Your Favorite Poems

[Hollylane]

Fireflies

by Marilyn Kallet

In the dry summer field at nightfall,
fireflies rise like sparks.
Imagine the presence of ghosts
flickering, the ghosts of young friends,
your father nearest in the distance.
This time they carry no sorrow,
no remorse, their presence is so light.
Childhood comes to you,
memories of your street in lamplight,
holding those last moments before bed,
capturing lightning-bugs,
with a blossom of the hand
letting them go. Lightness returns,
an airy motion over the ground
you remember from Ring Around the Rosie.
If you stay, the fireflies become fireflies
again, not part of your stories,
as unaware of you as sleep, being
beautiful and quiet all around you.

[Hollylane]

Dogs
by Patty Paine

It's said dogs don't think
they're human; they believe us

to be dogs. What odd dogs
we must seem. So clean

and clothed. What dog would
want our upright

concerns, the responsibility
of thumbs, burden of metaphor?

They lunge into every morning, whirl
my feet, until I take them

to the park, where they gazelle
through fescue, scramble over

fallen trees, dart after quarry,
real, and imagined. Sometimes I feel

like a child with holes
in my pockets, every day losing

some small stone of myself.
But on mornings like this—the dark

branches ice-limned and glistening,
the good sting of cold on my face—

I feel freed from the cage of my body,
so light I might soar.

[Hollylane]

I Could Take

by Hayden Carruth

I could take
two leaves
.........and give you one.
Would that not be
a kind of perfection?

But I prefer
one leaf
.........torn to give you half
.............showing

(after these years, simply)
love's complexity in an act,
.........the tearing and
..............the unique edges —
one leaf (one word) from the two
imperfections that match.

[Hollylane]

Unification

by Ramon Montaigne

The Mississippi at its mouth
Joins the Gulf of Mexico,
The west wind mixes with the south,
High pressure with the low.
Nothing in nature stands apart,
All things rendezvous—
I'd like to mingle with you.
Intermingled, intertwined,
This is what I have in mind.
I just feel a sudden urge
To merge.

The compound that is chlorophyll
Formed as the light increases
Makes every little flower thrill
With photosynthesis.
The morning glory mingles
With the honeysuckle vine,
Come wrap your little tendrils around mine.

I've been lonely as a cloud,
Drifting miserable and proud,
Lonely as a limestone butte—
Handsome, noble, destitute,
But I need you, I confess
Let's coalesce.

[Hollylane]

Interval

by Jeffrey Harrison

Sometimes, out of nowhere, it comes back,
that night when, driving home from the city,
having left the nearest streetlight miles behind us,

we lost our way on the back country roads
and found, when we slowed down to read a road sign,
a field alive with the blinking of fireflies,

and we got out and stood there in the darkness,
amazed at their numbers, their scattered sparks
igniting silently in a randomness

that somehow added up to a marvel
both earthly and celestial, the sky
brought down to earth, and brought to life,

a sublunar starscape whose shifting constellations
were a small gift of unexpected astonishment,
luminous signalings leading us away

from thoughts of where we were going
or coming from, the cares that often drive us
relentlessly onward and blind us

to such flickering intervals when moments
are released from their rigid sequence
and burn like airborne embers, floating free.

[Hollylane]

The Real Work

by Wendell Berry

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

[Hollylane]

French Lesson

by Rosemary Okun

I wanted to know
the language of my ancestors
I wanted to know what they said
when they made love
and when they spoke to the neighbors
I wanted to know how
they spoke to their children
and what my great-great-grandfather said
when he stubbed his toe

But ancestry is who your mother was
and mine came from Brooklyn
with a grandmother from Syracuse
who said Glory be to God
when someone dropped a cup
and Bless me Father
when she confessed

My ancestors went by shanks mare
and shouted give him the hook
if they were displeased
They ate apple pie and
their potatoes were Idahos