Hippos on Holiday

Hippos on Holiday 
by Billy Collins

is not really the title of a movie
but if it were I would be sure to see it.
I love their short legs and big heads,
the whole hippo look.
Hundreds of them would frolic
in the mud of a wide, slow-moving river,
and I would eat my popcorn
in the dark of a neighborhood theatre.
When they opened their enormous mouths
lined with big stubby teeth
I would drink my enormous Coke.

I would be both in my seat
and in the water playing with the hippos,
which is the way it is
with a truly great movie.
Only a mean-spirited reviewer
would ask on holiday from what?

"Hippos on Holiday" by Billy Collins from Aimless Love. © Random House, 2013. 

Elegy for J.F.K.

Elegy for J.F.K.

— W. H. Auden

When a just man dies,
Lamentation and praise,
Sorrow and joy, are one.

Why then, why there,
Why thus, we cry, did he die?
The heavens are silent.

What he was, he was:
What he is fated to become
Depends on us

Remembering his death,
How we choose to live
Will decide its meaning.

When a just man dies,
Lamentation and praise,
Sorrow and joy, are one. 

It's Not Just Trains

It's Not Just Trains 
by Lawrence Raab

The ticket office was closing
when we arrived and were informed
our train had departed ahead of schedule.

"What do you mean?” I asked. "Trains
leave on time, or late, but never early."
"Such things happen," the agent replied,

"more often than you would think."
"Look around," he added,
"and pay attention. It’s not just trains."

When I told my family of this unexpected
predicament, I was taken aback
by their lack of surprise. "Let’s wander

a while through this pretty little town,”
my wife proposed, “and see what happens."
"Or else,” said my son, "let’s head off

into that dark woods beyond the tracks,
each alone and without our baggage,
and try to find our way out

before nightfall.” He smiled, I thought,
at me in particular, as if he’d known
all along that would be the plan.


"It's Not Just Trains" by Lawrence Raab from Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts. © Tupelo Press, 2015. 

Gauguin's Grandson

Gauguin's Grandson 
by Paul Hostovsky 

was named Paul Gauguin,
too. He was an artist,
too. He lived in Denmark
in his grandfather’s shadow
all his life. And he chafed
against that shadow.
Like living under a rock—
a rock as big as the biggest
island in French Polynesia.
He painted only insects.

Insects that live under rocks—
beetles, ants, centipedes,
pill bugs. In a later period,
he painted only his wife Marta
in only her long black hair
and horn-rimmed glasses.
Toward the end of his life
he made hundreds of collages
of orthopterous insects—
katydids, mantids, cicadas,
crickets and grasshoppers
with long hind legs for jumping
or, you could say, flying;
and for making a rasping, chafing
sound or, you could say, song.


"Gauguin's Grandson" by Paul Hostovsky from The Bad Guys. © Future Cycle Press, 2015. 

Student

Student
 by  Ted Kooser 
The green shell of his backpack makes him lean
 into wave after wave of responsibility,
 and he swings his stiff arms and cupped hands,
paddling ahead. He has extended his neck
 to its full length, and his chin, hard as a beak,
 breaks the surf. He’s got his baseball cap on
backward as up he crawls, out of the froth

 of a hangover and onto the sand of the future,
 and lumbers, heavy with hope, into the library.
 "Student" by Ted Kooser from Delights & Shadows. © Copper Canyon Press, 2007.

And Now it's October

And Now it's October
by Barbara Crooker
the golden hour of the clock of the year. Everything that can run
to fruit has already done so: round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy
pears, black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,
the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat. Flowers that were once bright
as a box of crayons are now seed heads and thistle down. All the feathery
grasses shine in the slanted light. It’s time to bring in the lawn chairs
and wind chimes, time to draw the drapes against the wind, time to hunker
down. Summer’s fruits are preserved in syrup, but nothing can stopper time.
No way to seal it in wax or amber; it slides though our hands like a rope
of silk. At night, the moon’s restless searchlight sweeps across the sky.

"And Now it's October" by Barbara Crooker from Small Rain. © Purple Flag Press, 2014.

O Cheese

O Cheese 
by Donald Hall 

In the pantry the dear dense cheeses, Cheddars and harsh
Lancashires; Gorgonzola with its magnanimous manner;
the clipped speech of Roquefort; and a head of Stilton
that speaks in a sensuous riddling tongue like Druids.

O cheeses of gravity, cheeses of wistfulness, cheeses
that weep continually because they know they will die.
O cheeses of victory, cheeses wise in defeat, cheeses
fat as a cushion, lolling in bed until noon.

Liederkranz ebullient, jumping like a small dog, noisy;
Pont l’Évêque intellectual, and quite well informed; Emmentaler
decent and loyal, a little deaf in the right ear;
and Brie the revealing experience, instantaneous and profound.

O cheeses that dance in the moonlight, cheeses
that mingle with sausages, cheeses of Stonehenge.
O cheeses that are shy, that linger in the doorway,
eyes looking down, cheeses spectacular as fireworks.

Reblochon openly sexual; Caerphilly like pine trees, small
at the timberline; Port du Salut in love; Caprice des Dieux
eloquent, tactful, like a thousand-year-old hostess;
and Dolcelatte, always generous to a fault.

O village of cheeses, I make you this poem of cheeses,
O family of cheeses, living together in pantries,
O cheeses that keep to your own nature, like a lucky couple,
this solitude, this energy, these bodies slowly dying.


"O Cheese" by Donald Hall from Old and New Poems. © Ticknor & Fields, 1990. 

Look It Over

Look It Over  
by  Wendell Berry  

I leave behind even
 my walking stick. My knife
 is in my pocket, but that
 I have forgot. I bring
 no car, no cell phone,
 no computer, no camera,
 no CD player, no fax, no
 TV, not even a book. I go
 into the woods. I sit on
 a log provided at no cost.

 It is the earth I’ve come to,
 the earth itself, sadly
 abused by the stupidity
 only humans are capable of
 but, as ever, itself. Free.
 A bargain! Get it while it lasts.

 "Look It Over" by Wendell Berry from New Collected Poems. © Counterpoint Press, 2012. 

Cherry Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes 
by Anne Higgins

Suddenly it is August again, so hot,
breathless heat.
I sit on the ground
in the garden of Carmel,
picking ripe cherry tomatoes

and eating them.
They are so ripe that the skin is split,
so warm and sweet
from the attentions of the sun,
the juice bursts in my mouth,
an ecstatic taste,
and I feel that I am in the mouth of summer,
sloshing in the saliva of August.
Hummingbirds halo me there,
in the great green silence,
and my own bursting heart
splits me with life.


"Cherry Tomatoes" by Anne Higgins from At the Year's Elbow. © Mellen Poetry Press, 2000. 

Sky

Sky

by Charles Deemer

I miss the butterflies

that used to visit

our butterfly bush

every summer

I miss the deer

that used to wander

into the abandoned orchard

next to us for apples

Most of all, I miss

a night sky blazing

with stars, so many more

than this smattering 

of token urban stars

--stars far beyond numbers

breath-taking, awe-inspiring

argument and proof

of human smallness

a nightly jolt of humility

which somehow our ancestors

under skies before industry

starry, starry nights

saw in an opposite way

looking up not with humility

but into unbridled opportunity

a powerful calling 

to destiny and empire

which would be realized

the success of greed

destroying the sky

Tin Ear

Tin Ear 
by Peter Schmitt 

We stood at attention as she moved
with a kind of Groucho shuffle
down our line, her trained music
teacher’s ear passing by
our ten- and eleven-year-old mouths
open to some song now forgotten.
And as she held her momentary
pause in front of me, I peered
from the comer of my eye
to hers, and knew the truth
I had suspected.
In the following days,
as certain of our peers
disappeared at appointed hours
for the Chorus, something in me
was already closing shop.
Indeed, to this day
I still clam up
for the national anthem
in crowded stadiums, draw
disapproving alumni stares
as I smile the length of school songs,
and even hum and clap
through “Happy Birthday,” creating
a diversion-all lest I send
the collective pitch
careening headlong into dissonance.
It’s only in the choice acoustics
of shower and sealed car
that I can finally give voice

to that heart deep within me
that is pure, tonally perfect, music.
But when the water stops running
and the radio’s off, I can remember
that day in class,
when I knew for the first time
that mine would be a world of words
without melody, where refrain
means do not join,
where I’m ready to sing
in a key no one has ever heard.


"Tin Ear" by Peter Schmitt from Country Airport. © Copper Beech Press, 1989.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Planetoid

Twinkle, Twinkle, Planetoid
by Paul VerNooy

Twinkle, twinkle, planetoid
Out so far in inky void
Rocky core with ice encloaked
Your planethood has been revoked
The I.A.U. struck a blow
To the cosmic status quo
They’re not quite sure of your fate
But it leaves us only eight
Was it that your orbit’s tilted
Why you were so rudely jilted?
Could it be your little tryst
With Neptune that’s got them pissed?
Despite the fact you have a moon

Your reputation they impugn.
But take some comfort in their crime–
They’ll all be dead in one year’s time!*
Twinkle, twinkle, far from sun
So long for now, it’s been fun

*One year on Pluto is 248 Earth years

Paul VerNooy wrote this poem when Pluto lost its planethood in 2006.

This sad, sweet, tragic, Fourth of July world

Imagine This 
by Freya Manfred 

When you’re young, and in good health,
you can imagine living in New York City,
or Nepal, or in a tree beyond the moon,
and who knows who you’ll marry: a millionaire,
a monkey, a sea captain, a clown.

But the best imaginers are the old and wounded,
who swim through ever narrowing choices,
dedicating their hearts to peace, a stray cat,
a bowl of homemade vegetable soup,
or red Mountain Ash berries in the snow.

Imagine this: only one leg and lucky to have it,
a jig-jagged jaunt with a cane along the shore,
leaning on a walker to get from grocery to car,

smoothing down the sidewalk on a magic moving chair,
teaching every child you meet the true story

of this sad, sweet, tragic, Fourth of July world.


"Imagine This" by Freya Manfred from Speak, Mother. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2015.

What We Might Be, What We Are

What We Might Be, What We Are 
by X. J. Kennedy

If you were a scoop of vanilla
And I were the cone where you sat,
If you were a slowly pitched baseball
And I were the swing of a bat,

If you were a shiny new fishhook
And I were a bucket of worms,
If we were a pin and a pincushion,
We might be on intimate terms.

If you were a plate of spaghetti
And I were your piping-hot sauce,
We’d not even need to write letters
To put our affection across,

But you’re just a piece of red ribbon
In the beard of a Balinese goat
And I’m a New Jersey mosquito.
I guess we’ll stay slightly remote.


"What We Might Be, What We Are" by X.J. Kennedy from Exploding Gravity. © Little Brown, 1992.

Blessings In A Foreign Country

Blessings In A Foreign Country
by Charles Deemer

in this foreign country
I still call home
endlessly assaulted by noise
ads and hype and promotions
opinions and lies
where even the escape of a sporting event
requires using the mute button

the past is a sane sanctuary
filled with old friends
from Aeschylus to Dos Passos
from Aristophanes to Brecht
and many others

who remind me that literature
used to rise above the obscenities
of Filthy Lucre and popularity
and the search for meaning
used to be honorable work

who remind me how blessed I am
to be old enough to remember

a song with no end

a song with no end 
by Charles Bukowski 

when Whitman wrote, “I sing the body electric”

I know what he
meant
I know what he
wanted:

to be completely alive every moment
in spite of the inevitable.

we can’t cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
that when it does take
us

it will have known a victory just as
perfect as
ours.


"a song with no end" by Charles Bukowski from The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps. © Black Sparrow Press, 2002. 

It's Sweet to Be Remembered

It's Sweet to Be Remembered 
by Charles Wright

No one’s remembered much longer than a rock
is remembered beside the road
If he’s lucky or
Some tune or harsh word
uttered in childhood or back in the day.

Still how nice to imagine some kid someday
picking that rock up and holding it in his hand

Briefly before he chucks it
Deep in the woods in a sunny spot in the tall grass.


"It's Sweet to Be Remembered" by Charles Wright from Sestets. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.

You Asked For It

You Asked For It 
by George Bilgere 

There was a show on TV called
You Asked For It. Viewers would write in
and ask to see unusual things, such as
the world’s greatest slingshot expert.
I watched it every week
on our humble Motorola, although
the only episode I can remember now
is the one about the slingshot expert.

He was a grown man, as I recall,
and he lived in an ordinary place like New Jersey.
At a distance of ten or twenty paces
he could pulverize one marble with another.
He could hit a silver dollar
tossed into the air. He was the kind
of father I wanted to have,
an expert shot, never missing.

And I think of him now, perhaps long dead,
or frail and gray, his gift forgotten.
Just another old guy on a park bench
in Fort Lauderdale, fretting about Medicare,
grateful for the sun on his back, his slingshot
useless in this new world.

"You Asked For It" by George Bilgere. © George Bilgere.

the great escape

the great escape 
by Charles Bukowski 

listen, he said, you ever seen a bunch of crabs in a
bucket?
no, I told him.
well, what happens is that now and then one crab
will climb up on top of the others
and begin to climb toward the top of the bucket,
then, just as he’s about to escape
another crab grabs him and pulls him back
down.

really? I asked.
really, he said, and this job is just like that, none
of the others want anybody to get out of
here. that’s just the way it is
in the postal service!
I believe you, I said.

just then the supervisor walked up and said,
you fellows were talking.
there is no talking allowed on this
job.

I had been there for eleven and one-half
years.

I got up off my stool and climbed right up the
supervisor
and then I reached up and pulled myself right
out of there.

it was so easy it was unbelievable.
but none of the others followed me.

and after that, whenever I had crab legs
I thought about that place.
I must have thought about that place
maybe 5 or 6 times

before I switched to lobster.

"the great escape" by Charles Bukowski from Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way. © Ecco Press, 2004.

My Grandparents' Generation

My Grandparents' Generation 
by Faith Shearin 

They are taking so many things with them:
their sewing machines and fine china,

their ability to fold a newspaper
with one hand and swat a fly.

They are taking their rotary telephones,
and fat televisions, and knitting needles,

their cast iron frying pans, and Tupperware.
They are packing away the picnics

and perambulators, the wagons
and church socials. They are wrapped in

lipstick and big band music, dressed
in recipes. Buried with them: bathtubs

with feet, front porches, dogs without leashes.
These are the people who raised me

and now I am left behind in
a world without paper letters,

a place where the phone
has grown as eager as a weed.

I am going to miss their attics,
their ordinary coffee, their chicken

fried in lard. I would give anything
to be ten again, up late with them

in that cottage by the river, buying
Marvin Gardens and passing go,

collecting two hundred dollars.


"My Grandparents' Generation" by Faith Shearin from Telling the Bees. © Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2015

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale 
by Dan Albergotti

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.

Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.


"Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale" by Dan Albergotti from The Boatloads. © BOA Editions, Ltd., 2008.

The Summer Day

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

from New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston, MA

April 5, 1974

April 5, 1974 
by Richare Wilbur

The air was soft, the ground still cold.
In the dull pasture where I strolled
Was something I could not believe.
Dead grass appeared to slide and heave,
Though still too frozen-flat to stir,
And rocks to twitch and all to blur.
What was this rippling of the land?
Was matter getting out of hand
And making free with natural law,
I stopped and blinked, and then I saw
A fact as eerie as a dream.
There was a subtle flood of steam
Moving upon the face of things.
It came from standing pools and springs
And what of snow was still around;
It came of winter’s giving ground
So that the freeze was coming out,
As when a set mind, blessed by doubt,
Relaxes into mother-wit.
Flowers, I said, will come of it.

"April 5, 1974" by Richard Wilbur from Collected Poems. © Harcourt, 2004. 

Sleep

—the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

MACBETH Act 2, Scene 2

From Our House to Your House

From Our House to Your House 
by Jack Ridl 

It is 1959. It is the cusp of the coming revolution.
We still like Ike. We are still afraid of Sputnik.
We read Life magazine and Sports Illustrated
where the athletes grow up shooting hoops
in the driveway, playing catch in the backyard.
We sit on our sectional sofa. My mother loves
Danish modern. Our pants have cuffs. Our hair
is short. We are smiling and we mean it. I am
a guard. My father is my coach. I am sitting
next to him on the bench. I am ready to go in.
My sister will cheer. My mother will make
the pre-game meal from The Joy of Cooking.

Buster is a good dog. We are all at an angle.
We are a family at an angle. Our clothes are
pressed. We look into the eye of the camera.
“Look ‘em in the eye,” my father teaches us.
All we see ahead are wins, good grades,
Christmas. We believe in being happy. We
believe in mowing the lawn, a two-car garage,
a freezer, and what the teacher says. There is
nothing on the wall. We are facing away
from the wall. The jungle is far from home.
Hoses are for cleaning the car, watering
the gardens. My sister walks to school. My
father and I lean into the camera. My mother
and sister sit up straight. Ike has kept us
safe. In the spring, we will have a new car,
a Plymouth Fury with whitewalls and a vinyl top.

"From Our House to Your House" by Jack Ridl, from Practicing to Walk Like a Heron. © Wayne State University Press, 2013. 

This Morning, I Wanted Four Legs

This Morning, I Wanted Four Legs
by Jane Hirshfield

Nothing on two legs weighs much,
or can.
An elephant, a donkey, even a cookstove—
those legs, a person could stand on.
Two legs pitch you forward.
Two legs tire.
They look for another two legs to be with,
to move one set forward to music
while letting the other move back.

They want to carve into a tree trunk:
2gether 4ever.
Nothing on two legs can bark,
can whinny or chuff.
Tonight, though, everything’s different.
Tonight I want wheels.

"This Morning, I Wanted Four Legs" by Jane Hirshfield, from The Beauty. © Knopf, 2015. 

The Day Nothing Happened

The Day Nothing Happened 
by Jeffrey Harrison

On that day in history, history
took a day off. Current events
were uneventful. Breaking news
never broke. Nobody
of any import was born, or died.
(If you were born that day,
bask in the inverted glory
of your unimportance.)
No milestones, no disasters.
The most significant thing going on
was a golf tournament (the Masters).

It was a Sunday. In Washington,
President Eisenhower
(whose very name induces sleep)
practiced his putt
on the carpet of the Oval Office,
a little white ball crossing
and recrossing the presidential seal
like one of Jupiter’s moons
or a hypnotist’s watch.
On the radio, Perry Como
was putting everyone into a coma.

But the very next day,
in New York City,
Bill Haley & His Comets
recorded "Rock Around the Clock;"
and a few young people
began to regain consciousness …
while history, like Polyphemus

waking from a one-day slumber,
stumbled out of his cave,
blinked his giant eye, and peered around
for something to destroy.

"The Day Nothing Happened" by Jeffrey Harrison from Into Daylight. © Tupelo Press, 2014. 

What She Said

What She Said
by Billy Collins

When he told me he expected me to pay for dinner,
I was like give me a break.

I was not the exact equivalent of give me a break.
I was just similar to give me a break.

As I said, I was like give me a break.

I would love to tell you
how I was able to resemble give me a break
without actually being identical to give me a break,

but all I can say is that I sensed
a similarity between me and give me a break.

And that was close enough
at that point in the evening

even if it meant I would fall short
of standing up from the table and screaming
give me a break,

for God's sake will you please give me a break?!

No, for that moment
with the rain streaking the restaurant windows
and the waiter approaching,

I felt the most I could be was like

to a certain degree

give me a break.

"What She Said" by Billy Collins, from Horoscopes for the Dead. © Random House, 2011.

Valentine

Valentine 
by Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

"Valentine" by Carol Ann Duffy, from Mean Time. © Anvil Press, 2004. 

Sic Vita

Sic Vita 
by Henry King 

Or as the flights of Eagles are;
Or like the fresh spring’s gaudy hue;
Or silver drops of morning dew;
Or like a wind that chafes the flood;
Or bubbles which on water stood;

Even such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in, and paid to night.

      The Wind blows out; the Bubble dies;
      The Spring entombed in Autumn lies;
      The Dew dries up; the Star is shot;
      The Flight is past; and Man forgot.

New Year Love

New Year Love 
by Kristal Leebrick 

I remember our breath
in the icy air
and how the northern lights gathered
in a haze at the horizon,
spread up past the water tower
then vanished into the dark.
I remember that January night in North Dakota:
We left the dance,
the hoods of our dads’ air force parkas zipped tight,
our bare hands pulled into the coat sleeves.
We ran
into the wind
down the drifting sidewalks of our eighth-grade lives
to the brick-and-clapboard row houses on Spruce Street.
We ducked between buildings
and you pulled me close.
A flickering light from someone’s TV screen.
A kitchen window.
Your fingers tracing my face.
Your hair brushing my eyes.
Your skin, your lips.
My legs, my heart
I remember that January night in North Dakota,
but I can’t remember your name.

"New Year Love" by Kristal Leebrick. © Kristal Leebrick.