Halley's Comet

Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground's edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,
waving his hand-lettered sign.
At supper I felt sad to think
that it was probably
the last meal I'd share
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate.
So mother scolded me
and sent me early to my room.
The whole family's asleep
except for me. They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.

Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street --
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.

Stanley Kunitz, Passing Through: The Later Poems New and Selected (W. W. Norton & Company, 1995)

Runaways Cafe II

For once, I hardly noticed what I ate
(salmon and broccoli and Saint-Veran).
My elbow twitched like jumping beans; sweat ran
into my shirtsleeves. Could I concentrate
on anything but your leg against mine
under the table? It was difficult,
but I impersonated an adult
looking at you, and knocking back the wine.
Now that we both want to know what we want,
now that we both want to know what we know,
it still behooves us to know what to do:
be circumspect, be generous, be brave,
be honest, be together, and behave.
At least I didn't get white sauce down my front.

Marilyn Hacker, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (W. W. Norton & Company, 1995)

Welcome Morning

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry, "hello there, Annie"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.

Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975)

In Praise of Craziness, of a Certain Kind

On cold evenings
my grandmother,
with ownership of half her mind --
the other half having flown back to Bohemia --

spread newspapers over the porch floor
so, she said, the garden ants could crawl beneath,
as under a blanket, and keep warm,

and what should I wish for, for myself,
but, being so struck by the lightning of years,
to be like her with what is left, that loving.

Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems: Volume Two (Beacon Press, 2005)

In the Well

My father cinched the rope,
a noose around my waist,
and lowered me into
the darkness. I could taste

my fear. It tasted first
of dark, then earth, then rot.
I swung and struck my head
and at that moment got

another then: then blood,
which spiked my mouth with iron.
Hand over hand, my father
dropped me from then to then:

then water. Then wet fur,
which I hugged to my chest.
I shouted. Then Daddy hauled
the wet rope. I gagged, then pressed

my neighbor's missing dog
against me. I held its death
and rose up to my father.
Then light. Then hands. Then breath.


Andrew Hudgins, Southern Review, Vol.37, No. 2 Spring 2001

It Is I Who Must Begin

It is I who must begin.

Once I begin, once I try --

here and now,

right where I am,

not excusing myself

by saying things

would be easier elsewhere,

without grand speeches and

ostentatious gestures,

but all the more persistently

-- to live in harmony

with the "voice of Being," as I

understand it within myself

-- as soon as I begin that,

I suddenly discover,

to my surprise, that

I am neither the only one,

nor the first,

nor the most important one

to have set out

on that road.

Whether all is really lost

or not depends entirely on

whether or not I am lost.

Vaclav Havel, taken from Teaching with Fire, ed. S. M. Intrator and M. Scribner (Jossey Bass, 2003) 

Another Reason I Don't Keep A Gun in the House

The neighbor's dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic barking
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on the way out of the house.

The neighbor's dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast,
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris (University of Arkansas Press, 1988)

The Portrait

My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.

Stanley Kunitz, The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz (W. W. Norton, 2000)

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?


Robert Hayden, Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, ed. Frederick Glaysher (Liveright Publishing Corporation 1966)

Old Love

When my aunt died,
my uncle raised his hands
like a prophet in the Bible.
"I've lost my girl," he said
"I've lost my girl," over and over,
shaking his head.

I didn't know what to say,
where to look,
my quiet uncle raising his voice
to silence.

My aunt was eighty-seven.
"Listen," my uncle said, sighing
like a tree alone at night,
"women know.
Every midnight on New Year's Eve,
when others sang
and laughed and hugged,
your aunt looked at me,
tears in her eyes.
Sixty years.
She knew.
One day we'd kiss good-bye."


Pat Mora, Dizzy in Your Eyes (Alfred A. Knopf 2010)

The Tao of the Trial

From the trial transcript:

Miss Crandell's Boarding School

for Young Ladies of Color

Canterbury CT, 1833-34

Miss Crandall, you stand accused of knowingly

teaching colored persons not resident of the state,

without prior consent. What is your plea?

The Teacher does not instruct. The teacher waits.

Girl, has anyone been teaching anything to you and your friends?

Who taught you how to plead the Fifth Amendment?

Your honor, I submit as evidence

of alleged teaching of alleged students

this colored girl here, who openly reads books

and gazes skyward, who has been overheard

conversing animatedly in polysyllabic words

and referring off-handedly to the Ancient Greeks.

The Teacher teaches, without words and without action,

simplicity, patience, and compassion.

Marilyn Nelson, Poetry, September 2005

My Papa's Waltz

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.


Theodore Roethke, Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (Doubleday 1942)

from Shape of Time

You aren't better than anyone.

You aren't worse than anyone.

You have been given the world.

See what there is to see.

Protect what is around you,

hold who is there beside you.

All creatures in their own way 

are funny --

and fragile.

The question isn't 

how to be in style

but

how to live in truth

in the face of all the winds?

With mindfulness, courage,

patience, sympathy  --

how to remain brave

when the spirit fails?

Idleness is often empowering,

recreating oneself --

just as the moon gradually

grows full again,

a battery surely and

steadily recharges,

so everything, everyone

must have time for the self  --

for mirth and laziness

time to be human.

Doris Kareva, trans. by Tiina Aleman, Shape of Time, (Arc Publications 2010)

Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad

I think you are most yourself when you're swimming;
slicing the water with each stroke,
the funny way you breathe, your mouth cocked
as though you're yawning.

You're neither fantastic nor miserable
at getting from here to there.
You wouldn't win any medals, Dad,
but you wouldn't drown.

I think how different everything might have been
had I judged your loving
like I judge your sidestroke, your butterfly,
your Australian crawl.

But I always thought I was drowning
in that icy ocean between us,
I always thought you were moving too slowly to save me,
when you were moving as fast as you can.


Jan Heller Levi, I Gazed at You in Wonder: Poems copyright 1999 by Jan Heller Levi

The Grasp of Your Hand

      Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.
      Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but
for the heart to conquer it.
      Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
      Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling
Your mercy in my success alone; but let me find
the grasp of Your hand in my failure.


Rabindranath Tagore, The Heart of God: Prayers of Rabindranath Tagore, by Herbert E. Vetter (Tuttle Publishing 1997)

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through the chinks, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.


Jane Kenyon, Otherwise: New and Selected Poems (Gray WolfPress 1996)