Look It Over by Wendell Berry I leave behind even my walking stick. My knife is in my pocket, but that I have forgot. I bring no car, no cell phone, no computer, no camera, no CD player, no fax, no TV, not even a book. I go into the woods. I sit on a […]

Life While-You-Wait. by Wislawa Szymborska Performance without rehearsal. Body without alterations. Head without premeditation. I know nothing of the role I play. I only know it’s mine, I can’t exchange it. I have to guess on the spot just what this play’s all about. Ill-prepared for the privilege of living, I can barely keep up […]

Three kinds of hair in the brush one love has left on the kitchen counter. Four kinds of cries when it occurs as one to blow off school and go to the mountains. And later, over the river, when the upturned duck never turns over, five kinds of silence. Always our elsewheres are also here, […]

What Made Diane Rise and Leave the Room by Marjorie Saiser Last week one of the poems made tears come and it was too intimate she said. That was the surprising word she used, intimate. I think it was the line where you and I look at one another, an ordinary moment, and then keep […]

 Excerpts from “How to be Perfect” by Ron Padgett Get some sleep. Eat an orange every morning. Be friendly. It will help make you happy. Hope for everything. Expect nothing. Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room before you save the world. Then save the world. Be nice to […]

Advice to Myself by Jane Hirshfield The computer file of which I have no recollection is labeled “advice to myself” I click it open look scroll further down the screen stays backlit and empty thus I meet myself again hopeful and useless a mystery precisely as I must have done on August 19, 2010, 11:08 […]

BLT by Barbara Crooker Enjoy every sandwich. —Warren Zevon, talking with David Letterman about his terminal lung cancer shortly before his death. Here’s how to make a great sandwich: country white bread lightly toasted, contoured with mayonnaise, leaf lettuce spilling over the borders, overlays of tomatoes, train tracks of bacon leading straight out of town. […]

As I Walked Out One Evening by W.H. Auden As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat. And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: ‘Love has no ending. ‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll […]

Winter: Tonight: Sunset by David Budbill Tonight at sunset walking on the snowy road, my shoes crunching on the frozen gravel, first through the woods, then out into the open fields past a couple of trailers and some pickup trucks, I stop and look at the sky. Suddenly: orange, red, pink, blue, green, purple, yellow, […]

Over the Edge by Wendell Berry To tell a girl you loved her—my God!— that was a leap off a cliff, requiring little sense, sweet as it was. And I have loved many girls, women too, who by various fancies of my mind have seemed loveable. But only with you have I actually tried it: […]