love is more thicker than forget
(By E. E. Cummings 1894–1962)
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
==============================
Windchime
BY TONY HOAGLAND
She goes out to hang the windchime
in her nightie and her work boots.
It’s six-thirty in the morning
and she’s standing on the plastic ice chest
tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch,
windchime in her left hand,
hammer in her right, the nail
gripped tight between her teeth
but nothing happens next because
she’s trying to figure out
how to switch #1 with #3.
She must have been standing in the kitchen,
coffee in her hand, asleep,
when she heard it—the wind blowing
through the sound the windchime
wasn’t making
because it wasn’t there.
No one, including me, especially anymore believes
till death do us part,
but I can see what I would miss in leaving—
the way her ankles go into the work boots
as she stands upon the ice chest;
the problem scrunched into her forehead;
the little kissable mouth
with the nail in it.
=========================
Silver streamers dazzling winter
BY JOSHUA BECKMAN
I let my body down slow which is
what they say to do, like a whale
with its breathing and floating
in the ocean.
Yesterday
was the half moon
and today was basically
the half moon too.
A glacier’s blue
and water
in the middle of a lake
is blue.
I only had one day
during which I could get myself
out into the middle of it
and I did,
kudos to me.
And to the resilient goose
who never feels cold
And to the talky crow
who has so many friends
And to the inspiring stealthy ducks
who fly together in clips above water.
It’s a silly betrayal
of my own thoughts
to invent or remember,
so maybe I’ll just close
with these tender lines
of Henry David Thoreau:
“An oak tree
in Hubbard’s Passage
stands absolutely
motionless
and dark
against the sky.”
==========================
the inside
of an apple
burning fall
and wood making heat
also there are no stars
in the dark sky
grey
clouds bunch together
with closed down houses
and dog bark wind
I saw a picture being still
and I was still too
having seen something.
I sit most days on the porch
and sometimes one might hear
the clock clock of my heels
getting lost and sometimes
everyone in town is gone to sleep
and I step out into the street
so I might see a thing
and see a thing I do.
Big grey street
and silver snow
and silver sky
These bars on tracks
as trains do ride
empty field
covering the ground
with little bits of its stone
dipping down and
sloping upward
so always where the earth is
no one’s really there.
On 13th street
where there are cherry trees
and children brought
by their parents to live
in calm patterned seclusions kept
the day flowers and in a bowl
I poured the water.
If one feels nothing
and still sees, sees with his eyes
if one sees with his eyes sees with his eyes
=========================
