DPF / Szymborska

For the moments before, when the world was one kind of world, some different from what it became during and after those moments, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Photograph from September 11 / by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Clare Cavanagh

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.

DPF / Ammons

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

DPF / Berryman 

For infectious John, from Delusions, Etc.
from Lauds / by John Berryman 

but ha (haha) I’ve bought myself a hat!

DPF / Kumin

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

DPF / Howe

For waiting of all kinds, from The End.

from Lines Out to Silence / by Fanny Howe

How long I’ve waited, I can’t count
Long days in green — eternal advent —

DPF / Shakespeare

For a favorite poem of late autumn, from late summer, and from The Norton Introduction to Literature, Ninth Edition, edited by Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays.

from [That time of year thou mayst in me behold] / by William Shakespeare, 1609

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

DPF / Koeneke

For a Monday at home, from poetryfoundation.org. 
from Labor Day / by Rodney Koeneke

While time for them is a melody

played at long intervals across condominiums

we who are the power

know our systems so much better

now come to this hour outside it

now give it new form on guitar

DPF / Millar

For the long weekend, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Labor Day / by Joseph Millar

No one lays a flat bead of flux over a metal seam
or lowers the steel forks from a tailgate.
Shadows gather inside the sleeve
of the empty thermos beside the sink,
the bells go still by the channel buoy,
the wind lies down in the west

DPF / Benn

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