Poetry Platform - the largest database of poetry, save it to read later!

Poems

A New Poet Read Poem

Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods.

You don't see
its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way
its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page.

In fact
the very page smells of spilled
red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day - the odor of truth
and of lying.

And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only
in your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been a flower.

Emily Dickinson Read Poem

We think of hidden in a white dress
among the folded linens and sachets
of well-kept cupboards, or just out of sight
sending jellies and notes with no address
to all the wondering Amherst neighbors.

Eccentric as New England weather
the stiff wind of her mind, stinging or gentle,
blew two half imagined lovers off.

Yet legend won't explain the sheer sanity
of vision, the serious mischief
of language, the economy of pain.

Home For Thanksgiving Read Poem

The gathering family
throws shadows around us,
it is the late afternoon
Of the family.

There is still enough light
to see all the way back,
but at the windows
that light is wasting away.

Soon we will be nothing
but silhouettes: the sons'
as harsh
as the fathers'.

Soon the daughters
will take off their aprons
as trees take off their leaves
for winter.

Let us eat quickly--
let us fill ourselves up.

the covers of the album are closing
behind us.

I Married You Read Poem

I married you for all the wrong reasons,
charmed by your dangerous family history,
by the innocent muscles, bulging like hidden
weapons under your shirt, by your naive ties,
the colors of painted scraps of sunset.

I was charmed too by your assumptions
about me: my serenity— that mirror waiting to be
cracked, my flashy acrobatics with knives in the kitchen.

How wrong we both were about each other,
and how happy we have been.

Jump Cabling Read Poem

When our cars touched
When you lifted the hood of mine
To see the intimate workings underneath,
When we were bound together
By a pulse of pure energy,
When my car like the princess
In the tale woke with a start,
I thought why not ride the rest of the way together.

Anonymous Submission

Love Poem Read Poem

I want to write you
a love poem as headlong
as our creek
after thaw
when we stand
on its dangerous
banks and watch it carry
with it every twig
every dry leaf and branch
in its path
every scruple
when we see it
so swollen
with runoff
that even as we watch
we must grab
each other
and step back
we must grab each
other or
get our shoes
soaked we must
grab each other

Marks Read Poem

My husband gives me an A
for last night's supper,
an incomplete for my ironing,
a B plus in bed.

My son says I am average,
an average mother, but if
I put my mind to it
I could improve.

My daughter believes
in Pass/Fail and tells me
I pass.

Wait 'til they learn
I'm dropping out.

Meditation By The Stove Read Poem

I have banked the fires
of my body
into a small but steady blaze
here in the kitchen
where the dough has a life of its own,
breathing under its damp cloth
like a sleeping child;
where the real child plays under the table,
pretending the tablecloth is a tent,
practicing departures; where a dim
brown bird dazzled by light
has flown into the windowpane
and lies stunned on the pavement--
it was never simple, even for birds,
this business of nests.

The innocent eye sees nothing, Auden says,
repeating what the snake told Eve,
what Eve told Adam, tired of gardens,
wanting the fully lived life.

But passion happens like an accident
I could let the dough spill over the rim
of the bowl, neglecting to punch it down,
neglecting the child who waits under the table,
the mild tears already smudging her eyes.

We grow in such haphazard ways.

Today I feel wiser than the bird.

I know the window shuts me in,
that when I open it
the garden smells will make me restless.

And I have banked the fires of my body
into a small domestic flame for others
to warm their hands on for a while.

Anonymous submission

Mosaic Read Poem

1.

THE SACRIFICE

On this tile
the knife
like a sickle-moon hangs
in the painted air
as if it had learned a dance
of its own,
the way the boy has
among the vivid
breakable flowers,
the way Abraham has
among the boulders,
his two feet heavy
as stones.

2.

NEAR SINAI

God's hand here
is the size of a tiny cloud,
and the wordless tablets
he holds out
curve like the temple doors.

Moses, reaching up
must see on their empty surface
laws chiseled in his mind
by the persistent wind
of the desert, by wind
in the bulrushes.

3.

THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT

We know by the halos
that circle these heads
like rings around planets
that the small donkey
has carried his burden
away from the thunder
of the Old Testament
into the lightning
of the New.

4.

AT THE ARMENIAN TILE SHOP

Under the bright glazes
Esau watches Jacob,
Cain watches Abel.

With the same heavy eyes
the tilemaker's Arab assistant
watches me,
all of us wondering
why for every pair
there is just one
blessing.

Narcissus at 60 Read Poem

If love hadn't made him clumsy,
If he hadn't fallen forward,
Had never drowned
In his own perfection,
What would he have thought
About his aging face
As it altered, year after year
Season by season?

In the old conspiracy
between the eye
and its reflection, love casts
a primal shadow.

Perhaps he would blame
the wrinkling surface of the pool
for what he saw
or think the blemishes
on his once smooth cheek
were simply small fish
just beneath the lethal skin
of the water.

On the Steps of the Jefferson Memorial Read Poem

We invent our gods
the way the Greeks did,
in our own image—but magnified.

Athena, the very mother of wisdom,
squabbled with Poseidon
like any human sibling
until their furious tempers
made the sea writhe.

Zeus wore a crown
of lightning bolts one minute,
a cloak of feathers the next,
as driven by earthly lust
he prepared to swoop
down on Leda.

Despite their power,
frailty ran through them
like the darker veins
in the marble of these temples
we call monuments.

Looking at Jefferson now,
I think of the language
he left for us to live by.

I think of the slave
in the kitchen downstairs.

Pears Read Poem

Some say
it was a pear
Eve ate.

Why else the shape
of the womb,
or of the cello
Whose single song is grief
for the parent tree?

Why else the fruit itself
tawny and sweet
which your lover
over breakfast
lets go your pear-
shaped breast
to reach for?

Petit Dejeuner Read Poem

I sing a song
of the croissant
and of the wily French
who trick themselves daily
back to the world
for its sweet ceremony.

Ah to be reeled
up into morning
on that crisp,
buttery
hook.

Prosody 101 Read Poem

When they taught me that what mattered most
was not the strict iambic line goose-stepping
over the page but the variations
in that line and the tension produced
on the ear by the surprise of difference,
I understood yet didn't understand
exactly, until just now, years later
in spring, with the trees already lacy
and camellias blowsy with middle age,
I looked out and saw what a cold front had done
to the garden, sweeping in like common language,
unexpected in the sensuous
extravagance of a Maryland spring.

There was a dark edge around each flower
as if it had been outlined in ink
instead of frost, and the tension I felt
between the expected and actual
was like that time I came to you, ready
to say goodbye for good, for you had been
a cold front yourself lately, and as I walked in
you laughed and lifted me up in your arms
as if I too were lacy with spring
instead of middle aged like the camellias,
and I thought: so this is Poetry!

Self-Portrait Read Poem

After Adam Zagajewski
I am child to no one, mother to a few,
wife for the long haul.

On fall days I am happy
with my dying brethren, the leaves,
but in spring my head aches
from the flowery scents.

My husband fills a room with Mozart
which I turn off, embracing
the silence as if it were an empty page
waiting for me alone to fill it.

He digs in the black earth
with his bare hands.

I scrub it
from the creases of his skin, longing
for the kind of perfection
that happens in books.

My house is my only heaven.

A red dog sleeps at my feet, dreaming
of the manic wings of flushed birds.

As the road shortens ahead of me
I look over my shoulder
to where it curves back
to childhood, its white line
bisecting the real and the imagined
the way the ridgepole of the spine
divides the two parts of the body, leaving
the soft belly in the center
vulnerable to anything.

As for my country, it blunders along
as well intentioned as Eve choosing
cider and windfalls, oblivious
to the famine soon to come.

I stir pots, bury my face in books, or hold
a telephone to my ear as if its cord
were the umbilicus of the world
whose voices still whisper to me
even after they have left their bodies.

Shadblow Read Poem

Because the shad
are swimming
in our waters now,
breaching the skin
of the river with their
tarnished silvery fins,
heading upstream
straight for our tables
where already
knives and forks gleam
in anticipation, these trees
in the woods break
into flower--small, white
flags surrendering
to the season.

Something About The Trees Read Poem

I remember what my father told me:
There is an age when you are most yourself.

He was just past fifty then,
Was it something about the trees that make him speak?

There is an age when you are most yourself.

I know more than I did once.

Was it something about the trees that make him speak?

Only a single leaf had turned so far.

I know more than I did once.

I used to think he'd always be the surgeon.

Only a single leaf had turned so far,
Even his body kept its secrets.

I used to think he'd always be the surgeon,
My mother was the perfect surgeon's wife.

Even his body kept its secrets.

I thought they both would live forever.

My mother was the perfect surgeon's wife,
I can still see her face at thirty.

I thought they both would live forever.

I thought I'd always be their child.

I can still see her face at thirty.

When will I be most myself?

I thought I'd always be their child.

In my sleep it's never winter.

When will I be most myself?

I remember what my father told me.

In my sleep it's never winter.

He was just past fifty then.

Submitted by Jt

The Cossacks Read Poem

For Jews, the Cossacks are always coming.

Therefore I think the sun spot on my arm
is melanoma.

Therefore I celebrate
New Year's Eve by counting
my annual dead.

My mother, when she was dying,
spoke to her visitors of books
and travel, displaying serenity
as a form of manners, though
I could tell the difference.

But when I watched you planning
for a life you knew
you'd never have, I couldn't explain
your genuine smile in the face
of disaster.

Was it denial
laced with acceptance?

Or was it
generations of being English--
Brontë's Lucy in Villette
living as if no fire raged
beneath her dun-colored dress.

I want to live the way you did,
preparing for next year's famine with wine
and music as if it were a ten-course banquet.

But listen: those are hoofbeats
on the frosty autumn air.

The Happiest Day Read Poem

It was early May, I think
a moment of lilac or dogwood
when so many promises are made
it hardly matters if a few are broken.

My mother and father still hovered
in the background, part of the scenery
like the houses I had grown up in,
and if they would be torn down later
that was something I knew
but didn't believe.

Our children were asleep
or playing, the youngest as new
as the new smell of the lilacs,
and how could I have guessed
their roots were shallow
and would be easily transplanted.

I didn't even guess that I was happy.

The small irritations that are like salt
on melon were what I dwelt on,
though in truth they simply
made the fruit taste sweeter.

So we sat on the porch
in the cool morning, sipping
hot coffee.

Behind the news of the day--
strikes and small wars, a fire somewhere--
I could see the top of your dark head
and thought not of public conflagrations
but of how it would feel on my bare shoulder.

If someone could stop the camera then.

.

.

if someone could only stop the camera
and ask me: are you happy?

perhaps I would have noticed
how the morning shone in the reflected
color of lilac.

Yes, I might have said
and offered a steaming cup of coffee.

The Months Read Poem

January

Contorted by wind,
mere armatures for ice or snow,
the trees resolve
to endure for now,

they will leaf out in April.

And I must be as patient
as the trees—
a winter resolution

I break all over again,
as the cold presses
its sharp blade
against my throat.

February

After endless
hibernation
on the windowsill,
the orchid blooms—

embroidered purple stitches
up and down
a slender stem.

Outside, snow

melts midair
to rain.

Abbreviated month.

Every kind of weather.

March

When the Earl King came
to steal away the child
in Goethe’s poem, the father said
don’t be afraid,

it’s just the wind.

.

.

As if it weren’t the wind
that blows away the tender
fragments of this world—

leftover leaves in the corners
of the garden, a Lenten Rose
that thought it safe
to bloom so early.

April

In the pastel blur
of the garden,
the cherry
and redbud

shake rain
from their delicate
shoulders, as petals
of pink

dogwood
wash down the ditches
in dreamlike
rivers of color.

May

May apple, daffodil,
hyacinth, lily,
and by the front
porch steps

every billowing
shade of purple
and lavender lilac,
my mother’s favorite flower,

sweet breath drifting through
the open windows:
perfume of memory—conduit
of spring.

June

The June bug
on the screen door
whirs like a small,
ugly machine,

and a chorus of frogs
and crickets drones like Musak
at all the windows.

What we don’t quite see

comforts us.

Blink of lightning, grumble
of thunder—just the heat
clearing its throat.

July

Tonight the fireflies
light their brief
candles
in all the trees

of summer—
color of moonflakes,
color of fluorescent
lace

where the ocean drags
its torn hem
over the dark
sand.

August

Barefoot
and sun-dazed,
I bite into this ripe peach
of a month,

gathering children
into my arms
in all their sandy
glory,

heaping
my table each night
with nothing
but corn and tomatoes.

September

Their summer romance
over, the lovers
still cling
to each other

the way the green
leaves cling
to their trees
in the strange heat

of September, as if
this time
there will be
no autumn.

October

How suddenly
the woods
have turned
again.

I feel

like Daphne, standing
with my arms
outstretched
to the season,

overtaken
by color, crowned
with the hammered gold
of leaves.

November

These anonymous
leaves, their wet
bodies pressed
against the window

or falling past—
I count them
in my sleep,
absolving gravity,

absolving even death
who knows as I do
the imperatives
of the season.

December

The white dove of winter
sheds its first
fine feathers;
they melt

as they touch
the warm ground
like notes
of a once familiar

music; the earth
shivers and
turns towards
the solstice.

The New Dog Read Poem

Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and paper
and pen, has come
this manic animal
whose innocent disruptions
make nonsense
of my old simplicities-
as if I needed him
to prove again that after
all the careful planning,
anything can happen.

To A Daughter Leaving Home Read Poem

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

Traveling Light Read Poem

I am only leaving you
for a handful of days
but it feels as thought
i will be gone forever
the way the door closes
behind me with such solidity
the way my suitcase
carries everything
i'd need for an eternity
of traveling light
i have left my hotel number
on your desk, instructions
about the dog
and heating dinner.

but
like the weather front
they warn is on its way
with its switchblades
of wind and ice
our lives have minds
of their own

Vermilion Read Poem

Pierre Bonnard would enter
the museum with a tube of paint
in his pocket and a sable brush.

Then violating the sanctity
of one of his own frames
he'd add a stroke of vermilion
to the skin of a flower.

Just so I stopped you
at the door this morning
and licking my index finger, removed
an invisible crumb
from your vermilion mouth.

As if
at the ritual moment of departure
I had to show you still belonged to me.

As if revision were
the purest form of love.

Vertical Read Poem

Perhaps the purpose of leaves is to conceal
the verticality of trees which we notice in December
as if for the first time: row after row of dark forms
yearning upwards.

And since we will be horizontal
ourselves for so long, let us now honor
the gods of the vertical: stalks of wheat which
to the ant must seem as high as these trees do to us,
silos and telephone poles, stalagmites and skyscrapers.

but most of all these winter oaks, these soft-fleshed poplars,
this birch whose bark is like roughened skin against
which I lean my chilled head, not ready to lie down.

What We Want Read Poem

What we want
is never simple.

We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names--
now they want us.

But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.

We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.

We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.

It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.

Wind Chill Read Poem

The door of winter
is frozen shut,
and like the bodies
of long extinct animals, cars
lie abandoned wherever
the cold road has taken them.

How ceremonious snow is,
with what quiet severity
it turns even death to a formal
arrangement.

Alone at my window, I listen
to the wind,
to the small leaves clicking
in their coffins of ice.

Agoraphobia Read Poem

1.

Imagine waking
to a scene of snow so new
not even memories
of other snow
can mar its silken
surface.

What other innocence
is quite like this,
and who can blame me
for refusing
to violate such whiteness
with the booted cruelty
of tracks?

2.

Though I cannot leave this house,
I have memorized the view
from every window—
23 framed landscapes, containing
each nuance of weather and light.

And I know the measure
of every room, not as a prisoner
pacing a cell
but as the embryo knows
the walls of the womb, free
to swim as its body tells it, to nudge
the softly fleshed walls,
dreading only the moment
of contraction when it will be forced
into the gaudy world.

3.

Sometimes I travel as far
as the last stone
of the path, but
every step,
as in the children's story,
pricks that tender place
on the bottom of the foot,
and like an ebbing tide with all
the obsession of the moon behind it,
I am dragged back.

4.

I have noticed in windy fall
how leaves are torn from the trees,
each leaf waving goodbye to the oak
or the poplar that housed it;
how the moon, pinned
to the very center of the window,
is like a moth wanting only to break in.

What I mean is this house
follows all the laws of lintel and ridgepole,
obeys the commandments of broom
and of needle, custom and grace.

It is not fear that holds me here but passion
and the uncrossable moat of moonlight
outside the bolted doors.

The Answering Machine Read Poem

I call and hear your voice
on the answering machine
weeks after your death,
a fledgling ghost still longing
for human messages.

Shall I leave one, telling
how the fabric of our lives
has been ripped before
but that this sudden tear will not
be mended soon or easily?

In your emptying house, others
roll up rugs, pack books,
drink coffee at your antique table,
and listen to messages left
on a machine haunted

by the timbre of your voice,
more palpable than photographs
or fingerprints.

On this first day
of this first fall without you,
ashamed and resisting

but compelled, I dial again
the number I know by heart,
thankful in a diminished world
for the accidental mercy of machines,
then listen and hang up.

At the Air and Space Museum Read Poem

When I was
nearly six my

father
opened his magic

doctor bag:
two

tongue depressors fastened by
a rubber

band;
one flick

of his hairy wrist
and lo!

we invented
flight.

The Birds Read Poem

are heading south, pulled
by a compass in the genes.

They are not fooled
by this odd November summer,
though we stand in our doorways
wearing cotton dresses.

We are watching them

as they swoop and gather—
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart.

When they rustle among
the empty branches, the trees
must think their lost leaves
have come back.

The birds are heading south,
instinct is the oldest story.

They fly over their doubles,
the mute weathervanes,
teaching all of us
with their tailfeathers
the true north.

Counting Backwards Read Poem

How did I get so old,
I wonder,
contemplating
my 67th birthday.

Dyslexia smiles:
I’m 76 in fact.

There are places
where at 60 they start
counting backwards;
in Japan
they start again
from one.

But the numbers
hardly matter.

It’s the physics
of acceleration I mind,
the way time speeds up
as if it hasn’t guessed

the destination—
where look!
I see my mother
and father bearing a cake,
waiting for me
at the starting line.

The Death of the Bee Read Poem

The biography of the bee
is written in honey
and is drawing
to a close.

Soon the buzzing
plainchant of summer
will be silenced
for good;

the flowers, unkindled
will blaze
one last time
and go out.

And the boy nursing
his stung ankle this morning
will look back
at his brief tears

with something
like regret,
remembering the amber
taste of honey.

The Deathwatch Beetle Read Poem

1.

A cardinal hurls itself
at my window all morning long,
trying so hard to penetrate
its own reflection
I almost let it in myself,
though once I saw
another red bird, crazed
by the walls of a room,
spatter its feathers
all over the house.

2.

My whole childhood is coming apart,
the last stitches
about to be ripped out
with your death,
and I will be left—ridiculous,
to write
condolence letters
to myself.

3.

Thedeathwatch beetledeathwatch beetleA small beetle which sounds like a ticking watch when boring into wood
earned its name
not from its ugliness
or our terror
of insects
but simply because of the sound
it makes, ticking.

4.

When your spirit
perfects itself,
will it escape
out of a nostril,
or through thespiralspiral / passageRefers to the cochlea of the inner ear
passagespiral / passageRefers to the cochlea of the inner earof an ear?

Or is it even now battering
against your thin skull, wild
to get through, blood brother
to this crimson bird?

Egg Read Poem

In this kingdom
the sun never sets;
under the pale oval
of the sky
there seems no way in
or out,
and though there is a sea here
there is no tide.

For the egg itself
is a moon
glowing faintly
in the galaxy of the barn,
safe but for the spoon's
ominous thunder,
the first delicate crack
of lightning.

Elizabethan Read Poem

Her sex sent her mother
to the tower,
made her father profligate
with arrogant desires,

but she was made of flint
and backbone.

Think of a young girl
in a blue velvet bodice,
a white collar and lace,
the very prototype
of virginal.

Think of a woman, her court
enlivened by suitors and lovers
in doublets, in brocaded cloaks,
despite suspicions of their motives
staining the sheets,

the way cups of spicy,
flowery mead were sipped
despite the possibility
of poison.

Even the crown of the sun
must go down each night.

Could she have stood at the prow
of a ship in that great Armada she ordered,
instead of at a window, waiting
for urgent results?

Could she have guessed that the words
of a man she inspired, carved
into the marble of ages,
had a muscular beauty
more than equal
to her own worldly triumphs?

Daughter, Queen, Ruler
of roiling seas, of meandering
rivers and meadows,
of armies of soldiers, their swords
and armor glittering
like planets to her sun.

Namesake to an age.

And Poet?

When she turned
to the empty parchment
(or once to a windowpane,
a diamond for quill)
everything
must have gone quiet.

Even a queen is naked
before the naked page, awaiting
not the generous spoils owed to a victor
but the gifts freely given
of a besotted muse.

Eyes Only Read Poem

Dear lost sharer
of silences,
I would send a letter
the way the tree sends messages
in leaves,
or the sky in exclamations
of pure cloud.

Therefore I write
in this blue
ink, color
of secret veins
and arteries.

It is morning here.

Already the postman walks

the innocent streets,
dangerous as Aeolus
with his bag of winds,
or Hermes, the messenger,
god of sleep and dreams
who traces my image
upon this stamp.

In public buildings
letters are weighed
and sorted like meat;
in railway stations
huge sacks of mail
are hidden like robbers' booty
behind freight-car doors.

And in another city
the conjurer
will hold a fan of letters
before your outstretched hand—
"Pick any card.

.

.

"
You must tear the envelope
as you would tear bread.

Only then dark rivers
of ink will thaw
and flow
under all the bridges
we have failed
to build
between us.

Faith Read Poem

With the seal of science
emblazoned
on your forehead,
like the old Good Housekeeping
Seal of Approval,
I believe what you tell me
about cells and molecules,
though I can't see them.

And though the language you speak
is full of numbers and symbols
I'll never understand;
though your tie is askew
and your hair unruly, still I believe
what you say about the size of the universe,
which is either expanding or contracting,
I've forgotten which already.

So if tomorrow you tell me
you made a small miscalculation,
that God indeed created the world
in 6 short days, then rested on the 7th,
that it was Eve who landed us
in all this trouble, I would believe you.

I would believe you
as I've always done before.

I Am Learning to Abandon the World Read Poem

I am learning to abandon the world
before it can abandon me.

Already I have given up the moon
and snow, closing my shades
against the claims of white.

And the world has taken
my father, my friends.

I have given up melodic lines of hills,
moving to a flat, tuneless landscape.

And every night I give my body up
limb by limb, working upwards
across bone, towards the heart.

But morning comes with small
reprieves of coffee and birdsong.

A tree outside the window
which was simply shadow moments ago
takes back its branches twig
by leafy twig.

And as I take my body back
the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap
as if to make amends.

Misreading Housman Read Poem

On this first day of spring, snow
covers the fruit trees, mingling improbably
with the new blossoms like identical twins
brought up in different hemispheres.

It is not what Housman meant
when he wrote of the cherry
hung with snow, though he also knew
how death can mistake the seasons,
and if he made it all sound pretty,
that was our misreading
in those high school classrooms
where, drunk on boredom, we had to recite
his poems.

Now the weather is always looming

in the background, trying to become more
than merely scenery, and though today
it is telling us something
we don't want to hear, it is all
so unpredictable, so out of control
that we might as well be children again,
hearing the voices of thunder
like baritone uncles shouting
in the next room as we try to sleep,
or hearing the silence of snow falling
soft as a coverlet, even in springtime
whispering: relax, there is nothing
you can possibly do about any of this.

The Obligation to Be Happy Read Poem

It is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.

But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.

And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
to sadness were a hidden vice—
that downward tug on my mouth,
my old suspicion that health
and love are brief irrelevancies,
no more than laughter in the warm dark
strangled at dawn.

Happiness.

I try to hoist it
on my narrow shoulders again—
a knapsack heavy with gold coins.

I stumble around the house,
bump into things.

Only Midas himself
would understand.

The Quarrel Read Poem

If there were a monument
to silence, it would not be
the tree whose leaves
murmur continuously
among themselves;

nor would it be the pond
whose seeming stillness
is shattered
by the quicksilver
surfacing of fish.

If there were a monument
to silence, it would be you
standing so upright, so unforgiving,
your mute back deflecting
every word I say.

Remembering Frost at Kennedy’s Inauguration Read Poem

Even the flags seemed frozen
to their poles, and the men
stamping their well-shod feet
resembled an army of overcoats.

But we were young and fueled
by hope, our ardor burned away
the cold.

We were the president’s,
and briefly the president would be ours.

The old poet stumbled
over his own indelible words,
his breath a wreath around his face:
a kind of prophecy.

The Safecracker Read Poem

On nights when the moon seems impenetrable—
a locked porthole to space;
when the householder bars his windows
and doors, and his dog lies until dawn,
one jeweled eye open; when the maiden sleeps
with her rosy knees sealed tightly together,
on such nights the safecracker sets to work.

Axe .

.

.

Chisel .

.

.

Nitroglycerin .

.

.

Within the vault lie forty thousand
tons of gold; the heaped up spoils
of Ali Baba's cave; the secrets of the molecule.

He sands his fingertips
to feel the subtle vibrations
of wheel lining up, just so, with wheel.

His toolmarks are his fingerprints.

And now a crack appears on the side
of the egg, a single fault line,
and within: the golden yolk just waiting.

A kind of wind .

.

.

a door flies open .

.

.

a glitter
of forsythia forced out of the branch.

With smoothest fingertips you touch
the locked cage of my ribs .

.

.

just so.

My knees fall open.

And Cleopatra smiles,
whose own Egyptians first invented the lock.

Why Are Your Poems so Dark? Read Poem

Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?

"

Ask the moon.

Ask what it has witnessed.