SEASONS |
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I see you in every season, Laughing on a summer pond overhung with willows And ripple-kissed by little fish, Quiet in cathedrals of autumn trees; An arc of light when gray and brown are turning white. And when insistent green breaks crusted cold, I see you flower delicate and flower bold. |
Florence Thurman's Gift to Me |
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We carry histories with us when we die. Those who come to clear the furniture will ask, "Why all this clutter?" And holding a piece of blackened wood, "Of what use is this?" There is no provenance to say How it burned in some fisherman's fire On a sandy shoal in summer, Or how I pulled it from the river rise, Leaning precariously over the brown rush. I gave it to a friend Who said, "Bring me a piece of river drift. When Theodore fishes, he forgets." Smoothed by the river's scour, The broad base narrows to a swept-back point, As if modeled with intent, not by random artifice. Offered with pride and taken with pleasure, She found it fit to place on her polished table Between the Bible and her photographs. When she died, I took it back, A gift enriched by memory As when a summer evening's sun Throws long shadows across a lawn And gives glory to a trumpet vine clinging to a wall.
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Clear Cutting: With Thoughts of Gerard Manley Hopkins |
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Devastation is not the word, And I cannot think of one, For what has happened here, But only grieve for what is gone. No more cathedrel light Through white oak leaves, Or etchings on a winter sky Attenuated again and yet again to the finist fissure. Spring will not unfold Its canopy for summer song above a leaf meal floor Where efts and crickets nestle, Networks of nations, Resevours of deep, fresh things, left to parch Without God's green wings.
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April's Promises Unkeptsyllable the wind That hurries past the gray and then calls it back again.
No green sea is so cold
Blooms are battered and walkers scattered |
Winter WindOver ground that fragments, Lofting and tumbling in the wind. Trunks shot with light or crossed by shadow Stud the hillside where four deer rise To stand and stare, The fluid grace of flight held tight Until they spring -- a quick discharge Beneath the long reflex of trees.
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The water-tight door rattles open, and I am smothered in the Wet-wool night, the tropics with grit in the air.
Vague and luminous, gas flairs mark the meeting of black sky
Red lights in the pilothouse. Muffled words from the watch. Fifty miles from Iraq, the stowaway crickets sing.
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True things are often simple, And homage to those who see them first and say them best, For permutation, embedded concatenation, and random mutation complex puzzles, While metaphor, and his millipede, analogy, May map a new dance by following the lead.
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Beside the blue wheelbarrow Filled with pumpkins, You stand, arms akimbo, Right leg crossing left, Delicate arch of your foot Hidden in vines.
Like sun and air,
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In the orchard, seven purple iris stand in convocation. Do they chastise the libidinous birds, Deny their passion for the bee, Hold all hybrids heretic? Do they contend the falling of the leaves As we conjecture the fate of stars? Do they whisper of mortality? Or, indeed, is vegetable life blest That it only knows to face the light, So frailty and failure come As the setting of the sun?
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On the computer screen, Pictures of a bleached and shabby land: A bloody shark hanging in the market; Stubbled men drinking tea, Amused at the foreign photographer. On my lap, Leonie adjusts herself, And leaning back, nestles there. Where is a thing so sweet in Araby?
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It's October on the farm Where the pear tree grows In the bean field.
The fruit hangs heavily form the highest branches.
In the afternoon, we come
I climb the ladder
Sharply struck, the pears fall with a thud,
We play a blind man's game finding them:
Afraid of wasps, you step gingerly,
The buckets nearly full, and your patience gone,
Proud of the work now done,
you drag a bucket
Later, when our pears are pealed, cut,
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She comes from play With leaves tangled in her hair And a scent like some wild thing, More at home where wood's mold Makes a pungent floor -- Fecund ground for jasmine To twine its slender way to light.
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TimeAnd a week's work once a day's. As time compresses, the morning shower collides with the dinner hour, While raking leaves stretches to The blooming of the daffodils -- A strange relativity never calculated by Mr. Einstein. But the cosmic clock holds true. The same summer hour finds boys catching crayfish in the creek, And an old man trying on the shade for fit. His shuffling gate and bent shape tell us The gold and silver hours are not time spent But payment accrued for the ferryman.
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From the cold deck, I see the stars' brittle light. Matter seems desperate to escape, Racing to fill a void greater than despair; A suicide of energy, rushing to claim what is nothing While interstices gap greater, Letting nothingness well through.
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Together we planted the cypress tree. You, on muddy knees, pushed dirt over roots, Blond hair lay on your blue shirt. I held the trunk and heeled the earth. But you planted more than a tree that day. In fallow time and fertile need, you took root, Turning my season into May.
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The year turns toward the new equinox As we ride bicycles on country roads Past pines made greener by the red and yellow leaves.
Sometimes we ride in tandem,
Yet, it's not each other we revolve around;
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Early morning On the porch Between Fruit Loops And lessons, You breathe The honeysuckle air And hear the pipes Of a perfect spring In Arcadia.
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I am naked before you, Nailed up like a target, Open to your thrusts and blows, And if you deftly cut With blades that I have forged, Or strike with knotted cords As I have taught, Can I cry cruelty and bid you stop And pierce your poor heart with guilt, The most terrible weapon of my art?
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What is my winter's store? Your picture on the Blue Ridge, A brush with your fine hair, Your voice on a tape I play again. Our time was not a planting, but a gathering That cannot keep me in this cold.
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A damp chill had crept into the house, Empty for a winter's week, Claiming the room and taking the best chair Before the iron-cold stove Where I found a bluebird on the ashes. A proposition is the product of a rule, The grammars say, but I wondered How abstract a grammar must be To parse such a sentence.
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You were the light that made gray things glow, That danced across life's little acts Making them shine Like sun on windy water. A walk, a drive, a meal, a game, an idleness Were lighted to relief when your bright being joyed all.
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In Kentucky, I could hear the wind On the far ridge, and then silence Before it leaped the hollow and tumbled against the cabin.
Between the warning and the shock,
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When I am dead and dissipate, Let me linger on -- A light prisomed by a mist, A locust-laden plume of night, A throb that bruits a plated pond, A down, a gnarl, a polish from a water run. Let me be a stitch in God's outer self, A blessing to the sentient, And integral to all. |
Kathryn at the PianoI watch your face So attentive to the notes Dancing across the page.
It's not just attention,
Suprise and pleasure
At this instant,
Besides sun and trees,
You make the time
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