Our Blog Our Player Our Podcasts
questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com
---------------------
Thanks for Remembering Us
by Dana Gioia
The flowers sent here by mistake,
signed with a name that no one knew,
are turning bad. What shall we do?
Our neighbor says they're not for her,
and no one has a birthday near.
We should thank someone for the blunder.
Is one of us having an affair?
At first we laugh, and then we wonder.
The iris was the first to die,
enshrouded in its sickly-sweet
and lingering perfume. The roses
fell one petal at a time,
and now the ferns are turning dry.
The room smells like a funeral,
but there they sit, too much at home,
accusing us of some small crime,
like love forgotten, and we can't
throw out a gift we've never owned.
Our Blog Our Player Our Podcasts
questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com
Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks
by Jane Kenyon
I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .
I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper....
When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . .
I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . .
I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills. . . .
I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden. . . .
I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge. . . .
I am the heart contracted by joy. . . .
the longest hair, white
before the rest. . . .
I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow. . . .
I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . .
I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name. . . .
Our Blog Our Player Our Podcasts
questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com
Commanders Change Name To:
Our Blog Our Player Our Podcasts
questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com
Veterans of the Seventies
by Melvin Bell
Our Blog Our Player Our Podcasts
questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com
Our Blog Our Player Our Podcasts
questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com
A Lobsterman Looks At The Sea
by Richard Berlin
His new hip healed in, we're working
on a bluff, talking doctors and health care
reform as we shove a new propane tank into place.
A shape on the surface catches his eye:
"Right whale," he says, but I can only see
endless swells rolling in from the east.
He points out the gradations of gray
and green that mark deep ledge, the tide's
shape along the islands and rocks,
the whale's glistening back suddenly in focus.
I react with the same surprise
my patients feel when I observe
what they can't see—
a sudden shift in gaze, or a crease in a cheek,
understanding how a doctor becomes
like a man who has spent sixty years
on a lobster boat, watching the world
swim fast and shining, right before his eyes.
Our Blog Our Player Our Podcasts
questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com
by Lola Haskins
I'm crossing the river where it narrows,
carefully, it being Sunday
and I'm past the root end of the log
when I look up,
and there's a haunt sitting
on the blossom end.
I can see trumpet vine and blackberries
through her white dress.
Gnats hang in the air.
The river runs, red-brown and deep.
The haunt sings
and it's my music, the blood song
of my heart and bones
and my skull dancing in the road.
And Chloe, she knows my name.
She says Oh Patsy, take care,
or you will surely fall
and the thick river
will pull you too to shroudy weeds
and you'll be gone,
gone as the moment you looked up
and saw the trumpet vine and
berrries, hot and ready
through my white dress,
gone as all the years since I died,
and waited here for you.
Our Blog Our Player Our Podcasts
questions, comments: jcase4218@gmail.com
