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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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
