Poem of the Week is back to Thursdays!

I'm in a very classic mood. Here's one of my favorite Shakespeare sonnets.

Sonnet 73

by William Shakespeare

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

I realized I never posted a Poem of the Week last Thursday, so I decided that I'd post this classic poem. Because I'll always be a little bit in love with Eliot.


The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

by T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

* * *

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Cat, Failing

by Robin Robertson


A figment, a thumbed
maquette of a cat, some
ditched plaything, something
brought in from outside:
his white fur stiff and grey,
coming apart at the seams.
I study the muzzle
of perished rubber, one ear
eaten away, his sour body
lumped like a bean-bag
leaking thinly
into a grim towel. I sit
and watch the light
degrade in his eyes.

He tries and fails
to climb to his chair, shirks
in one corner of the kitchen,
cowed, denatured, ceasing to be
anything like a cat,
and there's a new look
in those eyes
that refuse to meet mine
and it's the shame of  being
found out.  Just that.
And with that
loss of face
his face, I see,
has turned human.

From PoetryFoundation.org

And What If

by Sergio A. Oritz

and what if the clothes
don't fit with comfort, does it matter,
or is it a matter of why? what if I sit and quietly

wait for the sun to return to my eyes,
eyes that have swum in steam where roses
loosen their oils. what else could I do?

and what if I collect teardrops, which I do,
what kind of misty river would you see?
what if my shadow finds the wind

that brought us together. I could borrow
his soft slippers and leap
from rooftops. you lied to me

but I promised not to lose a single night
of sleep. I too shall have the very best
to wear on thoughtless nights.

and what was lost? there are poems written
on the leaves of trees where I sought to rest,
ecstasies you've never seen or heard.

miracle vendor, my face
has the dry expression of bones,
yet I no longer maintain a need for water.

From Caveat Lector, Vol. 21, No. 1

Cautionary

by Dana Wildsmith


Mama called to ask if smoke alarms give death cries.
Hers just now squealed, she said,
and then fell to the floor.
Yes, as I’ve been trying to warn her,
there can be a high rate of failure-to-thrive
among smoke alarms, chairs, pencils:
any such household plunder, which is,
after all, an assemblage of orphans.
Attention is the key to prevention:
rotate your dishes
that the back bowls not feel neglected.
Turn fans off; allow them to steady themselves.
When a pen dries up, don’t let
the other pens watch you throw it away.
Smooth your sheets; unbend page corners;
straighten charleyhorsed rug fringe.
Thank your mailbox for its daily gifts.
At night when you lock your doors,
say a small benediction of tumbler and wood.
Impress your pillow
with useful dreams.


From the Asheville Poetry Review

One of my all-time favorite poems.

Heart, we will forget him!

by Emily Dickenson


Heart, we will forget him!
You an I, tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.

When you have done, pray tell me
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you're lagging.
I may remember him!

The name of that country is lonesome

by Marge Piercy

We go to meet our favorite programs
the way we might have met a lover,
the mixture of the familiar routine
and the unexpected revelation.

We can buy love at the shelter
if we get there before they have
executed it for being unwanted,
its fur cooling in the garbage.

It becomes more and more unusual
to be invited to dinner;
fast food is the family feast.
Who can be bothered with friends?

They have needs, you have to remember
their birthdays, they want to talk
when you’re just too tired.
Leave the answering machine on.

No one comes to the door any longer.
We would be scared.
That’s why we have an alarm.
That’s why we keep the gun loaded.

Drive in food, drive in teller,
drive by shooting, stay in the car.
Talk only to the television set.
It tells you just what to buy

so you won’t feel lonely
any longer, so you won’t feel
inadequate, bored, so you can
almost imagine yourself alive.

The well preserved man

He was dug up from a bog
where the acid tanned him
like a good leather workboot.

He is complete, teeth, elbows,
toenails and stomach, penis,
the last meal he was fed.

Sacrificed to a god or goddess
for fertility, good weather,
an end to a plague, who knows?

Only he was fed and then killed,
as I began to realize as you
ordered the expensive wine,

urged lobster or steak, you
whose eyes always toted the bill,
I was to be terminated that night.

I could not eat my last meal.
I kept running to the ladies room.
All I could do was drink and try,

try not to weep at the table.
I was green as May leaves on the maple.
I was new as a never folded dollar,

a child who didn't know how the old
story always ended. Sacrificed
to a woman with more to offer up,

the new May queen, lady of prominent
family, like the bog man I was
strangled with little bruising.

I lay in my bed with my arms folded
believing my life had bled out.
How astonished I was to survive,

to find I was intact and hungry.
All that happened was I knew the story
now and I grew long nails and teeth.



Copyright 1998, Middlemarsh, Inc.
from Early Grrrl
A Leapfrog Press Paperback Original
ISBN 0-9654578-6-9 Available Now
http://www.margepiercy.com/

Embrace Them All

by Katy Didden

Parc Georges-Brassens, Paris

Most afternoons, I’d run laps through Parc Brassens
where grows the second smallest vineyard

I have ever seen, and where those silver,
pruned-back stalks looked blunt,

strung-out on wires, and mostly dead
all winter. That was how I saw them.

That’s all I expected. Even in the cold,
I’d see a guy my age there, once a week,

playing his guitar. He’d sit next to the bench
where I’d be stretching. He rarely spoke—

just to ask if I’d like a song—
until the week before I left for good.

I was sitting at the top of a hill
about a hundred feet away from where

if you stand tiptoe you can see the Eiffel Tower.
He sat too close to me. We spoke of many things.

Then he suggested we go at it right there,
on the ground, under the sun. This is how

one lives who knows that she will die:
rolling in the arms of anyone when she can—

rolling in the arms of a musician—aware
that no one cares much what we do

in little knolls behind reedy forsythia,
in the middle of a Tuesday, in the middle

of living. And I would know now
how he felt, and the ground against me,

and whether he was rough or sweet.
And what is possible would widen every hour.

Oh, but me, I thought I was immortal.


Katy Didden is pursuing her PhD in literature and creative writing at the University of Missouri.

I realized I forgot to post the Poem of the Week today (yesterday? today?) and then I heard this poem on Album 88 (WRAS 88.5 in Atlanta - Georgia State University's Radio Station) and immediately fell in love with it. Also, it's appropriate for Valentine's Day...kind of. Hehe.

Kisses

by Kim Addonizio

All the kisses I've ever been given, today I feel them on my mouth.
And my knees feel them, the reckless ones placed there
through the holes in my jeans while I sat on a car hood
or a broken sofa in somebody's basement, stoned, the way I was
in those day, still amazed that boys and even men would want to
lower their beautiful heads like horses drinking from a river and taste me.
The back of my neck feels them, my hair swept aside to expose the nape,
and my breasts tingle the way they did when my milk came in after the birth,
when I was swollen, and sleepless, and my daughter fed and fed until I pried
her from me and laid her in her crib. Even the chaste kisses that brushed
my cheeks, the fatherly ones on my forehead, I feel them rising up from underneath
the skin of the past, a delicate, roseate rash; and the ravishing ones, God,
I think of them and the filaments in my brain start buzzing crazily and flare out.
Every kiss is here somewhere, all over me like a fine, shiny grit, like I'm a pale
fish that's been dipped in a thick swirl of raw egg and dragged through flour,
slid down into a deep skillet, into burning. Today I know I've lost no one.
My loves are here: wrists, eyelids, damp toes, all scars, and my mouth
pouring praises, still asking, saying kiss me; when I'm dead kiss this poem,
it needs you to know it goes on, give it your lovely mouth, your living tongue.


Kim Addonizio's website

Namaste

by Ruth Becker

The road opens up
I travel along its path
Where it leads me I know not
Yet up it I go anyway

Family, Friends, Coworkers
Light, Healing, Health
Love, Joy, Peace
Ananda

I thank the open road
For its willingness to be traveled
I thank the open road
For all it has in store

A traveler I am now
A path that ever changes
Travel with me my friend
Find your way with me.

Namaste

Hide and Seek

by Justin Blackburn

When I was a child
I played hide and seek with angels
One day I hid in the darkest place around
They didn’t find me
Until I came out.

Justin Blackburn's book of poems, Farting Fire, is available via Virgogray Press here.

Used Bookstore

by B.Z. Niditch

There is something
to a used bookstore;
the quiet earthy climate,
moving, fluttery sounds
of hands which retrieve
a love note in the leaf,
binding us to someone
who notes and writes
in certain creative corners;
those brusque, foaming reviews
which stay with you
long after volumes return
to their rebound leather
in our solitary rooms.


From Illogical Muse

Iron Flowers

by Kalamu ya Salaam


sluggish, semi-stagnant
the water in Haitian gutters,
small gullets, trickles green,
sewerage green, here even
the dirt is poor and
there is a cloying dullness
camouflaging even strongly
persistent colors

in squared, white walled
cemeteries
funeral flowers are made of
painted iron/ i see no roses
rising through this Port
Au Prince poverty

i hesitate to take pictures
it is like thievery
almost like
i am stealing precious light
that these, my brothers and sister,
need to live

Snow Day

by Billy Collins

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while, I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed.
the All Aboard Children’s School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with—some will be delighted to hear—

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and—clap your hands—the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.

From Poetry Foundation

Billy Collins, “Snow Day” from Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (New York: Random House, 2001). Copyright © 2001 by Billy Collins.

Burning the Old Year

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.


From PoetryFoundation.Org

Christmas Tree Lots

by Chris Green

Christmas trees lined like war refugees,
a fallen army made to stand in their greens.
Cut down at the foot, on their last leg,

they pull themselves up, arms raised.
We drop them like wood;
tied, they are driven through the streets,

dragged through the door, cornered
in a room, given a single blanket,
only water to drink, surrounded by joy.

Forced to wear a gaudy gold star,
to surrender their pride,
they do their best to look alive.

Archaeology of the Everyday

by Brian Brown

Scars are everywhere on this land-
Weatherbeaten barns stitched
Onto the thick skin of my ancestors.

A malignancy of chinaberry trees
Slips into quiet remission,
Ghosts of shade run amok
From the darkest days of the Depression.

Late cucumbers succumb
On skinny backyard fences,
While cotton is finished
Nearly as soon as it is planted,

Trampled by a machinery
Inconsiderate of these fields.

The economy of daylight proves
A broken promise as I move
With heavy luggage into winter.
Passing the dream-cemeteries

The failures of my fathers
Twinkle on the dawn,
Like stars that wash their headstones.

Their cries ride the echoes of coyote
At woods' edge. Fear uncaged.

If I stand here long enough,
My shoes will become my grave.

From Caveat Lector

I have been greeted by long absent friends

By Richard Elwes

I have been greeted by long absent friends
and loved the starting pleasure in their eyes;
have known the silence as the singer ends,
holding the listeners dumb with ecstasies;
have filled my nostrils from the opening rose,
have shouted verse, exulting down the wind,
have gazed at moonlit water as it flows,
and morning mountains with the sun behind;
have felt the blessed ease that follows pain,
and heard great tides of music as they sweep;
have found lost infant memories again,
seen Heaven-visiting children fast asleep.
I summon up these joys, each one apart-
and I have held my love against my heart.


http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-have-been-greeted-by-long-absent-friends/

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.


Translated by Stephen Tapscott

Thanks to Carmen for reminding me that I love this poem :-)

Yam

by Bruce Guernsey

The potato that ate all its carrots,
can see in the dark like a mole,

its eyes the scars
from centuries of shovels, tines.

May spelled backwards
because it hates the light,

pawing its way, padding along,
there in the catacombs.

I love formed poetry. I especially love using forms that you don't see very often, like pantoums. This poem is a Kyrielle, which I had never even heard of, and I really liked it. Enjoy!


I Put My Hands Into an Acre

by A.D. Gaspard

I turned as green as waking moss
Just north of life I grew across.
Steering clear of the stone breaker,
I put my hands into an acre.

Under a naked orange sky,
With red leaves floating, dancing by,
I gently fed the day taker,
And put my hands into an acre.

My fingers in the thick of it,
The earth and I were closely knit.
Sing a night-song to the Maker -
I put my hands into an acre.'


Check out A.D. Gaspard's book of  poems, Errant Autumn.

Garden

by Bill Vernon

The perfect red lips part, emitting
dissonance, her words. He sighs inside.
She sees his squinting. There's a moment
longer than despair can hold.
Sun wraps them in hot gauze. The ooze
released is voice exploding. How
beneath the level granules of her talcum
rise, a slow expanding, length and width,
the ridges of her sweat. Respond in kind
he does, two rivulets already caught
in wrinkles, coursing to his chin.

He wishes voluntary actions matched
as well. A breeze so fine it stills
her, stirs white rose, her tumbling hair
at temples, cools his pasty forehead.

Smiling, both of them, the tools of out-
side forces now, they're instruments
played by the elements. Eyes flit

from gleam to gleam, each thing a blossom
holding nectar. Ears surf on the waves
around impediments that hum. Their skin
drinks. Somewhere there is throbbing, and
it fills these hollow reeds with life.


From PoetsHaven.com

Kings of Sand

by Evan Greer

organic silver heart
gasping in the sunlight;
freezing in the sand.
Forgotten by the waves
and found by children
who,
ignorant that the
universe is round
had walked a straight line
hoping to get somewhere.

Following their footprints
through boulders obliterated
by the objectivity of Time,
Time--(who does not care enough to hate
the toys that it breaks.)
Children who will soon
come across (the spot) where
they {hopefully}
had read the sign and removed
their shoes
only to find that
they no longer fit.



From Poetic License, June 2003

This is one of my favorites. Those of you who saw Painted might remember the last part of the third section.

Enjoy!

Portrait of a Lady

by T. S. Eliot

     Thou hast committed —
     Fornication: but that was in another country,
     And besides, the wench is dead.
     (The Jew of Malta)

I
Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself — as it will seem to do—
With "I have saved this afternoon for you";
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet's tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips.
"So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room."
—And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.

"You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!)
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you —
Without these friendships — life, what cauchemar!"
Among the winding of the violins
And the ariettes
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite "false note."
— Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments,
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

II
Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
"Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands";
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see."
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
"Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all."

The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:
"I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.

You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel.
You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say: at this point many a one has failed.

But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey's end.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends ...."

I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends
For what she has said to me?
You will see me any morning in the park
Reading the comics and the sporting page.
Particularly I remark.
An English countess goes upon the stage.
A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,
Another bank defaulter has confessed.
I keep my countenance,
I remain self-possessed
Except when a street-piano, mechanical and tired
Reiterates some worn-out common song
With the smell of hyacinths across the garden
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong?

III
The October night comes down; returning as before
Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease
I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door
And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.
"And so you are going abroad; and when do you return?
But that's a useless question.
You hardly know when you are coming back,
You will find so much to learn."
My smile falls heavily among the bric-à-brac.

"Perhaps you can write to me."
My self-possession flares up for a second;
This is as I had reckoned.
"I have been wondering frequently of late
(But our beginnings never know our ends!)
Why we have not developed into friends."
I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark
Suddenly, his expression in a glass.
My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.

"For everybody said so, all our friends,
They all were sure our feelings would relate
So closely! I myself can hardly understand.
We must leave it now to fate.
You will write, at any rate.
Perhaps it is not too late.
I shall sit here, serving tea to friends."
And I must borrow every changing shape
To find expression ... dance, dance
Like a dancing bear,
Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.
Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance—
Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,
Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose;
Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand
With the smoke coming down above the housetops;
Doubtful, for quite a while
Not knowing what to feel or if I understand
Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon ...
Would she not have the advantage, after all?
This music is successful with a "dying fall"
Now that we talk of dying—
And should I have the right to smile?

The Color of Ash

by Leah Hale

We always met on the rust-tinted porch,
a pipe in my hand, you
with a bag of chocolate tobacco,
and we'd incinerate there.
Our bodies smoldered
down to ash, leaving only
the occasional hum of our voices
to rise in the leaves.
We were older back then
than we've ever been since,
and between the drag of our steady hands,
there was only the cherry glow in the bowl.

That was before the sun
rose on our black-and-blue mornings,
before I blew our conversations out of my
lungs,
before we stopped cutting our coffee
with whiskey, before our sking turned
the color of ash.

From Share: Art and Literary Magazine, Spring 2009.