Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never...

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll...

Clouds


My brother is a birder.
He has a life list
and when he adds new birds
it’s considered polite
to feign excitement.
And I am excited
for him.

On Another's Sorrow


Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow's share?

Our Mother


Our Mother who here is,
holy be all your names,
here be your reign,
your will is done,
heaven takes care of itself.
Give us our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses

The Ballad of Father O’Hart

Good Father John O'Hart
In penal days rode out
To a Shoneen who had free lands
And his own snipe and trout.
In trust took he John's lands;
Sleiveens were all his...

Every Revolution Needs Fresh Poems


Every revolution needs fresh poems
that is the reason
poetry cannot die.
It is the reason poets
go without sleep
and sometimes without lovers
without new...

Lines for Winter


Tell yourself
as it get cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you found yourself -
inside the dome of dark

TheSoldiers In The Garden


After the coup,
the soldiers appeared
in Neruda’s garden one night,
raising lanterns to interrogate the trees,
cursing at the rocks that tripped them.
From the...

Berryman


I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war

don't lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you're older

The Guest House


This being human is a guest house.https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2016-02-06_16-19-18.png
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, depression, a meanness,
some...

Blessed Disillusion

I thought it would be sudden,
instead it is gradual, graceful.
The sky falls leisurely.
A Chagall sky, it breaks
apart, slices of cobalt,
creamy eddies of clouds
drift...

Bedrock
a message from my father


may I counsel you
from this distance
25 years after cremation
most of the fire extinguished
ashes scattered in four...

I've seen that possum! And his excommunication document with my name on it! But it wouldn't have reached my conscious awareness without your original vision, Billy Collins. Thank you, Larry R. and...

Catholicism


There’s a possum who appears here at odd times,
often walking up the path to the house
in the middle of the day like a little ghost
with a long tail and a blank expression on...

Lead

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me

Meeting The Light Completely

Even the long-beloved
was once
an unrecognized stranger.

Just so,
the chipped lip
of a blue-glazed cup,
blown field

Fog Drip

Fog drip, they say,https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-12-03_13-59-46.png
replenishes the aquifer.
Redwood needles pull
moisture from the mist,
guiding it down to...

Ah, not to be cut off,

not through the slightest partition

shut out from the law of the stars.

The inner - what is it?

if not intensified sky,

En Route

This poem is for you who gaze up
from the rooftops

hammers resting in hands,
for the souls that don’t count
stars,

whose glowing faces darken

Air Mail

On a hunt for a mailbox
I carried the letter through town.
In the great forest of stone and concrete
this lost butterfly fluttered.

The stamp’s flying carpet
the address’s reeling...

The Holy Longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of...

Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away...

Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front


Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you...

For Guy Davenport

Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
we dance the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon
...

The Moment



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And not once,
but many times over,
again and again,
how we disappeared
into that deep well

Ode To Gaiety

Go gloom
Begone glum and grim
Off with the drab drear and grumble
It's time
its pastime
to come undone and come out laughing
time to wrap killjoys in wet blankets
and...

How Could I Ever Forget That Flash

How could I ever forget that flash of light! https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-08-06_12-05-43.png

...

A Summer Night
Out on the lawn I lie in bed,
Vega conspicuous overhead
In the windless nights of June,
As congregated leaves complete
Their day’s activity; my feet
Point to the rising moon....

Song


The chimney sweepershttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-07-29_13-13-22.png
Wash their faces and forget to wash the neck;
The lighthouse keepers
Let the lamps go out...

Growing Old


In some summers there is so much fruit,
the peasants decide not to reap any more.
Not having reaped you, oh my days,
my nights, have I let the slow flames
of your lovely produce...

1996, V

Some Sunday afternoon, it may be,
you are sitting under your porch roof,
looking down through the trees
to the river, watching the rain. The circles
made by the raindrops’ striking...

Benedicto

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-07-20_11-08-25-1.png
leading to the most amazing view.
May your rivers...

Old Man, Old Man


Young men, not knowing what to remember,
Come to this hiding place of the moons and years,
To this Old Man. Old Man, they say, where should we go?
Where did you find what you...

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
is how Mary Oliver ends the following poem. How would you answer this "Summer Day" question?

"Who made the...

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is...

A Beauty Blessing


As stillness in stone to silence is wed
May your heart be somewhere a God might dwell.


As a river flows in ideal sequence
May your soul discover time in presence.

In the Evening

The heads of roses begin to droop.
The bee who has been hauling his gold
all day finds a hexagon in which to rest.

In the sky, traces of clouds,...

Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)


Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
...

My Father's Letters

Every day my father writes
His life into being. He plants
Razor wire around the perimeter
Of his mind to keep out
The fog that steals the present,
Mines the paths of his...

Love This Miraculous World

Our understandable wish
to preserve the planet
must somehow be
reduced
to the scale of our
competence.
Love is never abstract.
It does not adhere

Judean Date Palm

The dandelion seed needs
only the rumor of rain
to open its doors
and begin to unfold.

Some seeds, like the chaparral,
are only released
by the merciless grace

hymn to the sacred body of the universe

let’s meet
at the confluence
where you flow into me
and one breath
swirls between our lungs

let’s meet
at the confluence

Pity The Nation
(After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose
sages are silenced,
and whose...

Reading Neruda While Waiting for an Ultrasound


We try hard not to fall into error - like trying to avoid the beehive, though it's where the honey is kept.
Autocorrect wants to make beehive...

Every Revolution Needs Fresh Poems

Every revolution needs fresh poems
that is the reason
poetry cannot die.
It is the reason poets
go without sleep
and sometimes without lovers
without new...

True North


That other compasshttps://www.yourinnercompass.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/compassquilt.jpg.w300h299.jpg
you bought in the city
is no good to you...

The Coming of Light


Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,...

Difference


The jellyfish
float in the bay shallows
like schools of clouds,
a dozen identical — is it right
to call them creatures,
these elaborate sacks

Meeting at Night


The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the...