Each From Different Heights

Stephen Dunn

That time I thought I was in love

and calmly said so

was not much different from the time

I was truly in love

and slept poorly and spoke out loud

to the wall

and discovered the hidden genius

of my hands.

And the times I felt less in love,

less than someone,

were, to be honest, not so different

either.

Each was ridiculous in its own way

and each was tender, yes,

sometimes even the false is tender.

I am astounded

by the various kisses we’re capable of.

Each from different heights

diminished, which is simply the law.

And the big bruise

from the longer fall looked perfectly white

in a few years.

That astounded me most of all.

i take my glasses off

Lucille Clifton 

it is the hard

edge of things

i am avoiding

the separations

so that i can take my glasses off

and then i cannot tell

which are the leaves

and which the angels

like blake

like that man

who lived with the lepers

not noticing what was sin

and what was grace

visioning visions vision

i take my glasses off

so i can see

#poets

 “Most people don’t see you. They see how you make them feel.”

I don’t know if anyone knows how disingenuous you are. 

How you’ve cultivated a facade of sincerity and approachability that hides your cutting and callous nature. 

How scary inappropriate. Invasive. Indecent. Insecure you truly are.

How being born plain will always be an impossible hurdle for your super-sized ego to bear. 

How you exercise your ‘power’ over people by getting away with crossing boundaries and never getting caught doing the diabolical things you do. 

 

The Past by Stephen Dunn

Herrings begin to glow just after they die, 

never while alive. When I read this 

I wanted to sit for a long  time in the dark. 

Nothing in nature is a metaphor. 

Everything is. I thought both thoughts. 

And I knew inexactly why I felt sad. 

Herrings dead and a glow- 

I should have been properly amazed, 

the way anyone. looking at a star 

would be., realizing it was years away, 

untouchable. Yet there it is, shining.

Kinder than Man by Althea Davis

And God

play ease let the deer

on the highway

get some kind of heaven.

Something with tall soft grass

and sweet reunion.

Let the moths in porch lights

go someplace

with a thousand suns,

that taste like sugar

and get swallowed whole.

May the mice

in oil and glue

have forever dry, warm fur

and full bellies.

If I am killed

for simply living,

let death be kinder

than man.

 “Be careful. When you do too much for people, they start loving your hand and not your heart.”

The Sun by Mary Oliver

 

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

Of the Shining Afterlife by Carl Phillips

 

Above me, the branches toss toward and away from each other

the way privacy does with what ends up

showing, despite ourselves, of

who we are, inside.

                                Then they’re branches again—hickory, I think.

      —It’s not too late, then.

Sisyphus And The Sudden Lightness by Stephen Dunn

 

It was as if he had wings, and the wind
behind him. Even uphill the rock
seemed to move of its own accord.

Every road felt like a shortcut.

Sisyphus, of course, was worried;
he'd come to depend on his burden,
wasn't sure who he was without it.

His hands free, he peeled an orange.
He stopped to pet a dog.
Yet he kept going forward, afraid
of the consequences of standing still.

He no longer felt inclined to smile.

It was then that Sisyphus realized
the gods must be gone, that his wings
were nothing more than a perception
of their absence.

He dared to raise his fist to the sky.
Nothing, gloriously, happened.

Then a different terror overtook him.

Love, Im Done with You by Ross Gay

 

You ever wake up with your footie PJs warming

your neck like a noose? Ever upchuck

after a home-cooked meal? Or notice

how the blood on the bottoms of your feet

just won’t seem to go away? Love, it used to be

you could retire your toothbrush for like two or three days and still

I’d push my downy face into your neck. Used to be

I hung on your every word. (Sing! you’d say: and I was a bird.

Freedom! you’d say: and I never really knew what that meant,

but liked the way it rang like a rusty bell.) Used to be. But now

I can tell you your breath stinks and you’re full of shit.

You have more lies about yourself than bodies

beneath your bed. Rooting

for the underdog. Team player. Hook,

line and sinker. Love, you helped design the brick

that built the walls around the castle

in the basement of which is a vault

inside of which is another vault

inside of which . . . you get my point. Your tongue

is made of honey but flicks like a snake’s. Voice

like a bird but everyone’s ears are bleeding.

From the inside your house shines

and shines, but from outside you can see

it’s built from bones. From out here it looks

like a graveyard, and the garden’s

all ash. And besides,

your breath stinks. We’re through.

The Darker Sooner by Catherine Wing

 

Then came the darker sooner,

came the later lower.

We were no longer a sweeter-here

happily-ever-after. We were after ever.

We were farther and further.

More was the word we used for harder.

Lost was our standard-bearer.

Our gods were fallen faster,

and fallen larger.

The day was duller, duller

was disaster. Our charge was error.

Instead of leader we had louder,

instead of lover, never. And over this river

broke the winter’s black weather.

A Ritual to Read to Each Other by William Stafford

 

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Today by Billy Collins

 

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

The Mower by Philip Larkin

 

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   

Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   

Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence   

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   

While there is still time.