The Poetry Playground

Night

The cold remote islands
And the blue estuaries
Where what breathes, breathes
The restless wind of the inlets,
And what drinks, drinks
The incoming tide;

Where shell and weed
Wait upon the salt wash of the sea,
And the clear nights of stars
Swing their lights westward
To set behind the land;

Where the pulse clinging to the rocks
Renews itself forever;
Where again on unclouded nights,
The water reflects
The firmament’s partial setting;

–O remember
In your narrowing dark hours
That more things move
Than blood in the heart.

~ Louise Bogan

Writing on Not Writing

I can feel my ship about to come in.
A white ship in a snowstorm
moving in.

The ship is made of gulls
huddled together
in the shape of a ship.

When it arrives, they will fly out into the storm,
leaving a space inside it
clear as reason.

I can tell there’s going to be a blizzard
of being somewhere else
any minute

because of time’s noise eating itself up
that is the noise of listening
that looks like a seething, florid whiteout of wings.

~ Jack Myers

telling our stories

the fox came every evening to my door
asking for nothing. my fear
trapped me inside, hoping to dismiss her
but she sat till morning, waiting.

at dawn we would, each of us,
rise from our haunches, look through the glass
then walk away.

did she gather her village around her
and sing of the hairless moon face,
the trembling snout, the ignorant eyes?

child, i tell you now it was not
the animal blood i was hiding from,
it was the poet in her, the poet and
the terrible stories she could tell.

~ Lucille Clifton

Bad Day

Not every day
is a good day
for the elfin tailor.
Some days
the stolen cloth
reveals what it
was made for:
a handsome weskit
or the jerkin
of an elfin sailor.
Other days
the tailor
sees a jacket
in his mind
and sets about
to find the fabric.
But some days
neither the idea
nor the material
presents itself;
and these are
the hard days
for the tailor elf.

~ Kay Ryan

Requiem

Today
is the
perfect day

The sky
just so
clouds moving
fast

Drops of water
on leaves
of Russian sage

Dog sitting
her chin
on crossed paws

Light streams
through branches
of locust tree

I sit
just so
at the
small table

Everything is
perfect
just like this
you would have said

~ Abigail Gramig

Chapter One

I love how books begin; those passages
that lead us by the hand across
the luxurious lawns, that portage us
gently up the gravel drive,
toward the manor house.

The author is still a kind host here,
anxious that we mingle
with the other weekend guests, that we note
how even the banisters are polished for us,
that we feel free to walk out
with the lady of the house and smoke
a cigarette, down the grand alley of elms.

We’re not expected to have things down pat
yet, like the family tree, or the route to the old Abbey.
Nothing really happens now,
beyond the delivery of breakfast trays.
It’s not scheduled to rain
for two more chapters, and no one
who matters to us has died yet.

~ Mark Aiello

Two Friends

The last word this one spoke
was my name. The last word
that one spoke
was my name.

My two friends
had never met. But when they said
that last word
they spoke to each other.

I am proud to have given them a language
of one word, a narrow space
in which, without knowing it,
they met each other at last.

~ Norman Maccaig