Christopher Merrill: "A Boy Juggling a Soccer Ball"

  









     after practice: right foot
to left foot, stepping forward and back,
     to right foot and left foot,
and left foot up to his thigh, holding
     it on his thigh as he twists
around in a circle, until it rolls
     down the inside of his leg,
like a tickle of sweat, not catching
     and tapping on the soft
side of his foot, and juggling
     once, twice, three times,
hopping on one foot like a jump-roper
     in the gym, now trapping
and holding the ball in midair,
     balancing it on the instep
of his weak left foot, stepping forward
     and forward and back, then
lifting it overhead until it hangs there;
     and squaring off his body,
he keeps the ball aloft with a nudge
     of his neck, heading it
from side to side, softer and softer,
     like a dying refrain,
until the ball, slowing, balances
     itself on his hairline,
the hot sun and sweat filling his eyes
     as he jiggles this way
and that, then flicking it up gently,
     hunching his shoulders
and tilting his head back, he traps it
     in the hollow of his neck,
and bending at the waist, sees his shadow,
     his dangling T-shirt, the bent
blades of brown grass in summer heat;
     and relaxing, the ball slipping
down his back. . .and missing his foot.

     He wheels around, he marches
over the ball, as if it were a rock
     he stumbled into, and pressing
his left foot against it, he pushes it
     against the inside of his right
until it pops into the air, is heeled
     over his head—the rainbow!—
and settles on his extended thigh before
     rolling over his knee and down
his shin, so he can juggle it again
     from his left foot to his right foot
—and right foot to left foot to thigh—
     as he wanders, on the last day
of summer, around the empty field.

after practice: right foot
to left foot, stepping forward and back, 
   to right foot and left foot,
and left foot up to his thigh, holding 
   it on his thigh as he twists
around in a circle, until it rolls 
   down the inside of his leg,
like a tickle of sweat, not catching 
   and tapping on the soft
side of his foot, and juggling
   once, twice, three times,
hopping on one foot like a jump-roper 
   in the gym, now trapping
and holding the ball in midair, 
   balancing it on the instep
of his weak left foot, stepping forward 
   and forward and back, then
lifting it overhead until it hangs there; 
   and squaring off his body,
he keeps the ball aloft with a nudge 
   of his neck, heading it
from side to side, softer and softer, 
   like a dying refrain,
until the ball, slowing, balances 
   itself on his hairline,
the hot sun and sweat filling his eyes 
   as he jiggles this way
and that, then flicking it up gently, 
   hunching his shoulders
and tilting his head back, he traps it 
   in the hollow of his neck,
and bending at the waist, sees his shadow, 
   his dangling T-shirt, the bent
blades of brown grass in summer heat; 
   and relaxing, the ball slipping
down his back. . .and missing his foot.

   He wheels around, he marches 
over the ball, as if it were a rock
   he stumbled into, and pressing
his left foot against it, he pushes it
   against the inside of his right 
until it pops into the air, is heeled
   over his head--the rainbow!-- 
and settles on his extended thigh before
   rolling over his knee and down 
his shin, so he can juggle it again
   from his left foot to his right foot
--and right foot to left foot to thigh--
   as he wanders, on the last day
of summer, around the empty field.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15951#sthash.4ECg3YGF.dpuf

after practice: right foot
to left foot, stepping forward and back, 
   to right foot and left foot,
and left foot up to his thigh, holding 
   it on his thigh as he twists
around in a circle, until it rolls 
   down the inside of his leg,
like a tickle of sweat, not catching 
   and tapping on the soft
side of his foot, and juggling
   once, twice, three times,
hopping on one foot like a jump-roper 
   in the gym, now trapping
and holding the ball in midair, 
   balancing it on the instep
of his weak left foot, stepping forward 
   and forward and back, then
lifting it overhead until it hangs there; 
   and squaring off his body,
he keeps the ball aloft with a nudge 
   of his neck, heading it
from side to side, softer and softer, 
   like a dying refrain,
until the ball, slowing, balances 
   itself on his hairline,
the hot sun and sweat filling his eyes 
   as he jiggles this way
and that, then flicking it up gently, 
   hunching his shoulders
and tilting his head back, he traps it 
   in the hollow of his neck,
and bending at the waist, sees his shadow, 
   his dangling T-shirt, the bent
blades of brown grass in summer heat; 
   and relaxing, the ball slipping
down his back. . .and missing his foot.

   He wheels around, he marches 
over the ball, as if it were a rock
   he stumbled into, and pressing
his left foot against it, he pushes it
   against the inside of his right 
until it pops into the air, is heeled
   over his head--the rainbow!-- 
and settles on his extended thigh before
   rolling over his knee and down 
his shin, so he can juggle it again
   from his left foot to his right foot
--and right foot to left foot to thigh--
   as he wanders, on the last day
of summer, around the empty field.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15951#sthash.4ECg3YGF.dpu

"A Boy Juggling a Soccer Ball" by Christopher Merrill, from Motion: American Sports Poems, edited by Noah Blaustein. © University of Iowa Press, 2001.

Photography credit: "Abstract flying soccer ball," by spc01 (originally color).


 

Dana Gioia: "California Hills in August"

I can imagine someone who found
these fields unbearable, who climbed
the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust,
cracking the brittle weeds underfoot,
wishing a few more trees for shade.

An Easterner especially, who would scorn
the meagerness of summer, the dry
twisted shapes of black elm,
scrub oak, and chaparral, a landscape
August has already drained of green.

One who would hurry over the clinging
thistle, foxtail, golden poppy,
knowing everything was just a weed,
unable to conceive that these trees
and sparse brown bushes were alive.

And hate the bright stillness of the noon
without wind, without motion,
the only other living thing
a hawk, hungry for prey, suspended
in the blinding, sunlit blue.

And yet how gentle it seems to someone
raised in a landscape short of rain–
the skyline of a hill broken by no more
trees than one can count, the grass,
the empty sky, the wish for water.

"California Hills in August" by Dana Gioia, from Daily Horoscope. © Graywolf Press, 1986.

Photography credit: "California Hills," by Jeff Kreulen, 2009 (originally color).


 

Linda Hogan: "Rapture"

Who knows the mysteries of the poppies
when you look across the red fields,
or hear the sound of long thunder,
then the saving rain.
Everything beautiful,
the solitude of the single body
or sometimes, too, when the body is kissed
on the lips or hands or eyelids tender.
Oh for the pleasure of living in a body.
It may be, it may one day be
this is a world haunted by happiness,
where people finally are loved
in the light of leaves,
the feel of bird wings passing by.
Here it might be that no one wants power.
They don't want more.
And so they are in the forest,
old trees,
or those small but grand.
And when you sleep, rapture, beauty,
may seek you out.
Listen. There is
secret joy,
sweet dreams you may never forget.
How worthy the being
in the human body. If,
when you are there, you see women
wading on the water
and clouds in the valley,
the smell of rain,
or a lotus blossom rises out of round green leaves,
remember there is always something
besides our own misery.

"Rapture" by Linda Hogan, from Rounding the Human Corners: Poems. © Coffee House Press, 2008.

Photography credit: "Lotus Blossom Flower," by unknown photographer (originally color).

Layman P'ang: "When the Mind Is at Peace"

When the mind is at peace,
the world too is at peace.
Nothing real, nothing absent.
Not holding on to reality,
not getting stuck in the void,
you are neither holy nor wise, just
an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.

"When the Mind Is at Peace" by Layman P'ang, from The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, edited by Stephen Mitchell. Translated from the Chinese by Stephen Mitchell. © HarperCollins, 2001.

Image credit: "Peace Among Chaos," acrylic on canvas, by Bonnie Peacher (originally color).


 

Raymond Carver: "Happiness"

So early it’s still almost dark out.
I’m near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren’t saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other’s arm.
It’s early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

"Happiness" by Raymond Carver, from All of Us: The Collected Poems. © Vintage Press, 2000.

Image credit: Detail from "Afternoon or morning sunlight pours in shuttered windows onto man lost in thought drinking coffee," video clip contributed by JHDT Stock Images LLC (originally color).

 

Dorianne Laux: "For the Sake of Strangers"

No matter what the grief, its weight,
we are obliged to carry it.
We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength
that pushes us through crowds.
And then the young boy gives me directions
so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,
waiting patiently for my empty body to pass through.
All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another—a stranger
singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees
offering their blossoms, a retarded child
who lifts his almond eyes and smiles.
Somehow they always find me, seem even
to be waiting, determined to keep me
from myself, from the thing that calls to me
as it must have once called to them—
this temptation to step off the edge
and fall weightless, away from the world.

"For the Sake of Strangers" by Dorianne Laux, from What We Carry. © BOA Editions, 1994.

Photography credit: Detail of image taken on August 1, 2012, by MRSPhotography (originally color).


 

Stephen Crane: "XXXV [A Man Saw a Ball of Gold in the Sky]"

A man saw a ball of gold in the sky;
He climbed for it,
And eventually he achieved it–
It was clay.

Now this is the strange part:
When the man went to the earth
And looked again,
Lo, there was a ball of gold.
Now this is the strange part:
It was a ball of gold.
Aye, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.

"XXXV [A Man Saw a Ball of Gold in the Sky]" by Stephen Crane, from The Black Riders and Other Lines. © Forgotten Books, 2012.  

Image credit: "Abstract CGI motion graphics and animated background with spinning golden earth," by VJLoops (originally color).

Craig Arnold: "Meditation on a Grapefruit"

To wake when all is possible
before the agitations of the day
have gripped you
                    To come to the kitchen
and peel a little basketball
for breakfast
              To tear the husk
like cotton padding        a cloud of oil
misting out of its pinprick pores
clean and sharp as pepper
                             To ease
each pale pink section out of its case
so carefully       without breaking
a single pearly cell
                    To slide each piece
into a cold blue china bowl
the juice pooling       until the whole
fruit is divided from its skin
and only then to eat
                  so sweet
                            a discipline
precisely pointless       a devout
involvement of the hands and senses
a pause     a little emptiness

each year harder to live within
each year harder to live without

"Meditation on a Grapefruit" by Craig Arnold. Published in Poetry (October 2009).

Image credit: "Peeled Grapefruit," oil painting on hardboard, by Faith Te (originally color).


 

Al Zolynas: "Postcard from Home"

Sitting on the deck, bare feet
on the railing, I watch and listen to
this day spilling out its myriad flow of details, one
after another, one on top of another, seamlessly,
with no apologies, not the slightest backing off:
two ruby-throated humming birds
drinking their sugar water, distant dogs
barking, the sudden shriek
of wood surrendering to a neighbor's power saw,
those boulders poking out of the hillside, another subdivision
materializing on the stripped land across the valley.
Each detail says "This!"
and has always and ever only said "This!"
Wish I were here.

"Postcard from Home" by Al Zolynas. © Al Zolynas.

Photography credit: "Woman's Bare Feet Propped Up," Comstock Photos (originally color).



 

Billy Collins: "Picnic, Lightning"

It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly within the panels of
the comics, but still, we know it is
possible, as well as the flash of
summer lightning, the thermos toppling
over, spilling out on the grass.
And we know the message can be
delivered from within. The heart, no
valentine, decides to quit after
lunch, the power shut off like a
switch, or a tiny dark ship is
unmoored into the flow of the body's
rivers, the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore. This is
what I think about when I shovel
compost into a wheelbarrow, and when
I fill the long flower boxes, then
press into rows the limp roots of red
impatiens—the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth from the
sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then
the soil is full of marvels, bits of
leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam. Then
the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the
clouds a brighter white, and all I
hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone, the small
plants singing with lifted faces, and
the click of the sundial as one hour
sweeps into the next.

"Picnic, Lightning," by Billy Collins, from Picnic, Lightning. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998.

Photography credit: "Sundial Shadow," by Dr. Roy Winkelman © 2009 (originally color).


 

Li-Young Lee: "From Blossoms"

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

"From Blossoms" by Li-Young Lee, from Rose. © BOA Editions, 1986.

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).



 

Marianne Murphy Zarzana: "Savasana: Corpse Pose"

On the bonsai-green carpet, you stretch
your frame out flat upon a blue yoga mat

and parallel, I lie down upon a purple one,
both of us becoming still, our bodies sinking

further into the floor with each slow, steady
breath. It’s night, and together we’re letting go.

Our old black lab mix, Mollie, wanders in, licks
your open palm, sniffs my hair, snuffles, settles

by my head with labored breath. Soon, I know,
we’ll lose her. Someday, each other. This is

practice. We’re learning to dissolve, surrender
to earth, release thighs, hips, neck, skull, all

the bones, pay attention only to breath—let it
become a ribbon, the texture of fine silk.

"Savasana: Corpse Pose" by Marianne Murphy Zarzana. © Marianne Murphy Zarzana.

Photography credit: "Detail from `Savasana—The Release,'" oil on linen, by Amy Funderburk © 2008-2011.

Philip Levine: "Our Valley"

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

"Our Valley" by Philip Levine, from News of the World: Poems. © Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 2009.

Image credit: "Pacheco Pass," giclée, by June Carey (originally color).

Philip Harnden: "Peter Matthiessen on Crystal Mountain"

[Curator's note: This poem is based on the 250-mile trek of renowned writer and naturalist Peter Matthiessen through the high Himalaya, a spiritual journey he undertook in mourning for his late wife.]


A month of trekking

sausage
crackers
coffee
     all gone

sugar
chocolate
tinned cheese
peanut butter
sardines
     nearly finished

soon down to
     bitter rice
     coarse flour
     lentils
     onions
     a few potatoes, without butter

now the common miracles
     murmur of friends at evening
     clay fires of smudgy juniper
     coarse dull food

one thing at a time

"Peter Matthiessen on Crystal Mountain," by Philip Harnden, from Journeys of Simplicity: Traveling Light with Thomas Merton, Basho, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard & Others. © Skylight Paths Publishing, 2007.

Photography credit: "View [of Crystal Mountain] from Shey Gompa, in Upper Dolpo," in the Himalaya, by Donato Cabal.

Michael Waters: "The Inarticulate"

Touching your face, I am like a boy
who bags groceries, mindless on Saturday,
jumbling cans of wax beans and condensed milk

among frozen meats, the ribboned beef
and chops like maps of continental drift,
extremes of weather and hemisphere,

egg carton perched like a Napoleonic hat,
till he touches something awakened by water,
a soothing skin, eggplant or melon or cool snow pea,

and he pauses, turning it in his hand,
this announcement of color, purple or green,
the raucous rills of the aisles overflowing,

and by now the shopper is staring
when the check-out lady turns and says,
“Jimmy, is anything the matter?”

Touching your face, I am like that boy
brought back to his body, steeped
in the moment, fulfilled but unable to speak.

"The Inarticulate" by Michael Waters, from Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems. © BOA Editions, 2001.

Image credit: "A picture of Angelina," pencil drawing by artistrunning (originally black and white).

Roberta Hill Whiteman: "Waterfall at Como Park"

(Curator's Note: Most likely this poem is a creative response to the Hamm Memorial Waterfall in Como Park, St. Paul, Minnesota, which I've had the pleasure of visiting. For a lovely audiovisual meditation on that waterfall, see this four-minute video.)

She's always walking off the edge,
allowing the wellspring of herself
to fall away without worry.

Even in a furious wind, she's out here,
shaking her glinting spray across the sand stone.
Through thick August afternoons,

she gazes at the sky and stays
poised enough to welcome sparrows.
Both structure and flux, she trembles

as she collects pebbles and leaves, while
her basin grows deeper, more substantial.
Those days when love is distant,

I return to her and learn how she sinks,
climbs, and leaps into abundant moments
where she gives without purpose

or boundary. She teaches me to believe
in this—it's best we're blind
to that which moving, moves us.

In her great-hearted leaps, she's my anchor,
gathering shadow and sun
without once stopping her song.

"Waterfall at Como Park" by Roberta Hill Whiteman, from Philadelphia Flowers: Poems. © Holy Cow! Press, 1996.

Photography credit: "Waterfall at Lake Como," by Clara James (originally color).


 

Anne Higgins: "Cherry Tomatoes"

Suddenly it is August again, so hot,
breathless heat.
I sit on the ground
in the garden of Carmel,
picking ripe cherry tomatoes
and eating them.
They are so ripe that the skin is split,
so warm and sweet
from the attentions of the sun,
the juice bursts in my mouth,
an ecstatic taste,
and I feel that I am in the mouth of summer,
sloshing in the saliva of August.
Hummingbirds halo me there,
in the great green silence,
and my own bursting heart
splits me with life.

"Cherry Tomatoes" by Anne Higgins, from At the Year's Elbow. © Mellen Poetry Press, 2000arperCollins Publishers, 1995.  

Image credit: "Cherry Tomatoes," watercolour on hot pressed paper, by Sarah Wimperis (originally color).


 

Albert Garcia: "August Morning"

It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect—
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?

"August Morning" by Albert Garcia, from Skunk Talk. © Bear Star Press, 2005.

Photography credit: Hubbley (originally color).



 

Edward Hirsch: "Wild Gratitude"

Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
And put my fingers into her clean cat's mouth,
And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens,
And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight,
I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart,
Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing
In every one of the splintered London streets,

And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke's
With his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude,
And his grave prayers for the other lunatics,
And his great love for his speckled cat, Jeoffry.
All day today—August 13, 1983—I remembered how
Christopher Smart blessed this same day in August, 1759,
For its calm bravery and ordinary good conscience.

This was the day that he blessed the Postmaster General
"And all conveyancers of letters" for their warm humanity,
And the gardeners for their private benevolence
And intricate knowledge of the language of flowers,
And the milkmen for their universal human kindness.
This morning I understood that he loved to hear—
As I have heard—the soft clink of milk bottles
On the rickety stairs in the early morning,

And how terrible it must have seemed
When even this small pleasure was denied him.
But it wasn't until tonight when I knelt down
And slipped my hand into Zooey's waggling mouth
That I remembered how he'd called Jeoffry "the servant
Of the Living God duly and daily serving Him,"
And for the first time understood what it meant.
Because it wasn't until I saw my own cat

Whine and roll over on her fluffy back
That I realized how gratefully he had watched
Jeoffry fetch and carry his wooden cork
Across the grass in the wet garden, patiently
Jumping over a high stick, calmly sharpening
His claws on the woodpile, rubbing his nose
Against the nose of another cat, stretching, or
Slowly stalking his traditional enemy, the mouse,
A rodent, "a creature of great personal valour,"
And then dallying so much that his enemy escaped.

And only then did I understand
It is Jeoffry—and every creature like him—
Who can teach us how to praise—purring
In their own language,
Wreathing themselves in the living fire.

"Wild Gratitude" by Edward Hirsch, from Wild Gratitude: Poems. © Knopf, 1986.

Photography credit: "Cat Lying Back," by unknown photographer (originally color).

Mary Oliver: "August"

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

"August" by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.

Photography credit: Corbis (originally color).



 

Robert Frost: "A Time to Talk"

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, "What is it?"
No, not as there is time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

"A Time to Talk" by Robert Frost, from Mountain Interval. © Henry Holt, 1916.

Photography credit: "Rusty Hoe Leaning Against Stone Masonry Wall," by unknown photographer (originally color).


 

William Stafford: "Why I Am Happy"

Now has come, an easy time. I let it
roll. There is a lake somewhere
so blue and far nobody owns it.
A wind comes by and a willow listens
gracefully.

I hear all this, every summer. I laugh
and cry for every turn of the world,
its terribly cold, innocent spin.
That lake stays blue and free; it goes
on and on.

And I know where it is.

"Why I Am Happy" by William Stafford, from Why I Am Happy. © Paper Crane Press, 1998.

Photography credit: "Willow on Water," by David Aimone (originally color).


 

Cathy Ross: "If the Moon Came Out Only Once a Month"

If the moon came out only once a month
people would appreciate it more. They’d mark it
in their datebooks, take a walk by moonlight, notice
how their bedroom window framed its silver smile.

And if the moon came out just once a year,
it would be a holiday, with tinsel streamers
tied to lampposts, stores closing early
so no one has to work on lunar eve,
travelers rushing to get home by moon-night,
celebrations with champagne and cheese.
Folks would stay awake ’til dawn
to watch it turn transparent and slowly fade away.

And if the moon came out randomly,
the world would be on wide alert, never knowing
when it might appear, spotters scanning empty skies,
weathermen on TV giving odds—“a 10% chance
of moon tonight”—and when it suddenly began to rise,
everyone would cry “the moon is out,” crowds
would fill the streets, jostling and pointing,
night events would be canceled,
moon-closure signs posted on the doors.

And if the moon rose but once a century,
ascending luminous and lush on a long-awaited night,
all humans on the planet would gather
in huddled, whispering groups
to stare in awe, dazzled by its brilliance,
enchanted by its spell. Years later,
they would tell their children, “Yes, I saw it once.
Maybe you will live to see it too.”

But the moon is always with us,
an old familiar face, like the mantel clock,
so no one pays it much attention.

Tonight
why not go outside and gaze up in wonder,
as if you’d never seen it before,
as if it were a miracle,
as if you had been waiting
all your life.

"If the Moon Came Out Only Once a Month" by Cathy Ross, from If the Moon Came Out Only Once a Month. © Forsythia Press, 2012.

Photography credit: "Lick Observatory Moonrise," by Rick Baldridge, 2012 (originally color).


 

Lisel Mueller: "Losing My Sight"

I never knew that by August
the birds are practically silent,
only a twitter here and there.
Now I notice. Last spring
their noisiness taught me the difference
between screamers and whistlers and cooers
and O, the coloraturas.
I have already mastered
the subtlest pitches in our cat's
elegant Chinese. As the river
turns muddier before my eyes,
its sighs and little smacks
grow louder. Like a spy,
I pick up things indiscriminately:
the long approach of a truck,
car doors slammed in the dark,
the night life of animals—shrieks and hisses,
sex and plunder in the garage.
Tonight the crickets spread static
across the air, a continuous rope
of sound extended to me,
the perfect listener.

"Losing My Sight" by Lisel Mueller, from Alive Together. © Louisiana State University Press, 1996. 

Photography credit: Unknown (originally color).



 

William Carlos Williams: "Nantucket"

Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow

changed by white curtains—
Smell of cleanliness—

Sunshine of late afternoon—
On the glass tray

a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which

a key is lying—And the
immaculate white bed

"Nantucket" by William Carlos Williams, from William Carlos Williams: Selected Poems, edited by Robert Pinsky. © Library of America, 2004.

Photography credit: detail of image by Elisabeth Dunker (originally color).