Linda Pastan Short Poems
Famous Short Linda Pastan Poems. Short poetry by famous poet Linda Pastan. A collection of the all-time best Linda Pastan short poems
by
Linda Pastan
Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and paper
and pen, has come
this manic animal
whose innocent disruptions
make nonsense
of my old simplicities--
as if I needed him
to prove again that after
all the careful planning,
anything can happen.
by
Linda Pastan
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.
by
Linda Pastan
When our cars touched
When you lifted the hood of mine
To see the intimate workings underneath,
When we were bound together
By a pulse of pure energy,
When my car like the princess
In the tale woke with a start,
I thought why not ride the rest of the way together.
by
Linda Pastan
The gathering family
throws shadows around us,
it is the late afternoon
Of the family.
There is still enough light
to see all the way back,
but at the windows
that light is wasting away.
Soon we will be nothing
but silhouettes: the sons'
as harsh
as the fathers'.
Soon the daughters
will take off their aprons
as trees take off their leaves
for winter.
Let us eat quickly--
let us fill ourselves up.
the covers of the album are closing
behind us.
by
Linda Pastan
What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names--
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.
by
Linda Pastan
I sing a song
of the croissant
and of the wily French
who trick themselves daily
back to the world
for its sweet ceremony.
Ah to be reeled
up into morning
on that crisp,
buttery
hook.
by
Linda Pastan
We think of hidden in a white dress
among the folded linens and sachets
of well-kept cupboards, or just out of sight
sending jellies and notes with no address
to all the wondering Amherst neighbors.
Eccentric as New England weather
the stiff wind of her mind, stinging or gentle,
blew two half imagined lovers off.
Yet legend won't explain the sheer sanity
of vision, the serious mischief
of language, the economy of pain.
by
Linda Pastan
Some say
it was a pear
Eve ate.
Why else the shape
of the womb,
or of the cello
Whose single song is grief
for the parent tree?
Why else the fruit itself
tawny and sweet
which your lover
over breakfast
lets go your pear-
shaped breast
to reach for?
by
Linda Pastan
Because the shad
are swimming
in our waters now,
breaching the skin
of the river with their
tarnished silvery fins,
heading upstream
straight for our tables
where already
knives and forks gleam
in anticipation, these trees
in the woods break
into flower--small, white
flags surrendering
to the season.
by
Linda Pastan
The door of winter
is frozen shut,
and like the bodies
of long extinct animals, cars
lie abandoned wherever
the cold road has taken them.
How ceremonious snow is,
with what quiet severity
it turns even death to a formal
arrangement.
Alone at my window, I listen
to the wind,
to the small leaves clicking
in their coffins of ice.
by
Linda Pastan
Pierre Bonnard would enter
the museum with a tube of paint
in his pocket and a sable brush.
Then violating the sanctity
of one of his own frames
he'd add a stroke of vermilion
to the skin of a flower.
Just so I stopped you
at the door this morning
and licking my index finger, removed
an invisible crumb
from your vermilion mouth. As if
at the ritual moment of departure
I had to show you still belonged to me.
As if revision were
the purest form of love.