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 […]

To the Soul by W. S. Merwin Is anyone there if so are you real either way are you one or several if the latter are you all at once or do you take turns not answering is your answer the question itself surviving the asking without end whose question is it how does it […]

Otherwise By Jane Kenyon I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my […]

Unity by Pablo Neruda There is something dense, united, settled in the depths, repeating its number, its identical sign. How it is noted that stones have touched time, in their refined matter there is an odor of age, of water brought by the sea, from salt and sleep. I’m encircled by a single thing, a […]

Because Even The Word Obstacle Is An Obstacle By Alison Luterman Try to love everything that gets in your way: The Chinese women in flowered bathing caps murmuring together in Mandarin and doing leg exercises in your lane while you execute thirty-six furious laps, one for every item on your to-do list. The heavy-bellied man […]

The New Colossus Emma Lazarus, 1849 – 1887 Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide […]

The New Song by W. S. Merwin For some time I thought there was time and that there would always be time for what I had a mind to do and what I could imagine going back to and finding it as I had found it the first time but by this time I do […]

After Zeno For my father By Kay Ryan When he was I was. But I still am and he is still. Where is is when is is was? I have an is but where is his? Now here— no where: such a little fatal pause. There’s no sense in past tense.

THE THINGS By Donald Hall • • • • When I walk in my house I see pictures,bought long ago, framed and hanging—de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore—that I’ve cherished and stared at for years,yet my eyes keep returning to the mastersof the trivial: a white stone perfectly round,tiny lead models of baseball players, a […]