5. Earth Again They are incomprehensible, the things of this earth. The lure of waters. The lure of fruits. Lure of two breasts and the long hair of a maiden. […]

from Find the Poets Find the poets, my friend said. They will not speak of the things you and I speak about. They will not speak of economic integration or […]

Epigraph from Motto In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing About the dark times. Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956, edited by John Willett and […]

  BLACKBERRY EATING I love to go out in late September among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast, the stalks very prickly, a penalty they […]

      Two Years Two years of my sister’s illness; the wind whips the river of her last spring. I have burned the beans again. Muriel Rukeyser (1913 – […]

                        My Mother’s Foot The main door into the nursing home slides open, an exhalation of stale air. The […]

  DAY The hens, startled, open their beaks and freeze in that style, immobile —I was going to say immoral— their mandibles and ruddy crests, only the arteries pulsing in […]

IOWA, JANUARY In the long winter nights, a farmer’s dreams are narrow. Over and over, he enters the furrow. Robert Hass (1941 – ) from Time and Materials, Ecco Press, […]

The world of dew is the world of dew. And yet, and yet— 1819 Kobayashi Issa from The Essential Haiku – Versions of Basho, Buson, & Issa, The Ecco Press, […]