Peaches—Six in a Tin Bowl, Sarajevo

If peaches had arms surely they would hold one another in their peach sleep. And if peaches had feet it is sure they would nudge one another with their soft peachy feet. And if peaches could they would sleep with their dimpled head on the other’s each to each. Like you and me. And sleep and sleep.

by Sandra Cisneros

 

little prayer

let ruin end here let him find honey where there was once a slaughter let him enter the lion’s cage & find a field of lilacs let this be the healing & if not     let it be

by Danez Smith from Poems of Healing, Karl Kirchwey, ed.

THE END REWARD
by Jonathan Greene

What passes in this world
for clever

amusing sleight of hand
or child’s play

or a magic trick that has
made all disappear

in the end does not fill
the requisite gravitas

and solace of Quiet
one has worked all of a life

to be gifted.


Jonathan Greene, “The End Reward” 

from Ebb & Flow. Published by Broadstone Books

 My Heart Leaps Up
by William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold
      A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
      Or let me die!
The Child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Wild Geese Alighting on a Lake
by Anne Porter

I watched them
As they neared the lake
They wheeled
In a wide arc
With beating wings
And then
They put their wings to sleep
And glided downward in a drift
Of pure abandonment
Until they touched
The surface of the lake
Composed their wings
And settled
On the rippling water
As though it were a nest.

Anne Porter, "Wild Geese Alighting on a Lake" from Living Things, Zoland Books.

Tulips for Elsie
by Jonathan Potter

The day before you died I thought I'd bring
You tulips for your bedside table, bright
Ones, pink and white, to give your gaze a place
To rest, to make your labor seem less harsh.
I told my daughter so, my four-year-old
Who'd told me I should visit you, who'd hinted:
Your work, this dying business you were in,
Was making worldly things seem flimsy, thin.
The day moved on and tulips left my mind, though,
Until I thought of you again, too late,
The night descending, bringing sleep's regrets.
The morning came and with its obligations
Distracting me, I let my dream of tulip
Fields plow under and turned to hear the news.


Jonathan Potter, "Tulips for Elsie" from

Tulips for Elsie  (Korrektiv Press 2021).

Glass
by C.K. Williams

I'd have thought by now it would have stopped,
as anything sooner or later will stop, but still it happens

that when I unexpectedly catch sight of myself in a mirror,
there's a kind of concussion, a cringe; I look quickly away.

Lately, since my father died and I've come closer to his age,
I sometimes see him first, and have to focus to find myself.

I've thought it's that, my precious singularity being diluted,
but it's harsher than that, crueler, the way, when I was young,

I believed how you looked was supposed to mean,
something graver, more substantial: I'd gaze at my poor face

and think, "It's still not there." Apparently I still do.
What isn't there? Beauty? Not likely. Wisdom? Less.

Is how we live or try to live supposed to embellish us?
All I see is the residue of my other, failed faces.

But maybe what we're after is just a less abrasive regard:
not "It's still not there," but something like "Come in, be still."


"Glass" from COLLECTED POEMS by C. K. Williams.

 

Starlings in Winter

by Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can't imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

Field Guide
by Tony Hoagland

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.
That’s all.

I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.


Tony Hoagland, “Field Guide” from  

Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty.

 

Winter Is the Best Time
by David Budbill

Winter is the best time
to find out who you are.

Quiet, contemplation time,
away from the rushing world,

cold time, dark time, holed-up
pulled-in time and space

to see that inner landscape,
that place hidden and within.


David Budbill, "Winter Is the Best Time" from While We've Still Got Feet.