Feasting by Elizabeth W. Garber I am so amazed to find myself kissing you with such abandon, filling myself with our kisses astounding hunger for edges of lips and tongue. Returning to feast again and again, our bellies never overfilling from this banquet. Returning in surprise, in remembering, in rediscovering, such play of […]
MoreA two-poem salute to fathers on this Father’s Day 2019. With poems as wonderful as these, that’s as good as twenty-one guns. This excerpt from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” belongs in the wild, in air cleaned fresh by summer rain. But with no countryside excursion possible, I taped the poem to the edge […]
MoreYoung love is sweet to behold, sweeter and sweeter as I grow older. It’s also something of a wonder for a long-married person like me to think back to the beginning—to try to remember—that time—in September—when love was an ember—about to billow— [Earworm alert. . . The Fantasticks is always waiting to be sung.] […]
MoreIt’s a good thing I passed by a playground before I found the cemetery I was on the hunt for. Because “Happy Mother’s Day, I see dead people” is twisted, even for a twisty elf like me. But I do see dead people this Mother’s Day—my mother who died the week before Mother’s Day […]
MoreThe Bagel by David Ignatow I stopped to pick up the bagel rolling away in the wind, annoyed with myself for having dropped it as 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 […]
MoreTo His Piano by Howard Nemerov Old friend, patient of error as of accuracy, Ready to think the fingerings of thought, You but a scant year older than I am With my expectant mother expecting maybe An infant prodigy among her stars But getting only little me instead– To see you standing […]
MoreSleeping on Horseback by Po Chu-I We had ridden long and were still far from the inn; My eyes grew dim; for a moment I fell asleep. Under my right arm the whip still dangled; In my left hand the reins for an instant slackened. Suddenly I woke and turned to question my […]
MoreThe Birds Have Vanished Into the Sky by Li Po The birds have vanished into the sky, and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains. A cable car ride up Austria’s Zwolferhorn led to this view of the […]
MoreSong by Frank O’Hara Is it dirty does it look dirty that’s what you think of in the city does it just seem dirty that’s what you think of in the city you don’t refuse to breathe do you someone comes along with a very bad character he seems attractive. […]
MoreA Country Epitaph by William Stafford I am the man who plunged through a river to save his dog; who failed my parents, though; who forgot my grief, and sang. Outside your light I stand. I appeal through careless words, I appeal by this casual stone: Was there more I could have […]
More