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Boston -- John Collins Bossidy

(Poem #129)Boston
 And this is good old Boston
 The home of the bean and the cod,
 Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots,
 And the Cabots talk only to God
-- John Collins Bossidy

Kashmir -- Jimmy Page/Robert Plant

(Poem #128)Kashmir
 Whoa, let the sun beat down upon my face
 And stars to fill my dream
 I am a traveler of both time and space
 To be where I have been
 T’ sit with elders of the gentle race
 This world has seldom seen
 Th’ talk of days for which they sit and wait
 All will be revealed
 Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace
 Whose sounds caress my ear
 But not a word I heard could I relate
 The story was quite clear
 Whoa-hoh, whoa-wa-oh
 Oooh, oh baby, I been flyin’
 Lord, yeah, mama, there ain’t no denyin’
 Oh, oooh yes, I’ve been flying
 Mama, mama, ain’t no denyin’, no denyin’
 Oh, all I see turns to brown
 As the sun burns the ground
 And my eyes fill with sand
 As I scan this wasted land
 Tryin’ to find, tryin’ to find where I beeeeeuhoaoh
 Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace
 Like thoughts inside a dream
 Heed the path that led me to that place
 Yellow desert stream
 My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon
 Will return again
 Sure as the dust that floats b’hind you
 When movin’ through Kashmir
 Oh, father of the four winds, fill my sails
 Across the sea of years
 With no provision but an open face
 ‘Long the straits of fear
 Whaoh, whaoh
 Whaoh-oh, oh
 Ohhhh
 Well, when I want, when I’m on my way, yeah
 When I see, when I see the way, you stay-yeah
 Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, well I’m down, yes
 Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, well I’m down, so down
 Ooh, my baby, oooh, my baby, let me take you there
 Oh, oh, come on, come on
 Oh, let me take you there
 Let me take you there
 Whoo-ooh, yeah-yeah, whoo-ooh, yeah-yeah, let me take you
-- Jimmy Page/Robert Plant

Ars Poetica #100: I Believe -- Elizabeth Alexander

(Poem #127)Ars Poetica #100: I Believe
 Poetry, I tell my students,
 is idiosyncratic. Poetry
 
 is where we are ourselves
 (though Sterling Brown said
 
 "Every 'I' is a dramatic ‘I’"),
 digging in the clam flats
 
 for the shell that snaps,
 emptying the proverbial pocketbook.
 
 Poetry is what you find
 in the dirt in the corner,
 
 overhear on the bus, God
 in the details, the only way
 
 to get from here to there.
 Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
 
 is not all love, love, love,
 and I'm sorry the dog died.
 
 Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
 is the human voice,
 
 and are we not of interest to each other?
-- Elizabeth Alexander

Ticket -- Meg Kearney

(Poem #126)Ticket
 I have a ticket in my pocket that will take me from Lynchburg
 to New York in nine hours, from the Blue Ridge to Stuy Town,
 
 from blue jays wrangling over sunflower seeds to my alarm
 clock and startled pigeons. If I had a daughter I'd take her
 
 with me. She'd sit by the window wearing the blue dress
 with the stars and sickle moons, counting houses and cemeteries,
 
 watching the knotted rope of fence posts slip by while I sat
 beside her pretending to read, but unable to stop studying
 
 her in disbelief. Her name would tell her that she's beautiful.
 Belle. Or something strong, biblical. Sarah. She would tolerate
 
 the blue jay and weep for the pigeon; she would have all the music
 she wanted and always the seat by the window. If I had a daughter
 
 she would know who her father is and he would be home writing letters
 or playing the banjo, waiting for us, and I would be her mother.
 
 We'd have a dog, a mutt, a stray we took in from the rain one night
 in November, the only stray we ever had to take in, one night in our
 
 cabin in the Catskills. It would be impossibly simple: two train tickets;
 a man, a dog, waiting; and a girl with her nose pressed to the window.
-- Meg Kearney

I'm not Lonely -- Nikki Giovanni

(Poem #125)I'm not Lonely
 i'm not lonely
 sleeping all alone

 you think i'm scared
 but i'm a big girl
 i don't cry
 or anything

 i have a great big bed
 to roll around
 in and lots of space
 and i don't dream
 bad dreams
 like i used
 to have that you
 were leaving me
 anymore

 now that you're gone
 i don't dream
 and no matter
 what you think
 i'm not lonely
 sleeping
 all alone
-- Nikki Giovanni

Parting -- Emily Dickinson

(Poem #124)Parting
 My life closed twice before its close;
 It yet remains to see
 If immortality unveil
 A third event to me
 
 So huge, so hopeless to conceive
 As these that twice befell.
 Parting is all we know of heaven,
 And all we need of hell.
-- Emily Dickinson

Telegraph Road -- Mark Knopfler

(Poem #123)Telegraph Road
 A long time ago came a man on a track
 Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back
 And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
 Made a home in the wilderness
 Built a cabin and a winter store
 And he ploughed up the ground by the cold lake shore
 The other travelers came walking down the track
 And they never went further and they never went back
 Then came the churches then came the schools
 Then came the lawyers then came the rules
 Then came the trains and the trucks with their load
 And the dirty old track was the telegraph road
 
 Then came the mines - then came the ore
 Then there was the hard times then there was a war
 Telegraph sang a song about the world outside
 Telegraph road got so deep and so wide
 Like a rolling river
 
 And my radio says tonight it's gonna freeze
 People driving home from the factories
 There's six lanes of traffic
 Three lanes moving slow
 
 I used to like to go to work but they shut it down
 I've got a right to go to work but there's no work here to be found
 Yes and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed
 We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed
 And the birds up on the wires and the telegraph poles
 They can always fly away from this rain and this cold
 You can hear them singing out their telegraph code
 All the way down the telegraph road
 
 I'd sooner forget but I remember those nights
 When life was just a bet on a race between the lights
 You had your head on my shoulder you had your hand in my hair
 Now you act a little colder like you don't seem to care
 But believe in me baby and I'll take you away
 From out of this darkness and into the day
 From these rivers of headlights these rivers of rain
 From the anger that lives on the streets with these names
 'cause I've run every red light on memory lane
 I've seen desperation explode into flames
 And I don't want to see it again
 
 From all of these signs saying sorry but we're closed
 All the way down the telegraph road
-- Mark Knopfler

Numbers -- Mary Cornish

(Poem #122)Numbers
 I like the generosity of numbers.
 The way, for example,
 they are willing to count
 anything or anyone:
 two pickles, one door to the room,
 eight dancers dressed as swans.
 
 I like the domesticity of addition--
 add two cups of milk and stir--
 the sense of plenty: six plums
 on the ground, three more
 falling from the tree.
 
 And multiplication's school
 of fish times fish,
 whose silver bodies breed
 beneath the shadow
 of a boat.
 
 Even subtraction is never loss,
 just addition somewhere else:
 five sparrows take away two,
 the two in someone else's
 garden now.
 
 There's an amplitude to long division,
 as it opens Chinese take-out
 box by paper box,
 inside every folded cookie
 a new fortune.
 
 And I never fail to be surprised
 by the gift of an odd remainder,
 footloose at the end:
 forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
 with three remaining.
 
 Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
 two Italians off to the sea,
 one sock that isn't anywhere you look.
-- Mary Cornish