by James Crews
Jehanne Dubrow
Pledge
Now we are here at home, in the little nation
of our marriage, swearing allegiance to the table
we set for lunch or the windchime on the porch,
its easy dissonance. Even in our shared country,
the afternoon allots its golden lines
so that we’re seated, both in shadow, on opposite
ends of a couch and two gray dogs between us.
There are acres of opinions in this house.
I make two cups of tea, two bowls of soup,
divide an apple equally. If I were a patriot,
I would call the blanket we spread across our bed
the only flag—some nights we’ve burned it
with our anger at each other. Some nights
we’ve welcomed the weight, a woolen scratch
on both our skins. My love, I am pledging
to this republic, for however long we stand,
I’ll watch with you the rain’s arrival in our yard.
We’ll lift our faces, together, toward the glistening.
Angela Narciso Torres
Amores Perros
Sometimes I love you
the way my dog loves
his all-beef chew bone,
worrying the knuckled
corners from every angle,
mandibles working
like pistons. His eyes glaze
over with a faraway look
that says he won’t quit
till he reaches the soft
marrow. His paws prop
the bone upright,
it slips—he can’t clutch it
tight enough, bite hard
enough. A dog’s paws
weren’t meant for gripping.
And sometimes I love you
the way my dog brushes
his flank nonchalant
against my legs, then flops
on the floor beside me
while I read or watch TV.
His heft warms.
One of us is hungry,
the other needs
to pee. But we sit,
content as wildflowers.
Minutes pass. Hours.
Noah Davis
Mending
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.
—Robert Frost
When I lie down with your
back against my chest, I think of how
my grandfather stacked river stone,
one upon another, building a wall
along the edge of the meadow.
And as my palm holds your hip,
I imagine the ball of bone
beneath the flesh, resting
like the cat at the foot of the bed.
And just as my grandfather would walk
the walls in April to find where
stones had cracked and crumbled,
I meander your body, placing my lips
along the backs of your legs, the bend
in your back, your neck that strains
under the day’s labor. And where lips
cannot reach, words act like the oval rocks
we wedged into crevices, saving the wall
that keeps the world from our bed.
Penny Harter
In the Dark
At bedtime, my grandson’s breath
rasps in and out of fragile lungs.
Holding the nebulizer mask
over his nose and mouth,
I rock him on my lap and hum
a lullaby to comfort him.
The nebulizer hisses as steroids
stream into his struggling chest,
and suddenly he also starts to hum,
his infant voice rising and falling
on the same few notes—some hymn
he must have learned while in the womb
or carried here from where he was before—
a kind of plainsong, holy and hypnotic
in the dark.
Nathan Spoon
A Candle in the Night
Stone is tender
to lichen.
Lichen is tender
to the earth and its other
inhabitants. What are
you and I tender to?
When a black hole
swallows a star,
it must do so
tenderly, since
a universe hinges
on tenderness.
At midnight
your candle burns
with tenderness,
dream-like in an amber
votive, its flame
flickering tenderly.
Francine Marie Tolf
Praise of Darkness
We touch one another
with defter fingers
at night.
Rain sounds different,
its steady falling
a remembered wisdom.
What if the dark waters
waiting to carry us home
slept inside every one of us?
We were loved
before stars existed.
We are older than light.
Judith Chalmer
An Essay on Age
It was a day to sing the praises of fire,
to bow to its purpose,
toes stretched apart, layers peeled,
our bodies gathered
into their warmest folds.
It was a day of mists, of freezing
and love. Now the night
when it returns will be kinder.
Now the moon will dominate
the dogs, sending them wild
into the burdock and we will have them
for hours on their backs.
This is the bright snap of apple, catch
in the throat—you realize how deeply
you have loved. You blow hard
on the flames and each day
is remembered mainly for the brush
of lips, for the way we stand
hip to hip in sheets of rain,
almost covered, enough.
Ted Kooser
Easter Morning
A misty rain pushed up against the windows
as if the house were flying through a cloud,
the drops too light, too filled with light to run,
suspended on the glass, each with the same
reflections: barn and yard and garden, grayed.
Then, suddenly appearing, burning in the quince
that soon will bloom, a cardinal, just one
milligram of red allotted to each droplet,
but each a little heavier for picking up
that splash of color, overfilled and spilling,
stumbling headlong down the chilly pane.
Andrea Potos
The Cardinal Reminds Me
It sweeps and arcs across my path
almost every day on my walk to the café,
under sun or cloud, its red
seems lit from inside, a brightness
bold as the lipstick my mother wore
no matter the day or the time,
no matter how near to the end
she got, even two days before the last—
the young dark-haired nurse applying it
for her while I sat near, my own
lips trembling from fear or hope
I could not tell, I could not separate anything,
not now either—the bright flame of this bird
recalling me to loss, or to joy.
Marjorie Saiser
When Life Seems a To-Do List
When the squares of the week fill
with musts and shoulds,
when I swim in the heaviness of it,
the headlines, the fear and hate,
then with luck, something like a slice of moon
will arrive clean as a bone
and beside it on that dark slate
a star will lodge near the cusp
and with luck I will have you
to see it with, the two of us,
fools stepping out the backdoor
in our pajamas.
Is that Venus?—I think so—Let’s
call it Venus, cuddling up to the moon
and there are stars further away
sending out rays that will not
reach us in our lifetimes
but we are choosing, before the chaos
starts up again,
to stand in this particular light.
Lahab Assef Al-Jundi
Moon
Companion of lonesome hearts.
Dreamy shepherd of starry-eyed lovers.
Cratered dusty-faced rock.
This night you shine through
is just a shadow.
Our smallness makes us believe
the whole universe is immersed in darkness.
Midday sun burns on the other side.
Daylight everywhere!
Moon,
perhaps you are here to illuminate
our illusion?
If all suns are extinguished,
all moons and planets collapsed
into black holes,
what tint would space be?
What are colors without eyes?
How do we sense a vibrating universe?
Go ahead and laugh, hanging moon,
I raise my cup to you—
patient teacher.
Crystal S. Gibbins
Because the Night You Asked
for Josh
Because the night you asked me
the moon shone like a quarter
in the sky; because the leaves
were the color of wine at our feet;
because, like you, there was a private
sense of absence in my every day;
because in your arms my heart grows
plump as a finch; because we both
pause at the sight of heavy branches
burdened with fruit, the sound
of apples dropping to the ground;
because you hold no secrets;
because I knew what I wanted;
because we both love the snow,
the ice, the feeling of a long deadening
freeze and the mercy of a thaw;
because you gave me an empty
beach on a warm day in fall,
and a feeling that we might stay
for awhile, just the two of us,
looking out across the water,
I said yes.
Rob Hunter
September Swim
Knee deep just feet from shore
your dive was more of an unhurried fall,
your hands ahead of you,
and then the water closed around your clothes,
your skirt collapsing suddenly
like a flower pulled by its stem through liquid.
You didn’t make a sound.
The wind rustled leaves all around us
and corrugated the water.
The sun dipped lower.
I didn’t know if you would ever
appear again because in that split second,
standing on the shore of this pond
in the mountains, long afternoon shadows
were black shrouds on the water,
tinges of yellow and orange already
seeping into leaves, I sensed the new season,
felt one season expire and pass on.
And in that moment you were submerged,
swallowed whole; but like a loon,
you bobbed up and shrieked the cold
baptism out of your lungs. You then stood up,
wet clothes clinging to your body,
your hands holding your surprised face.
Joyce Sutphen
What to Do
Wake up early, before the lights come on
in the houses on a street that was once
a farmer’s field at the edge of a marsh.
Wander from room to room, hoping to find
words that could be enough to keep the soul
alive, words that might be useful or kind
in a world that is more wasteful and cruel
every day. Remind us that we are
like grass that fades, fleeting clouds in the sky,
and then give us just one of those moments
when we were paying attention, when we gave
up everything to see the world in
a grain of sand or to behold
a rainbow in the sky, the heart
leaping up.
William Stafford
Any Morning
Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.
People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.
Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People won’t even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.
Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.
Reflective Pause
Pieces of Heaven
It can be difficult to give yourself permission to do nothing and allow for the space from which a sudden gratefulness can naturally arise. We feel guilty for not tackling the tasks we “should” be doing or we worry that others will judge us if they catch us in the act of indulging what might feel like laziness. “Any Morning” by William Stafford offers a reprieve from the fear of judgment that can keep us from uncovering true joy in a simple moment spent alone. Though we might be busy, though we might be tempted to reach for our phones or some other distraction, this poem invites us to pause and embrace a bit of space before the day begins.
We can always seek out “little corners like this, pieces of Heaven” when we can just be ourselves, and do what makes us happy, even if that means “lying on the couch” and relishing a few minutes of soul time. We’re often pressured to put on the frowning faces others wear in order to fit in, to fall in line with finding fault with the world or the people around us. But the more we take time for ourselves throughout each day, the less we feel obliged to act a certain way or complete a list of tasks just to please someone else.
Invitation for Writing and Reflection
What are your own “pieces of Heaven” that you’d like to pick up and save throughout the day? What are those secret things that bring you joy and keep hope alive, but which you worry others might judge?
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
How It Might Continue
Wherever we go, the chance for joy,
whole orchards of amazement—
one more reason to always travel
with our pockets full of exclamation marks,
so we might scatter them for others
like apple seeds.
Some will dry out, some will blow away,
but some will take root
and grow exuberant groves
filled with long thin fruits
that resemble one hand clapping—
so much enthusiasm as they flutter back and forth
that although nothing’s heard
and though nothing’s really changed,
people everywhere for years to come
will swear that the world
is ripe with applause, will fill
their own pockets with new seeds to scatter.
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.
Jessica Gigot
Motherhood
When the lilacs come back
I remember that I was born,
That there was a robin’s nest
Outside my mother’s window
As she waited to count my toes.
Now her hands rest on her stomach
Tangled in contemplation
As if I am still in there.
Her fingers are woven together
Like a fisherman’s net as she tries
One more time to offer advice.
Sarah Freligh
Wondrous
I’m driving home from school when the radio talk
turns to E. B. White, his birthday, and I exit
the here and now of the freeway at rush hour,
travel back into the past, where my mother is reading
to my sister and me the part about Charlotte laying her eggs
and dying, and though this is the fifth time Charlotte
has died, my mother is crying again, and we’re laughing
at her because we know nothing of loss and its sad math,
how every subtraction is exponential, how each grief
multiplies the one preceding it, how the author tried
seventeen times to record the words She died alone
without crying, seventeen takes and a short walk during
which he called himself ridiculous, a grown man crying
for a spider he’d spun out of the silk thread of invention—