Learn their sorrow's history.
Trace their lineage of the good.
Ask them for a song.

Make tea. Break bread.

Kim Stafford, from Wild Honey, Tough Salt

Mimesis, by Fady Joudah My daughter                         wouldn’t hurt a spider That had nested Between her bicycle handles For two weeks She waited Until it left of its own accord If you tear down the web I said It will simply know This isn’t a place to call home And you’d get to go biking She said that’s how others Become refugees isn’t it?

Fady Joudah, “Mimesis” from Alight. Copyright © 2013 by Fady Joudah.

 My Picture Left in Scotland, by Ben Jonson

 

I now think Love is rather deaf than blind,

For else it could not be

That she,

Whom I adore so much, should so slight me

And cast my love behind.

I'm sure my language to her was as sweet,

And every close did meet

In sentence of as subtle feet,

As hath the youngest He

That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree.

O, but my conscious fears,

That fly my thoughts between,

Tell me that she hath seen

My hundred of gray hairs,

Told seven and forty years

Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace

My mountain belly and my rocky face;

And all these through her eyes have stopp'd her ears.

The courage that my mother had     by Edna St. Vincent Millay

 The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.

 

The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.

 

Oh, if instead she’d left to me
The thing she took into the grave!—
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.

Good-by and Keep Cold

Robert Frost

This saying good-by on the edge of the dark

And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark

Reminds me of all that can happen to harm

An orchard away at the end of the farm

All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.

I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,

I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse

By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse.

(If certain it wouldn't be idle to call

I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall

And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)

I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun.

(We made it secure against being, I hope,

By setting it out on a northerly slope.)

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;

But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.

"How often already you've had to be told,

Keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below."

I have to be gone for a season or so.

My business awhile is with different trees,

Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,

And such as is done to their wood with an ax—

Maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night

And think of an orchard's arboreal plight

When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)

Its heart sinks lower under the sod.

But something has to be left to God.

 

Alone

by Edgar Allan Poe

 

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

>From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

To the New Year

by W. S. Merwin

 

With what stillness at last

you appear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible

 

M. S. Merwin, from the book, Present Company

Copper Canyon Press, 2005