my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear

no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want

no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart ( i carry it in my heart)

From 50 Poems, Grosset and Dunlap, 1940.  To hear the podcast, go here!

A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky

wood floor

A line of green shades–banker’s lights–down the center

Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply

too short

For me to sit in and read

So my first book was always too big

In the foyer up four stairs a semi-circle desk presided

To the left side the card catalogue

On the right newspapers draped over what looked like

a quilt rack

Magazines face out from the wall

The welcoming smile of my librarian

The anticipation in my heart

All those books–another world–just waiting

At my fingertips.

From Acolytes. William Marrow, 2007. To hear the podcast, go here!

the car lights cast an eerie glow

in the morning fog centering

on movement in the rain slick street

Hitting brakes I anticipate a squirrel or a cat or sometimes

a little raccoon

I once braked for a blind little mole who try though he did

could not escape the cat toying with his life

Mother-to-be possum occasionally lopes home…being

naturally…slow her condition makes her even more ginger

We need a sign POSSUM CROSSING to warn coffee-gurgling neighbors:

we share the streets with more than trucks and vans and

railroad crossings

All birds being kin of dinosaurs

think themselves invincible and pay no heed

to the rolling wheels while they dine

on an unlucky rabbit

I hit brakes for the flutter of the lights hoping it’s not deer

or a skunk or a groundhog

coffee splashes over the cup which I quickly put away from me

and into the empty passenger seat

I look…

relieved and exasperated…

to discover I have just missed a big fat wet leaf

struggling…to lift itself into the wind

and live

From Quilting The Black-Eyed Pea, HarperCollins, 2003. To hear the podcast, go here!

or any other river for that matter

to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month

have I had the pleasure–if it is a pleasure–

of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found

in a quiet room like this one–

a painting of a woman on the wall,

A bowl of tangerines on the table–

trying to manufacture the sensation

of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt

that others have been fishing

on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,

sliding the oars under the water

then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to

fishing on the Susquehanna

was one afternoon in a museum in Philladelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time

in front of a painting

in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,

dense trees along the banks,

and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green

flat-bottom boat

holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely

ever to do, I remember

saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on

to other American scenes

of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare

who seemed so wired with alertness

I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

From Picnic, Lightening, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998. To hear the podcast, go here!

may the tide

that is entering even now

the lip of our understanding

carry you out

beyond the face of fear

may you kiss

the wind then turn from it

certain that it will

love your back may you

open your eyes to water

water waving forever

and may you in your innocence

sail through this to that

From Quilting: Poems 1987-1990; BOA Editions, 2001. To listen to the podcast, go here!

Across the line of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice on a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shred crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snows-crust–

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the whithered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterward, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say before Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows–

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter,

And could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father’s trees

By riding them over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

From him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way back down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swing of birches,

And so I dream of going back to be.

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig’s having lashed across it open.

I’d like to get away from earth for awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, til the tree could bare no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

To listen to the podcast, go here!

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and force a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

From The Apple That Astonished Paris, University of Arkansas Press, 1996.

Want to listen to the podcast? Go here!

I’m going to get the ball rolling by posting a few poems that I’ve read and enjoyed.  Feel free to comment and discuss!