SON

By Craig Morgan Teicher


I don’t even know where my father lives.
I know his number, and whenever
I call he answers and gives
the usual update about getting together
with the stepkids and their kids,
about the latest minor crises
with his health, about what he did
with Maryanne for their anniversary.
He lives somewhere in Connecticut,
near where he lived before.
It’s been easy not to go there, but
I know I should—there won’t always be more
time. There will always be less.
I don’t even know my father’s address.

An Instructor’s Dream

By Bill Knott, 1940 - 2014


Many decades after graduation
the students sneak back onto
the school-grounds at night
and within the pane-lit windows
catch me their teacher at the desk
or blackboard cradling a chalk:
someone has erased their youth,
and as they crouch closer to see
more it grows darker and quieter
than they have known in their lives,
the lesson never learned surrounds
them: why have they come? Is
there any more to memorize now
at the end than there was then—
What is it they peer at through shades
of time to hear, X times X repeated,
my vain efforts to corner a room’s
snickers? Do they mock me? Forever?
Out there my past has risen in
the eyes of all my former pupils but
I wonder if behind them others
younger and younger stretch away
to a day whose dawn will never
ring its end, its commencement bell.

Death

BY BILL KNOTT

Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest. 

They will place my hands like this. 

It will look as though I am flying into myself.

The Real Thing

By John Freeman


You’re perfectly fine now – well, like me, still
recovering from our strenuous week,
but fine compared with how you seemed to be
yesterday morning when I heard you call
help me, please, and I thought maybe a spider
needed removing, or something was stuck,
or would take two people to shift. From your voice
I couldn’t tell it was anything more,
and that you spoke undemonstratively
because you were on the point of passing out.
Which you did, eventually, after sighing,
groaning oh dear and looking strangely white,
by which time I was sitting next to you.
When you fainted finally I missed it,
hoping you were gathering your forces,
wondering whether you might be dying,
wishing I’d never not been nice to you.
Later the doctor, who was reassuring,
you told me, said it had been a true faint
and I wondered what a false faint might be,
but it was satisfying somehow to have
the authenticity of yours confirmed.
You said that when you opened your eyes at last
you were grateful to find me there with you,
which was, as I said then, and say again,
a feeling very much reciprocated.

Saudade

John Freeman

means nostalgia, I’m told, but also

nostalgia for what never was. Isn’t it

the same thing? At a café

in Rio flies wreathe my glass.

 

How you would have loved this: the waiter

sweating his knit shirt dark. Children

loping, in tiny suits or long shorts, dragging

toys and towels to the beach. We talk,

 

or I talk, and imagine your answer, the heat clouding our view.

Here, again, grief fashioned in its cruelest translation:

my imagined you is all I have left of you.

Chanukah II

Pachim Ketanim
By Yossi Huttler

after all the holy wars

you’ve fought

all the wounds and scars

and defilement

search yourself

for that one incorruptible

jug of oil

retrieve it

kindle it

and find yourself

illuminating

a miraculously long time

For Chanukah

Subway
By Billy Collins
As you fly swift underground
with a song in your ears
or lost in the maze of a book

Remember the ones who descended here
into the mire of bedrock
to bore a hole through the granite

to clear a passage for you
where there was only darkness
Remeber as you come up into the light

SOME TREES

--John Ashbery

These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance. 
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.

Cheerios

BY BILLY COLLINS

One bright morning in a restaurant in Chicago

as I waited for my eggs and toast,

I opened the Tribune only to discover

that I was the same age as Cheerios.

Indeed, I was a few months older than Cheerios

for today, the newspaper announced,

was the seventieth birthday of Cheerios

whereas mine had occurred earlier in the year.

Already I could hear them whispering

behind my stooped and threadbare back,

Why that dude’s older than Cheerios

the way they used to say

Why that’s as old as the hills, 

only the hills are much older than Cheerios

or any American breakfast cereal,

and more noble and enduring are the hills,

I surmised as a bar of sunlight illuminated my orange juice.

Thanksgiving

Billy Collins

The thing about the huge platter 
of sliced celery, broccoli florets, 
and baby tomatoes you had arranged 
to look like a turkey with its tail fanned out 
was that all our guests were so intimidated 
by the perfection of the design 
no one dared disturb the symmetry 
by removing so much as the nub of a carrot. 

And the other thing about all that 
was that it took only a few minutes 
for the outline of the turkey to disappear 
once the guests were encouraged to dig in, 
so that no one would have guessed 
that this platter of scattered vegetables ever bore 
the slightest resemblance to a turkey 
or any other two- or four-legged animal. 

It reminded me of the sand mandalas 
so carefully designed by Tibetan monks 
and then just as carefully destroyed 
by lines scored across the diameter of the circle, 
the variously colored sand then swept 
into a pile and carried in a vessel 
to the nearest moving water and poured in-- 
a reminder of the impermanence of art and life. 

Only, in the case of the vegetable turkey 
such a reminder was never intended. 
Or if it was, I was too busy slicing up 
even more vivid lessons in impermanence 
to notice.  I mean the real turkey minus its head 
and colorful feathers, and the ham 
minus the pig minus its corkscrew tail 
and minus the snout once happily slathered in mud.

(From The Rain in Portugal, 77-78).

The Ideal

By James Fenton

This is where I came from.
I passed this way.
This should not be shameful
or hard to say.

A self is a self.
It is not a screen.
A person should respect
what he has been.

This is my past
which I shall not discard.
This is the ideal.
This is hard.

Distant Shame (excerpt)

By Zelda

I am bound in gratitude

to a pale green leaf -

for a leaf

is a hand

that pulls my soul from the abyss

with a simple, silky affection,

with no judgment about my life;

for a leaf is a startling story of freshness

and revival of the dead

Hurry

BY MARIE HOWE

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store 

and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

Central Park

By Sarah Shapiro

I took you to the zoo today,
although you were not there.
We marvelled at the parrots,
slowed down going by the bears.

I watched you as you watched the seals,
linked arms with you at snakes.
You gazed at the gorillas
for as long as wonder takes.

It's not so hard being by yourself
It's not so hard to walk
along the paths of Central Park
if you've got with whom to talk.

But to look a thing of beauty
very closely in its eyes,
that's going too far for a heart that knows
it's alone.

Hence these lies.

God the Architect

by Harry Kemp

Who thou art I know not,

But this much I know:

Thou hast set the Pleiades

In a silver row;

Thou hast sent the trackless winds

Loose upon their way;

Thou hast reared a colored wall

Twixt the night and day;

Thou hast made the flowers to blow,

And the stars to shine;

Hid rare gems of richest ore

In the tunneled mine —

But, chief of all thy wondrous works,

Supreme of all thy plan,

Thou hast put an upward reach

In the heart of Man.

Hide-and-Seek 1933

by Galway Kinnell

Once when we were playing
hide-and-seek and it was time
to go home, the rest gave up
on the game before it was done
and forgot I was still hiding.
I remained hidden as a matter
of honor until the moon rose.

from Strong Is Your Hold. © Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.

Rule #45, The Playbook

By Kwame Alexander

Dribble, 
fake, 
shoot, 
miss; 

dribble, 
fake, 
shoot, 
miss; 

dribble, 
fake, 
shoot, 
miss; 

dribble, 
fake, 
shoot, 
swish.

All or Nothing at All

 By Arthur Altman

All or nothing at all
Half love never appealed to me
If your heart never could yield to me
Then I'd rather have nothing at all

All or nothing at all
If it's love there is no in between
Why begin, then cry for something that might have been
No, I rather have nothing at all

But, please, don't bring your lips so close to my cheek
Don't smile or I'll be lost beyond recall
The kiss in your eyes, the touch of your hand makes me weak
And my heart may grow dizzy and fall

And if I fell under the spell of your call
I would be caught in the undertow
So, you see, I've got to say
No, no - all or nothing at all

Here and Now (Excerpt)

By Stephen Dunn

Electricity may start things,
but if they're to last
I've come to understand
a steady, low-voltage hum

of affection
must be arrived at...

Riding To Vanity Fair

Paul McCartney

I bit my tongue
I never talked too much
I tried to be so strong
I did my best
I used the gentle touch
I've done it for so long

You put me down
But I can laugh it off
And act like nothing's wrong

But why pretend
I think I've heard enough
Of your familiar song

I tell you what I'm going to do
I'll try to take my mind off you
And now that you don't need my help
I'll use the time to think about myself

You're not aware
Of what you put me through
But now the feeling's gone
But I don't mind
Do what you have to do
You don't fool anyone

I'll tell you what I'm going to do
I'll take a different point of view
And now that you don't need my help
I'll use the time to think about myself

The definition of friendship
Apparently ought to be
Showing support for the
One that you love
And I was open to friendship
But you didn't seem to have any to spare
While you were riding to Vanity Fair

There was a time
When every day was young
The sun would always shine
We sang along
When all the songs were sung
Believing every line

That's the trouble with friendship
For someone to feel it
It has to be real
Or it wouldn't be right
And I keep hoping for friendship
But I wouldn't dare
To presume it was there
While you were riding to Vanity Fair

The Fish Bowl
By Joni Mitchel

The fish bowl is a world diverse
where fishermen with hooks that dangle
from the bottom reel up their catch
on gilded bait without a fight.

Pike, pickerel, bass, the common fish
ogle through distorting glass
see only glitter, glamour, gaiety
and weep for fortune lost.

Envy the goldfish? Why?
His bubbles are breaking ’round the rim
while silly fishes faint for him.

Promise

By Judson Mitcham

Those back roads traveled me all my life.
Time spent me in idleness, wasted me.

Small towns passed through me, the old
melodies put me on and played me,

and stars used me to reckon with.
Maybe the truth tried to find me out.

A little history learned me. Right away,
it forgot. An odd dream, here and there,

understood me. The same old stories
told me over and over, and my soul

tried to save me, until
the day night walked off into me, alone,

when a promise broke me.

You Tell On Yourself (Author Unknown)

You tell on yourself by the friends you seek,
By the very manner in which you speak,
By the way you employ your leisure time,
By the use you make of dollar and dime.

You tell what you are by the clothes you wear,
And even by the way you wear your hair,
By the kind of things at which you laugh,
By the records you play on your phonograph.

You tell what you are by the way you walk,
By the things of which you delight to talk,
By the manner in which you bury deceit,
By so simple a thing as how you eat.

By the books you choose from the well-filled shelf
In these ways and more you tell on your self.

A Child is Something Else Again

Yehuda Amichai

A child is something else again. Wakes up
in the afternoon and in an instant he's full of words,
in an instant he's humming, in an instant warm,
instant light, instant darkness.

A child is Job. They've already placed their bets on him
but he doesn't know it. He scratches his body
for pleasure. Nothing hurts yet.
They're training him to be a polite Job,
to say "Thank you" when the Lord has given,
to say "You're welcome" when the Lord has taken away.

A child is vengeance.
A child is a missile into the coming generations.
I launched him: I'm still trembling.

A child is something else again: on a rainy spring day
glimpsing the Garden of Eden through the fence,
kissing him in his sleep,
hearing footsteps in the wet pine needles.
A child delivers you from death.
Child, Garden, Rain, Fate.

Poem Without an End

Inside the brand-new museum
there’s an old synagogue.
Inside the synagogue
is me.
Inside me
my heart.
Inside my heart
a museum.
Inside the museum
a synagogue,
inside it
me,
inside me
my heart,
inside my heart
a museum

Faith

By David Whyte

I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,

slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

Very early this AM I had some beautiful haiku centered moments with a dear old friend. Here are some haiku he shared:

Breathing by a lake
Creation flows in and out
Blessings from above

The lake in my mind
Ripples flowing gently out
At One with above

Purring and so wise
On my papers so handsome
My four legged child

Had it and lost it
Pre coffee or just old me
With my friend Reb Neil

Monte (Peace In Our Time)

By David Kirby

Once I got a postcard from Joyce Carol Oates,
whose novel Unholy Loves I had reviewed favorably,
and on it (the card) she wrote,
"I think you must be a fellow Canadian,"
and I figured, well! That's me, all right:
the Mounties, Wayne Gretzky, Margaret Atwood. . . .
It wasn't until years later
when I found the card again
while cleaning up some old files
that I saw she had written
not "Canadian" but "Conradian"
(in fact, I had mentioned a Conrad essay
she'd published elsewhere),
and I thought of the poster I'd seen for a Monet show,
only the artist's name was spelled "Monte."
I could see this Monte in his plaid jacket
and his open collar and his medallion
nestled in his chest hairs just so,
calling for a corned beef sandwich,
"very lean, please," and a Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray Tonic
so he'd have the energy to finish, say,
Caesar's Palace: The Façade at Sunset.
Names mean too much;
for example, if you called a general "Genital,"
as in, "Your car's ready, Genital--urrk!"
he'd kill you in a fit of rage,
and his bodyguards, confused by the gunfire
and the screaming, would fill the air with bullets
and take him right out of the picture.
Bingo, no more war.

The Rainbow

By William Wordsworth (1770–185)

My heart leaps up when I behold 
 A rainbow in the sky:
 So was it when my life began;
 So is it now I am a man;
 So be it when I shall grow old, 5
Or let me die!
 The Child is father of the Man;
 I could wish my days to be
 Bound each to each by natural piety.

Nothing Gold Can Stay - Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

By Yehoshua November

Thank you for these tiny
particles of ocean salt,
pearl-necklace viruses,
winged protozoans:
for the infinite,
intricate shapes
of submicroscopic
living things.

For algae spores
and fungus spores,
bonded by vital
mutual genetic cooperation,
spreading their
inseparable lives
from equator to pole.

My hand, my arm,
make sweeping circles.
Dust climbs the ladder of light.
For this infernal, endless chore,
for these eternal seeds of rain:
Thank you. For dust.

Marilyn Nelson

The Reading Mother

I had a Mother who read to me
Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea,
Cutlasses clenched in their yellowed teeth,
“Blackbirds” stowed in the hold beneath.

I had a Mother who read me lays
Of ancient and gallant and golden days;
Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,
Which every boy has a right to know.

I had a Mother who read me tales
Of Gelert the hound of the hills of Wales,
True to his trust till his tragic death,
Faithfulness blent with his final breath.

I had a Mother who read me the things
That wholesome life to the boy heart brings --
Stories that stir with an upward touch,
Oh, that each Mother of boys were such!

You may have tangible wealth untold;
Chests of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I, you can never be --
For I had a Mother who read to me

Desiderata By Max Ehrman

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with G-d,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

I Dreamed a Dream

I dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the
whole of the rest of the earth —
I dream’d that was the new city of Friends —
nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest —
it was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
and in all their looks and words.

Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass (Part 66: “I Dreamed a Dream”)