Happiness by Joyce Sutphen This was when my daughters were just children playing on the rocky shore of the lake, their hair in braids, their bright-colored jackets tied around their waists. It was afternoon, the shadows falling away, their faces glowing with light. Whatever we said then (and it must have been happy; it must […]

Bangers and Mash by Donald Hall We flew the Atlantic all night, your head with its first streak of gray leaning against my shoulder, and took a cab to our bed-and-breakfast. We napped, woke up at noon, and rode the tube from Russell Square to Piccadilly Circus, where we asked a stranger to take a […]

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 masters of the trivial — a white stone perfectly round, tiny lead […]

25th reunion BY BARBARA CROOKER A quarter of a century since we left high school, and we’ve gathered at a posh restaurant. A little heavier, a little grayer, we look for the yearbook pictures caught inside these bodies of strangers. Some of our faces are etched with lines, the faint tracing of a lover’s touch, […]

How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River by Barbara Crooker how you can never reach it, no matter how hard you try, walking as fast as you can, but getting nowhere, arms and legs pumping, sweat drizzling in rivulets; each year, a little slower, more creaks and aches, less breath. Ah, […]

June 15th, 8pm by Marge Piercy The evening comes slowly over us, over the cardinal and the wren still feeding, over the swallows suddenly swooping to snatch up mosquitoes over the marsh where the green sedge lately has a tawny tinge over two yearlings bending long necks to nibble hillock bushes finally separate from their […]

The Bookstall by Linda Pastan Just looking at them I grow greedy, as if they were freshly baked loaves waiting on their shelves to be broken open—that one and that—and I make my choice in a mood of exalted luck, browsing among them like a cow in sweetest pasture. For life is continuous as long […]

Spring by Linda Pastan Just as we lose hope she ambles in, a late guest dragging her hem of wildflowers, her torn veil of mist, of light rain, blowing her dandelion breath in our ears; and we forgive her, turning from chilly winter ways, we throw off our faithful sweaters and open our arms.

Practicing by Linda Pastan My son is practicing the piano. He is a man now, not the boy whose lessons I once sat through, whose reluctant practicing I demanded—part of the obligation I felt to the growth and composition of a child. Upstairs my grandchildren are sleeping, though they complained earlier of the music which […]

Special Delivery Mary Ruefle Overnight the ground seems not to have moved, the sun that was ablood when it went to bed has taken a shower, the white cat on top of the fence will not say where he slept and on the birdbath sits the brown bird who writes me a letter each morning […]