"it seemed wise

  to let

the currents be

whatever they would be,

allowing possibility 

to chance

where choice 

   could not impose itself"

-excerpt from Raft by A.R. Ammons
                       
Expressions of Sea Level 

''All Great Art is Praise'." John Ruskin

The City Limits by A. R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds’ bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

 

"

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.

"I never loved you."

Lines Written In The Days of Growing Darkness by Mary Oliver

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

Crossroads by Joyce Sutphen

The second half of my life will be black
to the white rind of the old and fading moon.
The second half of my life will be water 
over the cracked floor of these desert years.
I will land on my feet this time,
knowing at least two languages and who
my friends are. I will dress for the
occasion, and my hair shall be
whatever color I please.
Everyone will go on celebrating the old
birthday, counting the years as usual,
but I will count myself new from this
inception, this imprint of my own desire.

The second half of my life will be swift,
past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder,
asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road.
The second half of my life will be wide-eyed,
fingers shifting through fine sands,
arms loose at my sides, wandering feet.
There will be new dreams every night,
and the drapes will never be closed.
I will toss my string of keys into a deep
well and old letters into the grate.

The second half of my life will be ice
breaking up on the river, rain
soaking the fields, a hand
held out, a fire,
and smoke going
upward, always up.

Scenic World by Beirut

Scenes From The Arguments by Stephen Dunn

You slam the door and walk out,
or you leave quietly,
pulsing the static air
with what you believe is a statement.
You come back with lilies
and her favorite steamed dumplings
as a way of saying you were wrong,
or you go to The Feel Sorry For Yourself
Bar down the street and put some dents
in your infrastructure, hurt yourself good.
You come back singing an old song,
or are mumbling when
she fetches you and drives you home.
Or you stay and fight it out,
or stay and let rough sex
calm you into mere resentment.
Or you turn on the television
as a way of being together
without having to be present.
Or you say nothing and carry it with you,
or you say nothing and let it go.
And your dreams become populated
with other people you could have loved,
and her dreams, too, are shameless
and equally full, aren’t they? you ask,
even if she hasn’t volunteered a thing.

Connubial by Stephen Dunn

Because with alarming accuracy
she'd been identifying patterns
I was unaware of-this tic, that
tendency, like the way I've mastered
the language of intimacy
in order to conceal how I felt-

I knew I was in danger
of being terribly understood.

Variations on the Word Love by Margaret Atwood

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love , you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

To the Air by W. S. Merwin

Just when I needed you
there you were
I cannot say
how long you had been
present all at once
color of the day
as it comes to be seen
color of before
face of forgetting
color of heaven
out of sight within
myself leaving me
all the time only
to return without
question never
could I live without you
never have you
belonged to me
never do I want
you not to be with me
you who have been
the breath of everyone
and of each word spoken
without needing to know
the meaning of any of them
or who was peaking
when you are the wind
where do you start from
when you are still
where do you go
you who become
all the names I have known
and the lives in which
they came and went
invisible friend
go on telling me
again again