Evermay-on-the-Delaware You sleep in the sharp Adirondack chair, surrounded by a still cloud of larkspur and I am in the long shadows of lupine which almost reach you in the late afternoon. I'm remembering the night of our wedding, how rain throbbed on the windshield, each drop a shadow blooming somewhere on the map. I wanted you to know the way along roads blurred by a fury of rain. I yearned for you to reinvent yourself as lightning spread its repertoire, its variations. But love is each repetition, each small return; night after night love is the way you gather the birds, lifting their cage like a lantern. A.V. Christie (b.1963) "Evermay-on-the-Delaware" from Nine Skies by A.V. Christie. Copyright © 1997 by A.V. Christie. Reprinted by permission of University of Illinois Press. let there be new flowering let there be new flowering in the fields let the fields turn mellow for the men let the men keep tender through the time let the time be wrested from the war let the war be won let love be at the end Lucille Clifton (b. 1936) "let there be new flowering" from good woman: poems and a memoir, 1969-1980 by Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 1987. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd. Riddle We are animal cries, groans the body makes, the shrill keening of grief, pain and rage howled out, grunts of satisfaction, someone crooning to her young. We're animal cries becoming human, five daughters of your mother tongue. [Answer: Vowels] Nan Fry (b.1945) "Riddle" from Relearning the Dark by Nan Fry. Copyright © 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author and Washington Writers' Publishing House. Quies, or Rest A woman goes from room to room. She extinguishes One light in each room. Darkness follows her And in the last room she is overtaken. Then, she mounts the dark stair confidently And enters the room she sleeps in, and lies Down in the dark, where a man in the dark wakes A little and covers her with his arm. Allen Grossman (b.1932) "Quies, or Rest" from The Bright Nails Scattered on the Ground by Allen Grossman. Copyright © 1986. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Those Winter Sundays Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices? Robert Hayden (1913Ð1980) "Those Winter Sundays" from Angle of Ascent: New and Collected Poems by Robert Hayden. Copyright © 1966. Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Luck Sometimes a crumb falls From the tables of joy, Sometimes a bone Is flung. To some people Love is given, To others Only heaven. Langston Hughes (1902Ð1967) "Luck" from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., by permission of Harold Ober Associates, Incorporated. Copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. from Of Pairs The mockingbirds, that pair, arrive, one, and the other; glossily perch, respond, respond, branch to branch. One stops, and flies. The other flies. Arrives, dips, in a blur of wings, lights, is joined. Sings. Sings. Actually, there are birds galore: bowlegged blackbirds brassy as crows; elegant ibises with inelegant cows; hummingbirds' stutter on air; tilted over the sea, a man-of-war in a long arc without a feather's stir. Josephine Jacobsen (b.1908) "Of Pairs" (excerpt) from In the Crevice of Time: New and Collected Poems by Josephine Jacobsen. Copyright © 1995. Reprinted by permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press. from The Bells Hear the sledges with the bells— Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells Bells, bells, bells— From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) 0° These nights when the wind blows, I lay my head on the pillow, I lay my head on white feathers, white down, tag ends of Memory. White feathers, white down, I'm wrapped in a nightgown stiffening, year by year, against the cold. My arms hug the pillow, light as a feather when we lie in love's weather, but tonight I sleep alone, the closet full of skeletons that grin in the chilly breeze. Starving, they climb love's zero by degrees, as I will, the pillow dreaming furious dreams. Dreams not my own. Elizabeth Spires (b.1952) "0°" from Annonciade by Elizabeth Spires. Copyright © 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author. from The World is Round I am Rose my eyes are blue I am Rose and who are you I am Rose and when I sing I am Rose like anything Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) From The World is Round by Gertrude Stein. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Gertrude Stein. Keeping Things Whole In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been. We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole. Mark Strand (b. 1934) "Keeping Things Whole" from Selected Poems by Mark Strand. Copyright © 1980 by Mark Strand. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.