For the first day of autumn, a day on which the high temperature fell twenty-four degrees from Tuesday, in honor of the day, from poetryfoundation.org.
from To Autumn / by John Keats
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease
For fairy tales, wherever they may be found, from Transformations.
from Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) / by Anne Sexton
Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist’s trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues.
For all the cats our family has known, from The Complete Poems and Plays.
from The Naming of Cats / by T.S. Eliot
The Naming of Cats is a difficulty matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
For patience and waiting and pausing, as one season currently (barely) hides the next, from One Train.
from One Train / by Kenneth Koch
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be
important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.
For, “why do I have three hard-cover copies of this book?” I’m not sure, but I think it has something to do with my shared attachment to Plath. This one’s from Birthday Letters.
from Fairy Tale / by Ted Hughes
Forty-nine was your magic number.
Forty-nine this.
Forty-nine that. Forty-eight
Doors in your high palace
PIA: from June 2016.
For wishes, and for a beloved poet much missed, from poetryfoundation.org.
from The Minister of Culture Gets His Wish / by Mark Strand
The Minister of Culture goes home after a grueling day at the office. He lies on his bed and tries to think of nothing, but nothing happens or, more precisely, does not happen.
For going home, from Worldly Hopes. Okay, apologies that I had ALMONDS on my mind.
from I Went Back / by A.R. Ammons
I went back
to my old home
and the furrow
of each year
plowed like
surf
For infectious John, from Delusions, Etc.
from Lauds / by John Berryman
but ha (haha) I’ve bought myself a hat!
For writing as salvation, from Nurture. I saw Maxine Kumin speak at the Key West Literary Seminar in January of 2010 (kwls.org). She had such a peaceful spirit and calming manner.
from On Being Asked to Write a Poem in Memory of Anne Sexton / by Maxine Kumin (1925-2014)
The elk discards his antlers every spring.
They rebud, they grow, they are growing
an inch a day to form a rococo rack
For the whisper of possibility, from poetryfoundation.org.
from Fragments 1953 / by Gottfried Benn, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann
those were years when something whispered
poetry, publishing, and mentoring
A periodic, open discussion of particular poems
a resource for moving poetry
from lined paper, to Royal, to Smith Corona, to floppy disk, to 1TB hard drive...it's all a result of the passing wind.
Writer & Visual Artist
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