Things I Didn’t Know I Loved: After Nazim Hikmet - Linda Pastan

I always knew I loved the sky,
the way it seems solid and insubstantial at the same time;
the way it disappears above us
even as we pursue it in a climbing plane,
like wishes or answers to certain questions—always out of reach;
the way it embodies blue,
even when it is gray.

But I didn't know I loved the clouds,
those shaggy eyebrows glowering
over the face of the sun.
Perhaps I only love the strange shapes clouds can take,
as if they are sketches by an artist
who keeps changing her mind.
Perhaps I love their deceptive softness,
like a bosom I'd like to rest my head against
but never can.

And I know I love the grass, even as I am cutting it as short
as the hair on my grandson's newly barbered head.
I love the way the smell of grass can fill my nostrils
with intimations of youth and lust;
the way it stains my handkerchief with meanings
that never wash out.

Sometimes I love the rain, staccato on the roof,
and always the snow when I am inside looking out
at the blurring around the edges of parked cars
and trees. And I love trees,
in winter when their austere shapes
are like the cutout silhouettes artists sell at fairs
and in May when their branches
are fuzzy with growth, the leaves poking out
like new green horns on a young deer.

But how about the sound of trains,
those drawn-out whistles of longing in the night,
like coyotes made of steam and steel, no color at all,
reminding me of prisoners on chain gangs I've only seen
in movies, defeated men hammering spikes into rails,
the burly guards watching over them?

Those whistles give loneliness and departure a voice.
It is the kind of loneliness I can take in my arms, tasting
of tears that comfort even as they burn, dampening the pillows
and all the feathers of all the geese who were plucked to fill
them.

Perhaps I embrace the music of departure—song without lyrics,
so I can learn to love it, though I don't love it now.
For at the end of the story, when sky and clouds and grass,
and even you my love of so many years,
have almost disappeared,
it will be all there is left to love.

A Letter of Recommendation - Yehuda Amichai

On summer nights I sleep naked

in Jerusalem. My bed

stands on the brink of a deep valley

without rolling down into it.

In the daytime I walk around with the Ten

Commandments on my lips

like an old tune someone hums to himself.

Oh touch me, touch me, good woman!

That’s not a scar you feel under my shirt, that’s

a letter of recommendation, folded up tight,

from my father:

“All the same, he’s a good boy, and full of love.”

I remember my father waking me for early prayers.

He would do it by gently stroking my forehead, not

by tearing away the blanket.

Since then I love him even more.

And as his reward, may he be wakened

gently and with love

on the Day of the Resurrection.

May - Jonathan Galassi

The backyard apple tree gets sad so soon,

takes on a used-up, feather-duster look

within a week.

The ivy’s spring reconnaissance campaign

sends red feelers out and up and down

to find the sun.

Ivy from last summer clogs the pool,

brewing a loamy, wormy, tea-leaf mulch

soft to the touch

and rank with interface of rut and rot.

The month after the month they say is cruel

is and is not.

The Enkindled Spring - D.H. Lawrence

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,

Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,

Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between

Where the wood fumes up, and the flickering, watery rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration

Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze

Of growing, these sparks that puff in wild gyration,

Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among

This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed

About like a shadow buffeted in the throng

Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.

Tree - Jane Hirshfield

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

Calvin's Theory of Predestination - Betsy Johnson-Miller

Some people will be chosen
for the job, the Wednesday night poker game

for the limited number of spaces
available in heaven. Only so many

spoons fit in one drawer your mother
would say

and the same is true for clothes
and closets

shelves and cans and let's be honest
hearts and loves.

I cannot love you because I love another
is a problem

that sometimes gets admitted
over wine

in a restaurant
filled with people choosing

this dish over that meat
choosing something that will fill

the middle of their beings
or leave them slavering like a cheetah

who missed and pass that
would you? and let's be friends. Yes

let's drink to being friends
and then we can all go on our way

remembering the best part
about being chosen is that

you do not have to stop
for anyone along the way.