Category: Poetry

“Ingratitude” by Carl Dennis

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Spring, I remembered you all these months.
I spoke of the green yard under the snow
To my slumped visitors.
I sobered the giddy neighbors.
“You may think you’re still happy,”
I cautioned, “but recall the tea roses,
The lost leaves of the dogwood tree.”

But now you have fallen upon us, Spring,
Without warning,
So much greener than I remembered.
Friends I kept from forgetting
Laugh at me as they run outside
For falling so short in your praise.

“Ingratitude” by Carl Dennis, from New and Selected Poems 1974-2004. © Penguin Books, 2004.

“Game” by Laura Kasischke

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I thought we were playing a game
in a forest that day.
I ran as my mother chased me.

But she’d been stung by a bee.
Or bitten by a snake.
She shouted my name, which

even as a child I knew was not
“Stop. Please. I’m dying.”

I ran deeper
into the bright black trees
happily
as she chased me: How

lovely the little bits and pieces.
The fingernails, the teeth. Even
the bombed cathedrals
being built inside of me.

How sweet
the eye socket. The spine. The
curious, distant possibility that God
had given courage
to human beings
that we might
suffer a little longer.

And by the time

I was willing to admit that
all along
all along
I’d known it was no game

I was a grown woman, turning
back, too late.

“Game” by Laura Kasischke. From Poetry (October 2012)

“Pastoral” by William Carlos Williams

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The little sparrows
Hop ingenuously
About the pavement
Quarreling
With sharp voices
Over those things
That interest them.
But we who are wiser
Shut ourselves in
On either hand
And no one knows
Whether we think good
Or evil.
                    Then again,
The old man who goes about
Gathering dog lime
Walks in the gutter
Without looking up
And his tread
Is more majestic than
That of the Episcopal minister
Approaching the pulpit
Of a Sunday.
These things
Astonish me beyond words.

– William Carlos Williams, “Pastoral”

“Spring” by Linda Pastan

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Just as we lose hope
she ambles in,
a late guest
dragging her hem
of wildflowers,
her torn
veil of mist,
of light rain,
blowing
her dandelion
breath
in our ears;
and we forgive her,
turning from
chilly winter
ways,
we throw off
our faithful
sweaters
and open
our arms.

Linda Pastan, from Heroes in Disguise (W.W. Norton & Co., 1991)

 

“Guest of Honor” by Philip Dacey

On By Christina's WordsIn Music, Poetry
Marc Chagall, “La Mariée” 1950.

Every day, I drive by the grave
of my fiancee’s father.
She lost him when she was one.
He’s our intimate stranger,
our guardian angel,
floating a la Chagall
just above our heads.
I go to him for love-lessons.
He touches my hand
with that tenderness
the dead have for the living.
When I touch her hand so,
she knows where I’ve been.
At the wedding,
he’ll give her away to me.
And the glass he’ll raise to toast us
will be a chalice brimful of sun,
his words heard all the more clearly
for their absence, as stone
is cut away to form dates.

“Guest of Honor,” by Philip Dacey