daydreaming w/ Bob Arnold
Ione, Dead the Long Year
Empty are the ways,
Empty are the ways of this land
And the flowers
Bend over with heavy heads.
They bend in vain.
Empty are the ways of this land
Where Ione
Walked once, and now does not walk
But seems like a person just gone.
E Z R A P O U N D
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$14.99
Woodcutter's Autumn
Geese above
barking like dogs
open the gate
to our dark fence
and let in some thoughts
we put away for good —
of summer, that tourist
who took off fast
in his big car
and never paid taxes.
We'll be paying now —
Who let in these thoughts?
From carrying them home
my arms will ache
all winter.
________________________
Lynn Valente
The Possible Pleasures
Finishing Line Press, 2021
Shakti
She lies down on her side and fills the valley.
In the lowlands her legs are a river;
alder trees and wild winter bushes
shimmer in the windy rain.
In the mountain her breasts are blue
and snow clouds sweep across them.
In the bend of her knee
are a thousand farms.
When she dances
rain clouds are broken apart
by the sun flying across her shoulder.
When she sleeps and dreams
a thousand geese sing her praises.
_____________________
Robert Sund
First Glimpse of Swallows
Brooding Heron Press, 2022
Star Clusters / Hubble
___________________________________
For all searching guides for the world above (the stars)
we'd like to recommend two books for your library
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Times at Bellosguardo
Oh now there in the glittering
stretch that bends toward the hills
the hum of evening lessens
and the trees chat with the hackneyed
murmur of the sand; and how this common life
no longer owned by our breath
gets channeled there, crystalline,
into orders of columns
and willows at the edges
and great moats in the gardens
by the overbrimming pools,
and how a sapphire light returns
for the men who live down there: it is too sad
such peace should enlighten in glimmers
and everything then roll on, with intermittent
flashes over the steaming riverbends,
with intersecting chimneys
and shouts from the hanging gardens
and consternation and long laughter
over patched roofs, among the arrases
of massed branches and a brilliant tail
that trails across the sky before
desire can find the words!
____________________
Eugenio Montale (1896-1981)
Poems
translated by Jonathan Galassi
Everyman 2012
Water Table
My earliest wish was not to exist —
to burst in the backyard
behind the rectory
where no one would see me.
This wasn't a plea to be found
or mourned for, but to be unborn
into the atmosphere. To hang
in the humid air, as ponds vent upward
from the overheated earth,
rise until they freeze
and crystallize, then drop
into the aquifer.
________________
Eliza Griswold
If Men, Then
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
2020
MIT Press
2021
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image
A work by English graffiti artist Banksy is seen on a wall in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Friday, Dec. 21, 2007
