Poetry
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and …
Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day; Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side …
Dishwater Slap of the screen door, flat knock of my grandmother’s boxy black shoes on the wooden stoop, the hush and sweep of her knob-kneed, cotton-aproned stride out to the edge and then, toed in …
My windows now are giant drops of dew The common stones are dancing in my eyes; The light is winged, and panting, and the world Is fluttering with a little fall or rise. See, while …
Your voice comes to me, George, on the winter night In the faint mazy stars, a murmur of hesitant light In the air frozen solid, it seems, from here to Maine. Lonely and late I …
I’m driving along Interstate 8, it’s 12:20, a Monday and I pop the new cassette I bought for $1.64 into my hot new state-of-the-art in-dash stereo so I can hear what kind of Billie Holiday …
That last October, summer delayed her going, held time enchanted, even while sun slipped southward, kept birches green, blackberries on the vine, one perfect rose to dazzle our bedroom window, drove back the rain, allowed …
— for Claudia Criss cross apple sauce do me a favor and get lost while you’re at it drop dead then come back without a head my daughter sings for me when I ask her …
The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine-and-fifty swans. The nineteenth autumn …
Maybe it’s Ian. Maybe walking with him to the sitter’s, a kind of religious exercise, his singing counterpoint to mine as we walk wakens the gods. The fog dances more gently into the trees. This …
A broken moon on the cold water, And wild geese crying high overhead, The smoke of the campfire rises Toward the geometry of heaven - Points of light in the infinite blackness. I watch across …
My mother took a moral stand against it, said television was the work of the devil, said my father’s wanting it showed how weak he really was. But, for once, he stood firm. It was …
The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy Love. But …
Come live with me, and be my love; And we will all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dales and fields, Woods, or steepy mountain yields. And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing …
because I’m grading papers and want a familiar background story where I don’t need to concentrate. Something about showbiz people with nothing better to do but to wound each other. Ten papers in, I’m startled …
At Night We are apart; the city grows quiet between us, She hushes herself, for midnight makes heavy her eyes, The tangle of traffic is ended, the cars are empty, Five streets divide us, and …