Oveido - Israel Nebeker (of Blind Pilot)

The thrill here is quicker than you'd think
The way some jet-lagged bar kept pouring the wine
From over their heads then sit back down again
Four times is once too much for luck 
That's how many times the clock struck
I wandered home, saying your name

The arches here were built 'cause they don't fall
The catedrals to make you feel small
You might find your small soul
Leave the preaching to the president
The crowd cheers, his eyes get wet
I'm full as it is, I'm full as it is
So don't feed me more

You'll be having my head, big as a birthday
'Cause I left all my doubts on the airplane
I didn't know, I didn't know I'm not in control
I didn't know, I'm not invincible

And maybe some things are better left unsaid
But if you wanted to test that, I will, yeah, I guess, I could've said
But there were nights in bars that I recall
Your breath was courage laced with alcohol
You leaned in, you said,
"Make music with the chatter in here,
And whisper all the notes in my ears."
I didn't know, I didn't know the weight of my tongue
I didn't know, I didn't know what I'd done

The lights here are softer than you'd think
The dim lit peacocks in the trees,
They're hiding their eyes and their beauty, like me
But if my eyes were on my back
I know what I'd be looking at
Through every shade of brown and green
I didn't know, I didn't know it was nothing new
I didn't know, I didn't know it was you

i thank You God for most this amazing - e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Spring is like a perhaps hand - e.e. cummings

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

When in Wisconsin Where I Once Had Time - John Engels

When in Wisconsin where I once had time
the flyway swans came whistling
to the rotten Green Bay ice and stayed,
not feeding, four days, maybe five, I shouted

and threw stones to see them fly.
Blue herons followed, or came first.
I shot a bittern’s wing off with my gun.
For that my wife could cry.

My neighbor’s wife mistook the spawning frogs
for wood ducks nesting the white pines
up on Bean Hill: I straightway
set her right. Each April, on the first

rainy night I lantern-hunt for salamanders
where they hide, toewalking the bottom
mucks and muds. I shudder
at the scored skin of their sides, the deep

flesh tucks. In hand, they dry. I walk
in frogspawn jellies on my lawns. One time I hoped
the great white birds might brake
for the frog ditch and alight,

but all the addled past falls in on itself,
splash rings close inward on the rising stone,
my gun sucks fire, the bone becomes
whole bone, light narrows back

on point and filament, the forest turns to sand,
and only season lacking source rolls round
and round, till I in my turns fall forever back
clutching my stone, my gun, my light.

When in Wisconsin where I once had time
and spring beasts gorged my marrows and my tongue,
I was not blind: the red eft clambered
in my eye.

(c) 2005 by John Engels and posted with permission.

The Titanic - June Robertson Beisch

So this is how it feels, the deck tilting,
the world slipping away as one
sitting at a desk writes a check.

The Titanic went down titanically
like a goddess glittering,
Pinioned to an iceberg, she sank

almost thankfully while tiny mortals
leapt into the sea
and the band played Nearer My God to Thee.

But what happened to the signals of distress?
Nobody believed it was all really happening.
I still can’t believe that it happened to me.

As a child, I stared horrified at the photograph
and the vision of that scene in the moonlit sea.
We will be one of the survivors, we think,
then something looms up like catastrophe.

All life, it seems, is the morning after
and love is the most beautiful of absolute disasters.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

He'd dreamed he was going through a grove of timber trees where a gentle drizzle was falling, and for an instant he was happy in his dream.

-Chronicle of a Death Foretold

In Early Spring - Larry Smith

Road catkins, russet and tan, let the
wind sweep over them as dusk
seeps in along the lake,
and I pass road puddles
swelling to ponds, mirroring
the sky's own silveriness.
At the railroad tracks seven geese
veer off and set down in a field
so that only their necks
speak for them, telling us all
to go on while they rest
by the barn. Today a man
asked me if I were depressed,
and I looked up and smiled.
No more than these geese or catkins
as light falls around them, no
more than those pine boughs
lifting in the wind—just so,
life goes on.

The Past Is Still There - Deborah Garrison

I've forgotten so much.
What it felt like back then,
what we said to each other.

But sometimes when I'm standing
at the kitchen counter after dinner
and I look out the window at the dark

thinking of nothing,
something swims up.
Tonight this:

your laughing into my mouth
as you were trying
to kiss me.

Lending Out Books - Hal Sirowitz

You're always giving, my therapist said.
You have to learn how to take. Whenever
you meet a woman, the first thing you do
is lend her your books. You think she'll
have to see you again in order to return them.
But what happens is, she doesn't have the time
to read them, & she's afraid if she sees you again
you'll expect her to talk about them, & will
want to lend her even more. So she
cancels the date. You end up losing
a lot of books. You should borrow hers.

Insufficient Knowledge

You have to start with insufficient knowledge,
yes, this, and yes, praise be, then this,
you have to have that kind of courage.

A breath, a step, a word: it's to your advantage
to begin. There isn't a tune to wait for grace--you
have to start with insufficient knowledge.

Think of a worm's blind rearing at the edge
of a leaf, or a skydiver turning somersaults:
you have to have that kind of courage.

Break your fists, your back, your brain, punch
yourself an opening. This is all there is:
you have to start with insufficient knowledge.

of the heart, that higher organ, which
from time to time catches us be surprise
and we startle with the kind of courage

that will spend it all, not hold back, wage
everything, all, right away, every time, yes.
You have to love with that insufficient knowledge,
you have to have that kind of courage.