Category Poets

Seven white butterfliesdelicate in a hurry lookhow they bang the pages of their wings as they flyto the fields of mustard yellowand orange and plaingold all eternity is in the moment this is whatBlake said Whitman said suchwisdom in the…

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives—tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hangingfrom the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer, feel like?Do you think this world is…

1.I rose this morning early as usual, and went to my desk.But it’s spring,and the thrush is in the woods,somewhere in the twirled branches, and he is singing.And so, now, I am standing by the open door.And now I am…

1.Welcome to the silly, comforting poem. It is not the sunrise,which is a red rinse,which is flaring all over the eastern sky; it is not the rain falling out of the purse of God; it is not the blue helmet…

1.Fat,black, slick,galloping in the pitchof the waves, in the pearly fields of the sea,they leap toward us,they rise, sparkling, and vanish, and risesparkling,they breathe little clouds of mist, they liftperpetual smiles, they slap their tails on the waves, grandmothers and…

The white stones were mountains, then they went traveling.The pink stones also were part of a mountain beforethe glacier’s tongue gathered them up.Now they lie resting under the waves.The green stones are lovelier than the blue stones, I thought for…

All afternoon I have been walking over the dunes,hurrying from one thick raft of the wrinkled, saltroses to another, leaning down close to their darkor pale petals, red as blood or white as snow. Andnow I am beginning to breathe…

You are standing at the edge of the woodsat twilightwhen something beginsto sing, like a waterfall pouring downthrough the leaves. It isthe thrush.And you are just sinking down into your thoughts,taking inthe sweetness of it—those chords,those pursed twirls—when you hear…

Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I?Can’t fly, can’t run, and see how slowly I walk.Well, I think, I can read books. “What’s that you’re doing?”the green-headed fly shouts as it buzzes past.I close the book.Well, I…

A mink, jointless as heat, wastip-toeing along the edge of the creek,which was still in its coat of snow, yet singing—I could hear it!—the old song of brightness.It was one of those places, turning and twisty,that Ruskin might have painted,…