Poetry
Departure It was not like your great and gracious ways! Do you, that have naught other to lament, Never, my Love, repent Of how, that July afternoon, You went, With sudden, unintelligible phrase, And frighten’d …
Mailbox Sestina So, here’s the edge of summer’s moment, cutting deep Into protracted memories like sharpened blades of grass You’d again taken for granted, cow-spittle-glazed, And cutting open the crickets’ measured elegy— Their legworks’ liquid …
Cora A new idea. There’s something strangely delicious in these strokes… I pocket the epiphany for a later pondering. My love is not a secret. We hail babbling brooks in daylight and learn to read, …
May Night The spring is fresh and fearless And every leaf is new, The world is brimmed with moonlight, The lilac brimmed with dew. Here in the moving shadows I catch my breath and sing-- …
Allies: According to Herodotus “Just how much are you worth?” Xerxes asks Pythius, reputedly the richest man in Lydia, at the entertainment Pythius was holding in his palace for Xerxes and his chiefs of staff. …
Nights Drunk and weeping. It’s another night at the live-in opera, and I figure it’s going to turn out badly for me. The dead next door accept their salutations, their salted notes, the drawn-out wailing. …
A Higher Call “Our system is so discriminatory against Black and brown people…I want to do as much as I can to make their lives easier.” — Kim Kardashian I’m different now; I aim for …
XXV Let those who are in favour with their stars Of public honour and proud titles boast, Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars, Unlook’d for joy in that I honour most. Great princes’ …
Annabel Lee It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she …
Year’s End Now winter downs the dying of the year, And night is all a settlement of snow; From the soft street the rooms of houses show A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere, Like frozen-over …
White Christmas Forecasters generally consider a white Christmas to be an inch of snow on the ground or an inch falling that day. -News Item But along the river bottoms, snow found no place, When …
The New-England Boys’ Song About Thanksgiving Day Over the river and through the woods, To Grandfather's house we go; The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh Through the white and drifted snow. Over …
No! No sun—no moon! No morn—no noon— No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day— No sky—no earthly view— No distance looking blue— No road—no street—no “t’other side the way”— No end to any Row— No …
Kubla Khan Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. …
On Fields o’er Which the Reaper’s Hand Has Pass’d On fields o’er which the reaper’s hand has pass’d Lit by the harvest moon and autumn sun, My thoughts like stubble floating in the wind And …
The Yellow Twine His father’s baseball glove At night, each night, tucked under his bed— Strict prudence of a child’s desperate love Not said in words but said. Once a light khaki, now Darkened by …