Poetry

The Hayfork

by Henry Taylor

I could get up from this kitchen table, I think, and go see for myself whether, even how, in the worn planks of the old barn floor there might still be the two holes I saw made there forty years … Continue reading

The Admirer

by Claudia Emerson

September, 1926, clear He had before come courting – with pecans or peaches, berries. She had those times been able to thank him with one of her pies and be done with him. For this, though, he would want supper, … Continue reading

Bee Tree

by Cathryn Hankla

A bee colony, black hole in a split juniper trunk. Gnarled, rough mounds of bark guard a slash of buzzing dark. Wild bees delight, work and hover – dive into an artificial night. They pass each other to cover cones … Continue reading

Inside

by Linda Hogan

Inside the infant is already the path they will travel. It is how the newly born will grow to become a woman, a man, salvaged from other lives and worlds, and a heart that never rests. How something is made … Continue reading

In Media Res

by Rodney Jones

Of the one instant we might die in, if we consider it, it has not yet happened or it is too late, and what seems to remain of it after an hour misses the point, and twenty years after it … Continue reading

Skater

by Ted Kooser

She was all in black but for a yellow pony tail that trailed from her cap, and bright blue gloves that she held out wide, the feathery fingers spread, as surely she stepped, click-clack, onto the frozen top of the … Continue reading

Six Weeks After

by Maxine Kumin

two roistering dogs splayed me flat on frozen turf shattering six ribs consigning me to gray walls, bleak thoughts I’m up and about, hitching from place to place and I see the common coarse-grained stones have not given up their … Continue reading

Later Still

by W. S. Merwin

How could it be that none of us saw it when we were there all of us that one time standing with our arms around each other smiling it had been so long since we had been together perhaps we … Continue reading

The Camp-Fires

by Michael Longley

All night crackling camp-fires boosted their morale As they dozed in no man’s land and the killing fields. (There are balmy nights – not a breath, constellations Resplendent in the sky around a dazzling moon – When a clearance high … Continue reading

Seven White Butterflies

by Mary Oliver

Seven white butterflies delicate in a hurry look how they bang the pages of their wings as they fly to the fields of mustard yellow and orange and plain gold all eternity is in the moment this is what Blake … Continue reading