a mood apart

A Mood Apart


Once down on my knees to growing plants
I prodded the earth with a lazy tool
In time with a medley of sotto chants;
But becoming aware of some boys from school
Who had stopped outside the fence to spy,
I stopped my song and almost heart,
For any eye is an evil eye
That looks in onto a mood apart.


-Robert Frost

still life

Still Life


Snowfall. And in the nethermost
lode of whiteness,
a memory
that adds your steps
to the lot.

Endlessly,
I would have walked with you.


-Paul Auster

across 110th street

Love this opening from Jackie Brown.

in a country

In a Country


My love and I are inventing a country, which we
can already see taking shape, as if wheels were
passing through yellow mud. But there is a prob-
lem: if we put a river in the country, it will thaw
and begin flooding. If we put the river on the bor-
der, there will be trouble. If we forget about the
river, there will be no way out. There is already a
sky over that country, waiting for clouds or smoke.
Birds have flown into it, too. Each evening more
trees fill with their eyes, and what they see we can
never erase.

One day it was snowing heavily, and again we were
lying in bed, watching our country: we could
make out the wide river for the first time, blue and
moving. We seemed to be getting closer; we saw
our wheel tracks leading into it and curving out
of sight behind us. It looked like the land we had
left, some smoke in the distance, but I wasn't sure.
There were birds calling. The creaking of our
wheels. And as we entered that country, it felt as if
someone was touching our bare shoulders, lightly,
for the last time.


-Larry Levis

secrecy

Secrecy

Had we been only lovers from a book
That holy men, who had a hand in heaven,
Illuminated: in a yellow wood,
Where crimson beast and bird are clawed with gold
And, wound in branches, hunt or hawk themselves,
Sun-woman, I would hide you as the ring
Of his own shining fetters that the snake,
Who is the wood itself, can never find.


-Austin Clarke

come visit my garden & love

Today's poems are by Tom Dent from the 1964 anthology New Negro Poets: USA edited by Langston Hughes. You can read about the collection from an article in Time.


Come Visit My Garden


Beetles,
noisy bumble bees
and yellow jackets too,
rest,
rest awhile.

Come visit my garden,
come sit with me,
come drink with me,
come abide with me,
come think, talk
and relax with me
in my garden.

Look out from my cool abode
into the hot, hot day
and rest.

Come dream with me
while I surgically remove thorns
from my sweet roses.

Enjoy with me
the insulation
of my methodically erected
clean
brick walls.


--


Love


the gold of heaven
the blue of hell
the sun of day
the tomb of night--
the golden sun
anchoring my
spinning heart
while a blue tomb
lurks icily in
the dark.


-Tom Dent



Biographical information on nathanielturner.com

in flight

It's National Poetry Month. I'll try posting a poem a day as I attempted last year.

In Flight


The Himalayan legend says
there are beautiful white birds
that live completely in flight.
They are born in the air,

must learn to fly before falling
and die also in their flying.
Maybe you have been born
into such a life

with the bottom dropping out.
Maybe gravity is claiming you
and you feel
ghost-scripted.

For the one who lives inside the fall,
the sky beneath the sky of all.

-Jennifer K. Sweeney


I think it's a really beautiful poem. Here's a link to her book How to Live on Bread and Music.

I also recommend listening to it on the Academy of American Poets site.