#9

white petals sprinkled
on grass.
Sweep the lawn

Happiness

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

Ray Carver

#8

sleepless nights
wrestling with the pillow
wide open spaces, taming
A sensuous love

Speed and Perfection

How quickly the season of apricots is over--
a single night's wind is enough.
I kneel on the ground, lifting one, then the next.
Eating those I can, before the bruises appear.

Jane Hirshfield

#7

On the southern peninsula, the western ghats
can get chilly
the moon in a quiet way
instills energy and light to the dark faced hills
.
wearing jackets and boots armed with sticks
we had set out
it was a restless winter
at night we followed tracks used by the locals
.
in the vast openness away from the civilized world
it is easy to get lost
to lose yourself
warmth of the body can be felt
like a scent, it's in the air
.
The orchestra of crickets break
the silence, pebbles on the bank give away
a little of themselves everytime
the stream passes over them
.
we saw ants
had a way of getting anywhere and cold
water in the morning took our breath away
.
the winter sun and his love
touched every leaf and animal nurturing
giving life
.
it was then when you touched me
i realised that most answers are simple
some traced on my back with an index finger

Under One Small Star

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologise for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.
I apologise to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at
five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don't rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,
you gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don't pay me much attention.
Dignity please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from
your train.
Soul, don't take offense that I've only got you now and then.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man.
I know that I won't be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

Wislawa Symborska

#6

As children we spoke
of treasures
great voyages
.
across the seas
pirates, longboats
treasure maps desserted islands
lost gold
..
as the year of the horse
comes to a close
and spring turns to
winter. We still talk
.
of gold, we found
on our voyages
the treasures of
.
our hearts

In time I shall be Gursimran Singh

Facing it

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

Yusef Komunyakaa

#5

clumsy love

in the fragments of thought
sentenses stumble, subtle
words break

Finally!

SPRING LEMONADE

In late April they spread manure on the fields
the same week the lilac hedges bloom,
so the nose gets one of those symphonic challenges
that require you to stand out on the porch and breathe.

The earth goes around a corner, the dresser drawers slide out
and naturally, we change our clothes,
putting the long underwear away,
taking out the short-sleeve shirts,

trying to make the transition
from psychological Moscowto psychological Hawaii.
When Mary left her husband in December,
she made herself despise him
as a way of pushing off,
like you would push off from the wall of a swimming pool,

but then she gradually believed her own story
of how horrible he was,

and when I talked to her in March,
she was still spitting on his memory:
you would have thought she never had a heart.

There's a wheel turning in the center of the earth
and over it, our feet are always running, running,
trying to keep pace.
Then there's a period of quietude and rue,
when you want to crawl inside yourself,
when you prefer ugliness to hope.

Last night the sunset was so pink and swollen
the sky looked like it had gotten an infection.

We were sitting on the lawn and sipping lemonade.
Inflamed clouds were throbbing in the fevered light.
Shannon murmured, Somebody better call a doctor.
Kath said, Somebody get some aspirin.
But nobody moved.

And the smell of lilacs and manure blew out of the fields
with such complexity and sweetness, we closed our eyes.
It had nothing to do with being good, or smart, or choosing right.
It had to do with being lucky--
something none of us had ever imagined.

— Tony Hoagland

#4

That night
she took

her thoughts,
blended them with

her coffee

Eternity

Because Lena's not yet three,
she doesn't know the reason for this place.
"I like this little house. And this little house,"
she says as she loops around them
-the play-size "houses" of the dead.
Here in Key West, as in New Orleans,
where the land and sea are nearly level,
some are set just above the surface,
and Lena leans on their "big stone beds."
But since Lena's not yet three,
she doesn't know what any of it means:
she doesn't know where the earth rolls away to
every night while she's asleep
or who rolls with it-some above it, some below.
And because she doesn't know,
she moves in waves of joy
like the spirit on the surface of the waters
-before it ever thought of light.
She squeezes between two "beds"
that are stretched out side by side
one's bigger than the other
and pats them, left then right,
and reunites what slipped apart a hundred years ago:
a mother-and her child of a day.
We learn this from their surnames and the dates
-but Lena doesn't read,
and there's no reason to explain.
We watch her bolt through the gate
where the men of the Maine
sail on in shipshape rows
as she splashes among their stones.
"God Was Good to Me," one epitaph proclaims,
but Lena has no knowledge of God.
Or his goodness. Or the opposite implied
-though expressed on every side
in the silent houses of the dead.
When we say it's time to go, she runs ahead again,
drops down before an upright stone,
and moves her finger across its surface.
She runs to another, repeats her motions
as she reads its lines out loud:
The name. The date. And the other.
-And though she's still too young to read,
she reads them anyhow:
"I love you. I love you. I love you."
-But how could she know?--How could she know
what would trump all the mansions of gold?

John Murray

#3

stars twinkle
as snowflakes
wrapped in cotton
.
Fall on me

Cartoon Physics, part 1

Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down -- earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come
with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,
& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point
the bridge will give, who will swim to safety
& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.

Nick Flynn