(no subject)

[claymedeiros.livejournal.com]

With the Dog at Sunrise

Although we always come this way
I never noticed before that the poplars
growing along the ravine
shine pink in the light of winter dawn.

What am I going to say
in my letter to Sarah—a widow
at thirty-one, alone in the violence
of her grief, sleepless,
and utterly cast down?

I look at the lithe, pink trees more carefully,
remembering Stephen, the photographer.
With the hunger of two I take them in.
Perhaps I can tell her that.

The dog furrows his brow while pissing long
and thoughtfully against an ancient hemlock.
The snow turns the saffron of a monk’s robe
and acrid steam ascends.

Searching for God is the first thing and the last,
but in between such trouble, and such pain.

Far up in the woods where no one goes
deer take their ease under the great
pines, nose to steaming nose….

Jane Kenyon

Make Believe Ballroom Time

[i-hunger.livejournal.com]

Make Believe Ballroom Time -
Mark Strand

Judging by his suit which was excessively
drab but expensive, and his speech which was
uninflected and precise, I guessed he was a
banker, perhaps a lawyer, even a professor in
one of the larger, better universities. It never
occurred to me that he might be something
else until, during a lull in our conversation,
he suddenly got up and began dancing. The
others at the party, plainly disturbed by this,
affected a more intense involvement in their
conversations than was necessary. They spoke
loudly, rapidly. But the man continued dancing.
And because I recognized what calling,
what distant music he obeyed, I envied him.

The Rose Family; Robert Frost

[herquivers.livejournal.com]

The Rose Family

The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple's a rose,
And the pear is, and so's
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only know
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose--
But were always a rose.