The Poetry Playground

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all 
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

~ Gary Snyder

The Guests

Our house was strewn with 
people whom no on claimed 
to know, people who had

been there for thirty years
or more. One might show
himself at dinner, cobwebbed

and thinner than the dead.
No one would speak of it,
unless the guest became

unpleasant, and then it was 
in gestures, because our
voices were saved for something

better. Our dry lips flecked
with foam, our hammering hearts
out-waited our guests, and 

now, at last, we are alone.

~ James Tate

Search Party

By now I know most of the faces
that will appear beside me as
long as there are still images
I know at last what I would choose
the next time if there ever was 
a time again I know the days 
that open in the dark like this
I do not know where Maoli is

I know the summer surfaces
of bodies and the tips of voices
like stars out of their distances
and where the music turns to noise
I know the bargains in the news
rules whole languages formulas
wisdom that I will never use
I do not know where Maoli is

I know whatever one may lose
somebody will be there who says
what it will be all right to miss
and what is verging on excess
I know the shadows of the house
routes that lead out to no traces
many of his empty places
I do not know where Maoli is

You that see now with your own eyes
all that there is as you suppose
though I could stare through broken glass
and show you where the morning goes
though I could follow to their close
the sparks of an exploding species
and see where the world ends in ice
I would not know where Maoli is

~ W.S. Merwin

Why Are Your Poems So Dark?

Isn’t the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn’t the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain 
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn’t banish darkness.

Instead he invented 
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask 
“Why are you sad so often?”

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.

~ Linda Pastan

Up on the Roof

You wonder why it is they write of it, sing of it,
till suddenly you’re there, nearest you can get
to flying for jumping and you’re alone, at last,
the air bright. Remembering this, I go 
with my too-light jacket up to the sixth floor,
out onto the roof and I freeze under the stars
till he comes with my too-heavy jacket, heavier
and heavier, as he tries to muffle my foolishness.
A blanket on a fire (he says) and it’s true
I am left black, bruised a little, smouldering.

You can sit with a book up there and reel in
life with someone else’s bait. You can let your eyes
skim the river, bridges, banks, a seagull’s parabola.
At night you can watch the sky, those strange galaxies
like so many cracks in the ceiling spilling secrets
from the flat above. You can breathe. You can dream.

But he turns to me, as you’d coax a child
in the back of a stuffy car: we could play I-Spy?
I look at the black and blue above and the only 
letter I find is ‘S’. I cannot name
the dust of starlight, the pinheaded planets,
but I can join the dots to make a farming tool,
the belt of a god: all any of us needs is work,
mystery, a little time alone up on the roof.

~ Maura Dooley

What Grandma Taught Her

She hates to be
somewhere without 
something to do.
They are off petting
the animals that don’t 
have a real home.
When she gets like this
her hands and feet fidget 
her mind wanders as far
as it can in all directions
and keeps looking back.
Give her a pen and paper
so she can quiet her mind
like her grandmother 
would do during
church service.
She would write her name 
over and over.
Grandma taught her this
when she was eight years old
right after her mother died.

~ Melissa A. Stephenson