I should be open to the idea that it is not a tragedy that writing in this notebook has brought me no closer to discovering what it was I might have been looking for, particularly since there is no way of knowing what it might have been. I came here not to find a pond, but in an odd way I did find one, one that I am happier than ever to be with. I found the newsawn pine smell of the cabin walls. I found quiet. And I found a kind of release, however temporary, from the urge to understand. Perhaps now I can dust these windowsills without feeling that it’s an evasion from doing something more meaningful. Perhaps I can now let the raindrops, which have started to fall into the pond, just be raindrops.

~ from Big Cabin (Coffee House Press, 2019)

The man across the street is mowing 40 acres on a small lawn 
mower.
It's so small, it must take him days, so I imagine that he likes it. 
He must. He goes around each tree carefully. He has 10,000 trees; 
it's a tree farm, so there are so many trees. One circle here. One 
circle there. My dog and I've been watching. The light's escaping 
the sky,
and there's this place I like to stand, it's before the rise, so I'm   
invisible. I'm standing there, and I've got the dog, and the man is 
mowing in his circles. So many circles. There are no birds or anything, 
or none that I can see. I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden,
disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It's not
sadness, though it may sound like it. I'm thinking about people
and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than
anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine,
and how it's hard not to always want something else, not just to let
the savage grass grow.

~ from Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015)

Going forth is no game.
We leave whole lives behind— 
not just people and possessions.

All your wants.

All your fears.

All the little rituals	
that get you through the day
and tuck you in at night.

Only see that all these pretty wooden pieces	
aren’t you—
and don’t belong to you.

they belong to the game.

I know it’s comforting to count up all the squares, 	
run your fingers along the edge of the board,
and plan out all your moves ahead of time.

The world beyond the table only seems dark— 
like empty space.

It’s okay to be afraid.

~ from the first free women, Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns, Matty Weingast (Shambhala Publications, 2020)

Seems like a long time
Since the waiter took my order.
Grimy little luncheonette,
The snow falling outside.

Seems like it has grown darker
Since I last heard the kitchen door
Behind my back
Since I last noticed
Anyone pass on the street.

A glass of ice-water
Keeps me company
At this table I chose myself
Upon entering.

And a longing,
Incredible longing
To eavesdrop
On the conversation
Of cooks.

~ from Poetry 180, Selected by Billy Collins, (Random House, 2003)

Above the harbor these clouds refuse to be described	
except in the language with which they describe themselves.
I stand here in the morning stillness.

Which is of course not a stillness, 	
the sky spreading open in the East with amber light
while drifting away to the West.

Here I an sense how the world 
spins us precisely in its undetectable turn
somehow both towards and away.

The blue of the harbor holds	
the sky in its calm gaze.
This is a love poem, be patient.

Between you and me nothing leaves	
everything gathers.
I will name for you each wave rolling up on the harbor sand:

this is the first breath of sleep
this the cloth of your mother’s dress
this the cadence of our long conversation

I want to show you how everything	
on this harbor has been broken;
shells, glass, rust, bones and rock—

Crushed into this expanse of glittering sand,	
immune to ruin, now rocking
in the slow exhale of the tide.

~ from Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (Green Writers Press 2019)

It was dragging my hands along its belly,
loosing the bit and wiping the spit
from its mouth that made me
a snatch of grass in the thing’s maw,
a fly tasting its ear. It was
touching my nose to his that made me know
the clover’s bloom, my wet eye to his that
made me know the long field’s secrets.
But it was putting my heart to the horse’s that made me know
the sorrow of horses. Made me
forsake my thumbs for the sheen of unshod hooves.
And in this way drop my torches.
And in this way drop my knives.
Feel the small song in my chest
swell and my coat glisten and twitch.
And my face grow long.
And these words cast off, at last,
for the slow honest tongue of horses.

~ from Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015)

I've been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say "bless you"
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. "Don't die," we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don't want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, "Here, have my seat," "Go ahead—you first," "I like your hat."
 
~ from Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (Green Writers Press 2019)

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

~ from Healing the Divide, Poems of Kindness and Connection edited by James Crews (Green Writers Press, 2019)

May our weapons be effective feminine inventions that like life. 
May we blow up like weeds, and be medicinal and everywhere. 
May the disturbed ground be our pharmacy. 
May the exhausted hang out in the beautiful light. 
May our souls moisten and reveal us. 
May our actions be deft as the inhale after a dream of suffocation. 
May the oligarchs get enough to eat in their souls. 
May we participate in the intelligence we’re in. 
May we grow into our name. 
May political harm be a stench that awakens. 
May we not be distracted. 
Let our joy repeated be power that spreads. 
May our wealth be common. 
May oligarchs come out of their fortresses and become 
  psychologically well. 
May their wealth be returned to the people and places. 
May we shift slide rise tilt roll and twist. 
May we feel the very large intimacy 
And may it assist us.

~ from Rag Cosmology (Book Thug, 2017)

What if each time
you caused pain
a small round stone
was put in your pocket
pebbles for inducing
self-doubt
osmium for death.
When you heard
someone approach
their pockets noisy
you’d know,
just as dogs do:
to keep distance.
Some men
would pull wagons
behind them,
their pants disfigured.
They’d be shamed
from sidewalks
delayed at customs,
they could never
lie flat on beds.
They’d have
to stand feeling
the weight of
what they’d done.   

~ from THE PARK (2020 Copper Canyon Press)

Out of the bosom of the Air,     
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, 
Over the woodlands brown and bare,     
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,       
Silent, and soft, and slow       
Descends the snow. 
 
Even as our cloudy fancies take     
Suddenly shape in some divine expression, 
Even as the troubled heart doth make 
In the white countenance confession,       
The troubled sky reveals       
The grief it feels. 
 
This is the poem of the air,     
Slowly in silent syllables recorded; 
This is the secret of despair,     
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,       
Now whispered and revealed       
To wood and field.

~ in the public domain

I want to get up early one more morning,

before sunrise. Before the birds, even.

I want to throw cold water on my face

and be at my work table

when the sky lightens and smoke

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world—

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy—have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

~ from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

(Random House, 1985)

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark.  Go without sight, 
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

~ from Farming, A Hand Book (Counterpoint, 2011)

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
    Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
    From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
    A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
    You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
    Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
    They will not keep you waiting at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
    Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
    Yea, beds for all who come.
 
~ Public domain

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world—

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy—have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

~ from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

(Random House, 1985)

Once when the lawn was a golden green
and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials
in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed
with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass,
feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered
what I would become and where I would find myself,
and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant
that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard
my name as if for the first time, heard it the way
one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off
as though it belonged not to me but to the silence
from which it had come and to which it would go.

~ from Collected Poems (Knopf, 2014)

Standing at the swell of the muddy Mississippi
after the Urgent Care doctor had just said, Well,
sometimes shit happens, I fell good and hard
for New Orleans all over again. Pain pills swirling
in the purse along with a spell for later. It’s taken
a while for me to admit, I am in a raging battle
with my body, a spinal column thirty-five degrees
bent, vertigo that comes and goes like a DC Comics
villain nobody can kill. Invisible pain is both
a blessing and a curse. You always look so happy,
said a stranger once as I shifted to my good side
grinning. But that day, alone on the riverbank,
brass blaring from the Steamboat Natchez,
out of the corner of my eye, a girl, maybe half my age,
is dressed, for no apparent reason, as Wonder Woman.
She struts by in all her strength and glory, invincible,
eternal, and when I stand to clap (because who wouldn’t),
she bows and poses like she knew I needed the myth,
—a woman, by a river, indestructible

~ from The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018)

I apologize to coincidence for calling it necessity.
I apologize to necessity just in case I'm mistaken.
Let happiness be not angry that I take it as my own.
Let the dead not remember they scarcely smolder in my memory. 
I apologize to time for the muchness of the world overlooked 
  per second.
I apologize to old love for regarding the new as the first. 
Forgive me, far-off wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize to those who cry out of the depths for the minuet-record.
I apologize to people at railway stations for sleeping at five in 
  the morning.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing now and again.
Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing up with a spoonful of water.
And you, O falcon, the same these many years, in that same cage,
forever staring motionless at that self-same spot,
absolve me, even though you are but a stuffed bird.
I apologize to the cut-down tree for the table's four legs.
I apologize to big questions for small answers.
O Truth, do not pay me too much heed.
O Solemnity, be magnanimous unto me.
Endure, mystery of existence, that I pluck out the threads of your 
  train.
Accuse me not, O soul, of possessing you but seldom.
I apologize to everything that I cannot be everywhere.
I apologize to everyone that I cannot be every man and woman.
I know that as long as I live nothing can justify me,
because I myself am an obstacle to myself.
Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,
and later try hard to make them seem light.

~Translated from the Polish by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire, from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry

Everybody said it was useless
Everybody said, "you're trying to lean on sun dust"
that the beloved before whose tree I stand
can't be reached
Everybody said, "you're crazy to throw yourself 
headlong into a volcano and sing"
Everybody said that salty mountain 
won't yield even one glass of wine 
Everybody said, "You can't dance on one foot"
Everybody said there won't be any lights at the party
That's what they all said
but everybody came to the party anyway

translated by: Sharif Elmusa and Charles Doria
~ from The Flag of Childhood, edited by Naomi Shihab Nye (Aladdin Paperbacks, 2002)

The floorboards creak overhead, 
heavy with stars. 
The sound makes you think of the dead, 
as though they’re closer than you knew: 
like the doubled s in essence, 
an extra consonant slipped into the word 
for the very truth of you. 

~ from Heaven’s Thieves (Brick Books, 2016)

9				

I broke your heart.
Now barefoot I tread	
on shards.


17

Why is the word yes so brief
It should be
the longest,
the hardest,
so that you could not decide in an instant to say it,
so that upon reflection you could stop
in the middle of saying it.


59

Writing down verses, I got	
a paper cut on my palm.
The cut extended my life line	
by nearly one-fourth.

~ from If There Is Something to Desire (Alfred A Knopf, 2010) Translated from the Russian by Steven Seymour