for Sarah
Pretension has it
you can’t
get back
what’s gone by.
Yet I don’t believe it.
The sky
in this place
stays here
and the sun
comes, or goes
and comes again,
on the same day.
We live in a circle,
older or younger,
we go round
and around on this earth.
I was trying to remember
what it
was like
at your age.
From The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945–1975, by Robert Creeley, © 2006 by the Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press. Used with permission of the University of California Press and the Estate of Robert Creeley.
You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.
Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:
head south on Mississippi 49, one—
by—one mile markers ticking off
another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion—dead end
at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches
in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand
dumped on a mangrove swamp—buried
terrain of the past. Bring only
what you must carry—tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock
where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:
the photograph—who you were—
will be waiting when you return
"Theories of Time and Space" from Native Guard: Poems by Natasha Trethewey. Copyright © 2006 by Natasha Trethewey. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
You walked in like the light From every sun that rose This year had exploded Symmetrically from your eyes I was uncertain—no I was certain I wanted your eyes to shoot Laser beams straight through me It was certain we were soon to be Bound by something mythological It was certain that when you moved The hair away from my mouth A locust in your eyes Moved farther afield It was uncertain if one day We would be saying I will not love you The way I love you presently It was certain we spoke The danger language of deer Moving only when moving Our velvet bodies in fear
Copyright © 2014 by Christie Ann Reynolds. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on January 27, 2014. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
You can only hear you look like a hooker so many times
before you become one. Spandex was really big
the year I stopped believing.
I babysat for the rabbi’s son, Isaac. There was luxe carpet
in every room of the condo. Isaac liked Legos
and we made a pasture and a patriarch and lots of wives.
In his car in his garage the rabbi handed me a self-help book
and put my hand on his crotch, ready to go.
I didn’t care.
I made good money.
Isaac lived to be 180 according to the bible.
Isaac is the only patriarch who didn’t have concubines.
Isaac is 30 now. Modern scholarship tells us
the patriarchs never existed. Experience taught me
the patriarchs are all we’ve got.
Copyright © 2019 by Lynn Melnick. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 8, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.