Morning opened
Like a rose,
And the snow on the roof
Rose-color took.
Oh, how the street
Toward light did leap!
And the lamps went out.
Brightness fell down
From the steeple clock
To the rows of shops
And rippled the bricks
Like the scales of a fish,
And all that day
Was a fairy tale
Told once in a while
To a good child.

— Donald Justice

for Ellie

You left the overhead light on which burned
all night, till nearly morning, when Cedar
woke crying, perhaps hungry, and you turned
from your place next to me to feed her
if necessary, but mostly to let
her know that you were beside her and God
was in his heaven. Is it light that prods
us from our sleeping? Surely light begets
light and pulls us, as an infant is pulled
from the birth canal into waiting hands;
hands whose shapes are defined by that child’s shape
and in turn, define for that child, the world.
There’s little of this world I understand.
Only that your hands are graceful and kind
and lie like light against my chest while I sleep.

— Steve Kronen

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

— Philip Larkin

being to timelessness as it’s to time,
love did no more begin than love will end;
where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim
love is the air the ocean and the land

(do lovers suffer? all divinities
proudly descending put on deathful flesh:
are lovers glad? only their smallest joy’s
a universe emerging from a wish)

love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star

—do lovers love? why then to heaven with hell.
Whatever sages say and fools, all’s well

— e.e. cummings

Whatever synapse-leaping chemical
triggers response—finger from the hot stove
or the memory of a friend twenty years
dead—would, if poured from a beaker,
eat a hole through pig-iron. Quicker
than rust but slower than the sheer
beam of laser, it’s searing, chimerical,
thorough; in many ways resembles love.

— Steve Kronen

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera,my
mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera,of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

— e.e. cummings

The windows grow small with frost and the moon
Is large above the house. On the baby’s hands
Are red socks, curled above his face.
Far away, a siren or a dog.
In your long hair is a trellis of flowers
Which makes everything in the kitchen brighter.
It defies all sensemaking, the weather so cold
And the south so far away. You try not to draw
Attention to yourself, but how can you help it?
Here, drink some more wine. We have warmed some wine
And though it’s good wine, we put an apple in it.
Here, setting the wine before me. But I don’t want more wine.
I want to ask about the flowers. He wakes up
And his red hands sink deep into your yellow hair.

— Steve Kronen

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

— William Carlos Williams

It is what he does not know,
Crossing the road under the elm trees,
About the mechanism of my car,
About the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
About Mozart, India, Arcturus,

That wins my praise. I engage
At once in whirling squirrel-praise.

He obeys the orders of nature
Without knowing them.
It is what he does not know
That makes him beautiful.
Such a knot of little purposeful nature!

I who can see him as he cannot see himself
Repose in the ignorance that is his blessing.

It is what man does not know of God
Composes the visible poem of the world.
…Just missed him!

— Richard Eberhart

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you’re young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever’s living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man’s
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation’s dead undoom.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

— e.e. cummings