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

Poem to Raymond Carver

comforter thrown
over my legs
late morning
cats asleep at my feet
I am reading a tattered copy
of A NEW PATH TO THE WATERFALL
you said you wanted this
all of your life
waking each day to
everything new
choosing whether to
fish or write or play
with your cat Morris.
I look outside at the new snow —
the same Syracuse snow
that you must have watched
and I too feel like
lobotomizing the morning
rising only to cook brook trout
for breakfast.

~ joan cofrancesco

Hope

After everything I find it intact
like a chimney
standing beside a basement
jumbled with black
and smoking rafters.
It is the bubble that rises
from a sunken ship as a diver
cracks into the wreck.
It is the bird that builds
in a fallen tree, the tracks of anything
crossing a desert, a tortoise
tucked into its orange shell
as a burning meadow sweeps over it.
It is the blinking light
of my answering machine,
the beer that was
hiding beneath the squash.
It is nightlights and cribs
and milky breath — the spider missing
from the bedroom wall
when I come back
with a tissue to crush it out.

~ Charles Rafferty

Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight

One ran,
her nose to the ground,
a rusty shadow
neither hunting nor playing.

One stood; sat; lay down; stood again.

One never moved,
except to turn her head a little as we walked.

Finally we drew too close,
and they vanished.
The woods took them back as if they had never been.

I wish I had thought to put my face to the grass.

But we kept walking,
speaking as strangers do when becoming friends.

There is more and more I tell no one,
strangers nor loves.
This slips into the heart
without hurry, as if it had never been.

And yet, among the trees, something has changed.

Something looks back from the trees,
and knows me for who I am.

~ Jane Hirshfield

Moscow

For a while I was alone,
so I dated whoever’s work I was reading,
but the relationships always ended badly.
I wasn’t smart enough for Wayne,
I wasn’t caustic enough for David,
Kevin & I were doing well,
but then I met his real boyfriend,
and it turns out I’m not his type.
Sometimes I broke it off.
Jean got to be too depressing.
Fyoder was a bad provider.
After Franz, I started dating myself,
and that was nice. Of course, then I met you
and I had to stop being the man in my life.
I miss me sometimes, but we’ll always have Moscow.

~ Jason Schneiderman

Nobody

Nobody loves me,
Nobody cares,
Nobody picks me peaches and pears.
Nobody offers me candy and Cokes,
Nobody listens and laughs at my jokes.
Nobody helps when I get in a fight,
Nobody does all my homework at night.
Nobody misses me,
Nobody cries,
Nobody thinks I’m a wonderful guy.
So if you ask me who’s my best friend, in a whiz,
I’ll stand up and tell you that Nobody is.
But yesterday night I got quite a scare,
I woke up and Nobody just wasn’t there.
I called out and reached out for Nobody’s hand,
In the darkness where Nobody usually stands.
Then I poked through the house, in each cranny and nook,
But I found somebody each place that I looked.
I searched till I’m tired, and now with the dawn,
There’s no doubt about it —
Nobody’s gone!

~ Shel Silverstein