DPF / Dimitrov

For the JFK roses blooming under the front window, from Poetry, June 2015.

from The Last Luxury, JFK, Jr. / by Alex Dimitrov

Born of the sun, we traveled a short while toward the sun.
Where there were seasons and sky. Where there were monuments.
Like a single engine plane in a July haze.

DPF / Cao

For a yesterday I’ll call today, from Poetry, July/August 2015.

from Memento / by Lily Cao

We might have been twins, I born in May
and she of the blistered January

DPF / Cassarino

For happy 4th to you! From Poetry Foundation.

from Firework / by Stacie Cassarino

I was a keeper of breath,
of hay. I walked a field, collecting bones.

DPF / Stafford

For dust of all kinds and train travel, from A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.

from Vacation / by William Stafford (1914-1993)

One scene as I bow to pour her coffee:–

Three Indians in the scouring drouth
huddle at the grave scooped in the gravel,
lean to the wind as our train goes by.
Someone is gone.

DPF / Soseki

For mountains and parts of life that appear to be mountains, from A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.

from Magnificent Peak / by Muso Soseki (1275-1351) translated by W.S. Merwin

From the four directions
        you can look up and see it
            green and steep and wild.

DPF / Haines

For intimate moments in the landscape’s immense spaces, a fitting metaphor for how a poem sits in the mind, from A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz.

from The Train Stops at Healy Fork / by John Haines (1924-2011)

We saw the scattered iron
and timber of the campsite,
the coal seam
in the river bluff,
the twilight green of the icefall.