Imaginary Conversation Linda Pastan You tell me to live each day as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen where before coffee I complain of the day ahead—that obstacle race of minutes and hours, grocery stores and doctors. But why the last? I ask. Why not live each day as if it […]

Pokeberries Ruth Stone I started out in the Virginia mountains with my grandma’s pansy bed and my Aunt Maud’s dandelion wine. We lived on greens and back-fat and biscuits. My Aunt Maud scrubbed right through the linoleum. My daddy was a Northerner who played drums and chewed tobacco and gambled. He married my mama on […]

The Vantage Point Robert Frost If tired of trees I seek again mankind, Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn, To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn. There amid lolling juniper reclined, Myself unseen, I see in white defined Far off the homes of men, and farther still The graves of […]

TREES By W. S. Merwin I am looking at trees they may be one of the things I will miss most from the earth though many of the ones I have seen already I cannot remember and though I seldom embrace the ones I see and have never been able to speak with one I […]

LATE SPRING W. S. Merwin Coming into the high room again after years after oceans and shadows of hills and the sounds of lies after losses and feet on stairs after looking and mistakes and forgetting turning there thinking to find no one except those I knew finally I saw you sitting in white already […]

My Friends Don’t Get Buried By Edward Hirsch My friends don’t get buried in cemeteries anymore, their wives can’t stand the sadness of funerals, the spectacle of wreaths and prayers, tear-soaked speeches delivered from the altar, all those lies and encomiums, the suffocating smell of flowers filling everything. No more undertakers in black suits clutching […]

Bottle of Wine By Carl Dennis I like to park a few blocks from the house of my hosts And walk with my bottle of wine the tree-lined streets, Anticipating the dinner with friends that awaits me. A bottle of wine showing not only that I’m grateful To be included but that I’m eager to […]

The Old Man in Spring By Bertolt Brecht Oh back in my day when I was a youngster Spring was lovelier than it is today And that the lovely girls back then were lovelier Is the only thing that cheers us old men on their way. Ask your mother: she thinks the same as I […]

To Luck W.S. Merwin In the cards and at the bend in the road we never saw you in the womb and in the cross fire in the numbers whatever you had your hand in which was everything we were told never to put our faith in you but bow to you humbly after all […]

TO THE MISTAKES You are the ones who were not recognized in time although you may have been waiting in full sight in broad day from the first step that set out toward you and although you may have been prophesied hung round with warnings had your big pictures in all the papers yet in […]