An Afternoon In The Stacks by Mary Oliver

Closing the book, I find I have left my head inside.

It is dark in here, but the chapters open

their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,

words adjusting themselves to their meaning.

Long passages open at successive pages.

An echo, continuous from the title onward, hums behind me.

From in here, the world looms, a jungle redeemed by

these linked sentence scarved out when an author

traveled and a reader kept the way open. When this

book ends I will pull it inside-out like a sock and

throw it back in the library.

But the rumor of it will haunt

all that follows in my life.

A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

The Colonel by Carolyn Forche

What you have heard is true. I was in his house.

His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His

daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the

night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol

on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on

its black cord over the house. On the television

was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles

were embedded in the walls around the house to

scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his

hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings

like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of

lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for

calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes,

salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed

the country. There was a brief commercial in

Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was

some talk of how difficult it had become to govern.

The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel

told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the

table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing.

The colonel returned with a sack used to

bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on

the table. They were like dried peach halves. There

is no other way to say this. He took one of them in

his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a

water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of

fooling around he said. He swept the ears to the floor

with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air.

Something for your poetry, no? he said.

Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice.

Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

Until The End

An evening impulse
That gives you direction
And you must follow
Where it may go
Always
With its beauty
And unsteadiness
With passion
In the day to day
A personal will
To want. To feel. To live
With the sun
Until the end

Happiness by Jane Kenyon

There's just no accounting for happiness
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away
And how can you forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for the occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme for
for you alone.
No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.
It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Since You Asked by Lawrence Raab

Since you asked, let's make it dinner

at your house-a celebration

for no reason, which is always

the best occasion. Are you worried

there won't be enough space, enough food?

But in a poem we can do anything we want.

Look how easy it is to add on rooms, to multiply

the wine and chickens. And while we're at it

let's take those trees that died last winter

and bring them back to life.

Things should look pulled together,

and we could use the shade-so even now

they shudder and unfold their bright new leaves.

And now the guests are arriving-everyone

you expected, then others as well:

friends who never became your friends,

the men you didn't marry, all their children.

And the dead-I didn't tell you

but they're always included in these gatherings-

hesitant and shy, they hang back at first

among the blossoming trees.

You have only to say their names,

ask them inside. Everyone will find a place

at your table. What more can I do?

The glasses are filled, the children quiet.

My friend, it must be time for you to speak.

Sleeping In The Forest by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.