1
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.
Winter Trees/ William Carlos Williams
2
their
calls like an echo of lake, or what makes lake
lake.
Joy/ Miller Oberman
3
semicolon
two mallards drifting
one dunks for a snail
em dash
at dusk a wild goose
heading east
question mark
the length of silence
after a loon’s call
Birds Punctuate the Days/ Joyce Clement
4
open the tin of biscuits and spread on Boursin
cheese with herbs. take a bite.
hear the poem in your mouth.
Things To Do In The Kitchen/ Miriam Solan
5
next to it a picture of Jesus—
actually
a digital, color photograph of the Lord
in his prime, robed and
though bearded
impossibly young and athletic, and—
as always—alone.
How to Get There/ Philip Levine
6
everything, in a place we knew, every thing, we knew, little and large and mine and ours, except horror, all of it, everything could flame up that quickly, could flare and be gone.
this beginning may have always meant this end/ Camille T. Dungy
7
so
many lost in the tumble so many feelings so many yellow and red so many
silver and gold so many blue and green so many green things so many grass
so many suns beat down so many heatstrokes so many city moves on
so many layers so many accumulations so many things a street a street remember
so many/ John Pluecker
8
If there is
a purpose, maybe there are too many of us
to see it, though we can, from a distance,
hear the dull thrum of generation’s industry,
feel its fleshly wheel churn the fire inside us, pushing
the world forward toward its ragged edge, rushing
like a swollen river into multitude and rank disorder.
Such abundance. We are gorged, engorging, and gorgeous.
Life is Beautiful/ Dorianne Laux
9
There are not enough jam jars to can this summer sky at night. I want to spread those little meteors on a hunk of still-warm bread this winter. Any trace left on the knife will make a kitchen sink like that evening air
Summer Haibun/ Aimee Nezhukumatathil
10
A line
Break could reflect
The way the sun breaks
Through the clouds or breakfast
Or, this rainbow begins here
And then’s over
There
Leg of Lamb/ Bernadette Mayer
11
Come to me at dawn or dusk, by foot, canoe or a single shell
To greet eagles, cranes, fox, trees…a ten-mile gorge of paradise
Stop seeking before or after life, for a paradise
Already in us, in each cell of being that is paradise
And the Old Man Speaks of Paradise: a Ghazal