Easy by Roland Flint While she starts the water and measures the pasta, he sets the table and peels the garlic. She cuts up broccoli, strips snow peas, readies fish— he presses the garlic, fixes her a kir, and him a gin. She sautés the vegetables while he grates cheese, readies the candles, and puts […]

While I Was Sleeping by Olivia Stiffler my daughter’s hair turned gray. Great nieces and nephews returned from college some with degrees some with babies some with the same bad habits. My granddaughter wore a boyfriend handcuffed to her wrist. My husband grew cataracts and seemed confused. As was I waking to this drama having […]

Musée Des Beaux Arts By W.H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always […]

Death Again by Jim Harrison Let’s not get romantic or dismal about death. Indeed it’s our most unique act along with birth. We must think of it as cooking breakfast, it’s that ordinary. Break two eggs into a bowl or break a bowl into two eggs. Slip into a coffin after the fluids have been […]

Yes by William Stafford It could happen any time, tornado, earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen. Or sunshine, love, salvation. It could, you know. That’s why we wake and look out––no guarantees in this life. But some bonuses, like morning, like right now, like noon, like evening.

Questionnaire by Wendell Berry How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of […]

Let Evening Come by Jane Kenyon Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long […]

The More Loving One by W.H. Auden Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us […]

Rereading Frost by Linda Pastan Sometimes I think all the best poems have been written already, and no one has time to read them, so why try to write more? At other times though, I remember how one flower in a meadow already full of flowers somehow adds to the general fireworks effect as you […]

This Is Just To Say BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold