Written by
Galway Kinnell |
3
As this plane dragged
its track of used ozone half the world long
thrusts some four hundred of us
toward places where actual known people
live and may wait,
we diminish down in our seats,
disappeared into novels of lives clearer than ours,
and yet we do not forget for a moment
the life down there, the doorway each will soon enter:
where I will meet her again
and know her again,
dark radiance with, and then mostly without, the stars.
Very likely she has always understood
what I have slowly learned,
and which only now, after being away, almost as far away
as one can get on this globe, almost
as far as thoughts can carry - yet still in her presence,
still surrounded not so much by reminders of her
as by things she had already reminded me of,
shadows of her
cast forward and waiting - can I try to express:
that love is hard,
that while many good things are easy, true love is not,
because love is first of all a power,
its own power,
which continually must make its way forward, from night
into day, from transcending union always forward into difficult day.
And as the plane descends, it comes to me
in the space
where tears stream down across the stars,
tears fallen on the actual earth
where their shining is what we call spirit,
that once the lover
recognizes the other, knows for the first time
what is most to be valued in another,
from then on, love is very much like courage,
perhaps it is courage, and even
perhaps
only courage.
Squashed
out of old selves, smearing the darkness
of expectation across experience, all of us little
thinkers it brings home having similar thoughts
of landing to the imponderable world,
the transoceanic airliner,
resting its huge weight down, comes in almost lightly,
to where
with sudden, tiny, white puffs and long, black, rubberish smears
all its tires know the home ground.
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Written by
Barry Tebb |
You always disrupt me;
When I ring you for comfort
You wing me, send my
Pudding of a mind
A-splatter on the wall.
You chase me to bed even,
Passionately, not-yourself-at-all,
You bawl your lewd reminders
Down aching avenues of dreams
To shudder me awake.
And then at last you’ll fake
Your promises and take
Some simpler way, battening
On the eggs you’ll hatch
Warmly some tea-cosy day.
All this, you’ll say, was
Merely adolescence, not
The real unpoked you,
Tittupping in high heels
And cellophaned to view.
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Written by
Edgar Lee Masters |
You praise my self-sacrifice, Spoon River,
In rearing Irene and Mary,
Orphans of my older sister!
And you censure Irene and Mary
For their contempt of me!
But praise not my self-sacrifice,
And censure not their contempt;
I reared them, I cared for them, true enough!--
But I poisoned my benefactions
With constant reminders of their dependence.
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Written by
Omer Tarin |
They stand together
The twin stalks
In my backyard,
Sometimes reminders
Of some things not done,
Some weeds not plucked
When it was time to do so;
Why I did not clear the yard
Is not so important now
As why did I want to?
Indeed, I see no petal
Half as nice as those two
That grow together, in their awkward fashion,
And they have some part of me
Where it wouldn't do;
It doesn’t matter anymore, of course,
When other weeds have grown
Along them, only not like them at all,
And choked the petunias
Out of their shallow beds;
And there is some justice
In my garden going to seed,
Then standing tall and together
Once I’ve ceased to tend.
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Written by
Rg Gregory |
peaches exude this thrall -
reminders of those luscious
whereabouts that lips
best find their precious sips
to cry let this be all
they lull so well endowed
with dreams of wanting flesh
who can resist their touch
not they who wishing much
sigh o you do me proud
and yield in fruitful dreams
to the nectars of delight
that peaches bosom forth
(no better biter’s worth)
or so the vision seems
till age sends suckers out
to tease such juice away
and longing’s hardened crust
admits a fraying trust
that o the joy’s run out
believe that if you will –
till death the sweetened flow
haunts lips the peaches kissed
embalms taste-buds so blessed
no timelessness can kill
where peaches nestle - hopes
cannot be pensioned off
they cluster down the ages
drop softened onto pages
libido fondly gropes
so peach (of all) impeaches
yearnings that lose their lustre
yet stir goodbyes to house
remnants of lust’s carouse
(glow of the heart’s far reaches)
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