Another blue for shadows over snow.The clear or cloudy sky uses blue twice-Both different blues. And hills row after rowAre colored blue according to how far.You know the bluejay’s double-blur deviceShows best when there are no green leaves to show.And Sirius is a winterbluegreen star.
Weather has stained the shingles darkAnd indistinguishable from bark.Lichen that long ago adjournedIts lodging here has now returned.And if you look in through the doorYou see a sapling through the floor.
Come wake me up. Come any hourOf night. Come whistling up the road.Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.Make me get out of bed and comeAnd let you in and light a light.Tell me the northern lights are onAnd make me look. Or tell me cloudsAre doing something to the moonThey never did before,…
He thought of Virgil, Virgil who wasn’t there to chat with.History he never forgave for letting Latinlapse into Italian, a renegade jabberingmusical enough but not enough to call musicSo he conversed with stones, imperial and papal.Even the preposterous popes he could condonea moment for the clean arrogance of their inscriptions.He asked the Italians only to…
Are vegetable hearts) were worn on sleeves,The squash’s are. In green the squash vine gushes.The flowers are cornucopias of summer,Briefly exuberant and cheaply golden.And if they make a show of being hidden,Are open promiscuously to every comer.Let the squash be what it was doomed to beBy the old Gardener with the shrewd green thumb.Let it…
But once upon a timeThere were three old women.One wore a small beardAnd carried a big umbrella.One stood in the middleOf the road hailing cars.One drove an old cartAll over the town collecting junk.They were not weird sisters,No relation to one another.A duly accredited witch INever heard Amherst ever hadBut as I say thereWere these…
The stones are grayAnd so are they.And both are weatherworn and round,Leading the eye back to the ground.Two mingled flocks –The sheep, the rocks.And still no sheep stirs from its placeOr lifts its Babylonian face.
woodsmoke cowbarn honeysuckle woodpilesawhorse bucksaw outhouse wellsweepbackdoor flagstone bulkhead buttermilkcandlestick ragrug firedog brownbreadhilltop outcrop cowbell buttercupwhetstone thunderstorm pitchfork steeplebushgristmill millstone cornmeal waterwheelwatercress buckwheat firefly jewelweedgravestone groundpine windbreak bedrockweathercock snowfall starlight cockcrow
(Hal for short) boy with wind-wild hair.It means Praise God, as well it should since praiseIs what God’s for. Why didn’t they call my fatherHallelujah instead of Ebenezer?Eben, of course, but christened Ebenezer,Product of Nova Scotia (hallelujah).Daniel, a country doctor, was his fatherAnd my father his tenth and final boy.A baby and last, he had…
in sun, and I am one.Such merriment and such sobriety–the small wild fruit on the tall stalk–was this not always my true style?Above an elegance of snow, beneatha silk-blue sky a brotherhood of fourbirds. Can you mistake us?To sun, to feast, and to converseand all together–for this I have abandonedall my other lives.Submitted by Larry…
