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.