(Poem #84)Happiness Why, Dot asks, stuck in the back seat of her sister's two-door, her freckled hand feeling the roof for the right spot to pull her wide self up onto her left, the unarthritic, ankle—why does her sister, coaching outside on her cane, have to make her laugh so, she flops back just as she was, though now looking wistfully out through the restaurant reflected in her back window, she seems bigger, and couldn't possibly mean we should go ahead in without her, she'll be all right, and so when you finally place the pillow behind her back and lift her right out into the sunshine, all four of us are happy, none more than she, who straightens the blossoms on her blouse, says how nice it is to get out once in a while, and then goes in to eat with the greatest delicacy (oh I could never finish all that) and aplomb the complete roast beef dinner with apple crisp and ice cream, just a small scoop. |
Happiness -- Wesley McNair
Happiness -- Raymond Carver
(Poem #83)Happiness So early it's still almost dark out. I'm near the window with coffee, and the usual early morning stuff that passes for thought. When I see the boy and his friend walking up the road to deliver the newspaper. They wear caps and sweaters, and one boy has a bag over his shoulder. They are so happy they aren't saying anything, these boys. I think if they could, they would take each other's arm. It's early in the morning, and they are doing this thing together. They come on, slowly. The sky is taking on light, though the moon still hangs pale over the water. Such beauty that for a minute death and ambition, even love, doesn't enter into this. Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it. |
I Say I Say I Say -- Simon Armitage
(Poem #82)I Say I Say I Say Anyone here had a go at themselves for a laugh? Anyone opened their wrists with a blade in the bath? Those in the dark at the back, listen hard. Those at the front in the know, those of us who have, hands up, let's show that inch of lacerated skin between the forearm and the fist. Let's tell it like it is: strong drink, a crimson tidemark round the tub, a yard of lint, white towels washed a dozen times, still pink. Tough luck. A passion then for watches, bangles, cuffs. A likely story: you were lashed by brambles picking berries from the woods. Come clean, come good, repeat with me the punch line 'Just like blood' when those at the back rush forward to say how a little love goes a long long long way. |
My Star -- Robert Browning
(Poem #81)My Star All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me, therefore I love it.
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The first dream -- Billy Collins
(Poem #80)The first dream The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight and as I lean against the door of sleep I begin to think about the first person to dream, how quiet he must have seemed the next morning as the others stood around the fire draped in the skins of animals talking to each other only in vowels, for this was long before the invention of consonants. He might have gone off by himself to sit on a rock and look into the mist of a lake as he tried to tell himself what had happened, how he had gone somewhere without going, how he had put his arms around the neck of a beast that the others could touch only after they had killed it with stones, how he felt its breath on his bare neck. Then again, the first dream could have come to a woman, though she would behave, I suppose, much the same way, moving off by herself to be alone near water, except that the curve of her young shoulders and the tilt of her downcast head would make her appear to be terribly alone, and if you were there to notice this, you might have gone down as the first person to ever fall in love with the sadness of another. |
Self-Portrait at Thirty-Nine -- Ted Kooser
(Poem #79)Self-Portrait at Thirty-Nine A barber is cutting the hair; his fingers, perfumed by a rainbow of bottled oils, blanket the head with soft, pink clouds. Through these, the green eyes, from their craters, peer. There's a grin lost somewhere in the folds of the face, with a fence of old teeth, broken and leaning, through which asides to the barber pounce catlike onto the air. This is a face which shows its age, has all of the coin it started with, with the look of having been counted too often. Oh, but I love my face! It is that hound of bronze who faithfully stands by the door to hold it open wide— on light, on water, on leafy streets where women pass it with a smile. Good dog, old face; good dog, good dog. |
Please Give This Seat To An Elderly Or Disabled Person -- Nina Cassian
(Poem #78)Please Give This Seat To An Elderly Or Disabled Person I stood during the entire journey: nobody offered me a seat although I was at least a hundred years older than anyone else on board, although the signs of at least three major afflictions were visible on me: Pride, Loneliness, and Art. |