Interscope
2004
daydreaming w/ Bob Arnold
Northern Lights
I longed for you before I knew
you; that's what I always think
when something like this happens.
I never dreamt I would see them,
especially from my own back porch
right here in Kentucky. But there
they are. The richest purple, glowing
green, the blush of them,
an undulating mystery
as abstract as the enigma that brings
two people into the same orbit.
Here we are, watching them, together,
and we always will be, even when
we are nothing more than sky.
____________________
Silas House
All These Ghosts
Blair, 2025
Lover
We have reached the open sea, my love,
the shore lights extinguished
seahorse flutes sweet and lilting
We have reached the open sea
I open the urn
scatter you
little pieces of you
falling more slowly than powder
obliquely onto the water
I scatter all of you
You turn the sea faintly red
You calm the waters
just as when you were alive and
midnight snow's fell upon
our open hands
I give you the sky
give you the sea
I give it all to you all to you
I take the urn that held you
hold it to my breast
I put myself inside the urn that held you
I am now in your dreams
1987-88
_________________________________
Wang Yin
A Summer Day in the
Company of Ghosts
translated by Andrea Lingenfelter
NYRB 2022
Tim McNulty
Stopping by Stumps
Elegy with Table Saw & Cobwebs
Rummaging the wood-rack
I pull a cracked
old shingle off the stack
a scrap
on which at
some point, with his flat
knife-whittled pencil
my old friend Ollie scratched
5/32 + 1/2 —
a kind of riddle now, a workman's
artifact,
unnoticed since that
year the cancer cells attacked –
since whatever it
once meant,
whatever part it
played in some project,
went with him
into the flames
& ash.
Friends
we die like that:
thew hole starry sky goes black
while these little
nothings last —
while these spiders in the rafters
go clutching
their white sacks
whispering & yet & yet
& yet & yet
until I dust the fading rune
& put it back.
______________________
Patrick Phillips
Song of the Closing Doors
Knopf 2022
Whisper
I didn't know
I was in prison
till I looked out
the small round windows
and saw you whispering stars
______________________
How long have I been here
up to my neck in sunshine
splashing across my bed
On this street
nothing reminds me
of my children
Here I am
trying to give up
and you keep blossoming
________________
Joy Ladin
Family
Persea Books, 2024
Quadrangle Books
1966
At 3 a.m.
the room contains no sound
except the ticking of the clock
which has begun to panic
like an insect, trapped
in an enormous box.
Books lie open on the carpet.
Somewhere else
you're sleeping
and beside you there's a woman
who is crying quietly
so you won't wake.
On a Train
The book I've been reading
rests on my knee. You sleep.
It's beautiful out there —
fields, little lakes and winter trees
in February sunlight,
every car park a shining mosaic.
Long, radiant minutes,
your hand in my hand,
still warm, still warm.
To My Husband
If we were going to die, I might
Not hug you quite as often or as tight,
Or say goodbye to you as carefully
If I were certain you'd come back to me.
Perhaps I wouldn't value every day,
Every act of kindness, every laugh
As much, if I knew you and I could stay
For ever as each other's other half.
We may not have too many years before
One disappears to the eternal yonder
And I can't hug or touch you any more.
Yes, of course that knowledge makes us fonder.
Would I want to change things, if I could,
And make us both immortal? Love, I would.
____________________________________
Wendy Cope
Collected Poems
Faber 2024