in the beginning the sound of holes, and the weight of treason and light paper streamers. and a hundredfold, and below; and the girls with thickening braids, wet paper maps, brought round at last to see the slick animal caught in the rain. and the deluge; and the dark; and the story past the window
and the window
and the stutter
and the thought was insubstantial, and stained; and the hands were limpid, and sought; and the children scattered in front of the wagon like increasing wind. and the pen that drew your name, and the one that would not; and a child with a small box of crayons, not yet opened; and the positioning of fingers and wrists
and my hand was a token of yours
and the trees, pulled backwards
Copyright © 2011 by Laura Walker. Used with permission of the author.
not of silver nor of coral,
but of weatherbeaten laurel.
Here, he introduced a sea
uniform like tapestry;
here, a fig-tree; there, a face;
there, a dragon circling space—
designating here, a bower;
there, a pointed passion-flower.
This poem is in the public domain.
Everyone knows that the moon started out as a renegade fragment of the sun, a solar flare that fled that hellish furnace and congealed into a flat frozen pond suspended between the planets. But did you know that anger began as music, played too often and too loudly by drunken performers at weddings and garden parties? Or that turtles evolved from knuckles, ice from tears, and darkness from misunderstanding? As for the dominant thesis regarding the origin of love, I abstain from comment, nor will I allow myself to address the idea that dance began as a kiss, that happiness was an accidental import from Spain, that the ancient game of jump-the-fire gave rise to politics. But I will confess that I began as an astronomer—a liking for bright flashes, vast distances, unreachable things, a hand stretched always toward the furthest limit— and that my longing for you has not taken me very far from that original desire to inscribe a comet's orbit around the walls of our city, to gently stroke the surface of the stars.
Copyright © 2011 by Troy Jollimore. Used with permission of the author.
Saturn seems habitual,
The way it rages in the sky
When we're not looking.
On this note, the trees still sing
To me, and I long for this
Mottled world. Patterns
Of the lamplight on this leather,
The sun, listening.
My brother, my sister,
I was born to tell you certain
Things, even if no one
Really listens. Give it back
To me, as the bird takes up
The whole sky, ruined with
Nightfall. If I can remember
The words in the storm,
I will be well enough to sit
Here with you a little while.
Copyright @ 2014 by Noelle Kocot. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on May 16, 2014.