And then there is that incredible moment,

when you realize what you're reading,

what's being revealed to you, how it is not

what you expected, what you thought

you were reading, where you thought you were heading.

Then there is that incredible knowing

that surges up in you, speeding

your heart; and you swear you will keep on reading,

keep on writing until you find another not going

where you thought- and until you have taken

someone on that ride, so that they take in

their breath, so that they let out their

sigh, so that they will swear

they will not rest until they too

have taken someone the way they were taken by you.

--Kate Light

Variation on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,

which may not happen.

I would like to watch you,

sleeping. I would like to sleep

with you, to enter

your sleep as its smooth dark wave

slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent

wavering forest of bluegreen leaves

with its watery sun & three moons

towards the cave where you must descend,

towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver

branch, the small white flower, the one

word that will protect you

from the grief at the center

of your dream, from the grief

at the center. I would like to follow

you up the long stairway

again & become

the boat that would row you back

carefully, a flame

in two cupped hands

to where your body lies

beside me, and you enter

it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air

that inhabits you for a moment

only. I would like to be that unnoticed

& that necessary

--Margaret Atwood

After the Earthquake

After the first astounding rush,

after the weeks at the lake,

the crystal, the clouds, the water lapping the rocks,

the snow breaking under our boots like skin,

& the long mornings in bed...

After the tangos in the kitchen,

& our eyes fixed on each other at dinner,

as if we would eat with our lids,

as if we would swallow each other...

I find you still

here beside me in bed,

(while my pen scratches the pad

& your skin glows as you read)

& my whole life so mellowed & changed

that at times I cannot remember

the crimp in my heart that brought me to you,

the pain of a marriage like an old ache,

a husband like an arthritic knuckle.

Here, living with you,

love is still the only subject that matters.

I open to you like a flowering wound,

or a trough in the sea filled with dreaming fish,

or a steaming chasm of earth

split by a major quake.

You changed the topography.

Where valleys were,

there are now mountains.

Where deserts were,

there now are seas.

We rub each other,

but we do not wear away.

--Erica Jong

If You Forget Me

I want you to know

one thing.

You know how this is:

if I look

at the crystal moon, at the red branch

of the slow autumn at my window,

if I touch

near the fire

the impalpable ash

or the wrinkled body of the log,

everything carries me to you,

as if everything that exists,

aromas, light, metals,

were little boats

that sail

toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,

if little by little you stop loving me

I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly

you forget me

do not look for me,

for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,

the wind of banners

that passes through my life,

and you decide

to leave me at the shore

of the heart where I have roots,

remember

that on that day,

at that hour,

I shall lift my arms

and my roots will set off

to seek another land.

But

if each day,

each hour,

you feel that you are destined for me

with implacable sweetness,

if each day a flower

climbs up to your lips to seek me,

ah my love, ah my own,

in me all that fire is repeated,

in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,

my love feeds on your love, beloved,

and as long as you live it will be in your arms

without leaving mine.

--Pablo Neruda

i like my body when it is with your

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like,slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric fur,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh....And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new



-e.e. cummings

A Decade

When you came you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread-
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.


--Amy Lowell, 1916

Song

The weight of the world

is love.

Under the burden

of solitude,

under the burden

of dissatisfaction

the weight,

the weight we carry

is love.

Who can deny?

In dreams

it touches

the body,

in thought

constructs

a miracle,

in imagination

anguishes

till born

in human--

looks out of the heart

burning with purity--

for the burden of life

is love,

but we carry the weight

wearily,

and so must rest

in the arms of love

at last,

must rest in the arms

of love.

No rest

without love,

no sleep

without dreams

of love--

be mad or chill

obsessed with angels

or machines,

the final wish

is love

--cannot be bitter,

cannot deny,

cannot withhold

if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give

for no return

as thought

is given

in solitude

in all the excellence

of its excess.

The warm bodies

shine together

in the darkness,

the hand moves

to the center

of the flesh,

the skin trembles

in happiness

and the soul comes

joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,

that's what

I wanted,

I always wanted,

I always wanted,

to return

to the body

where I was born.

--Allen Ginsberg, 1954

The Names

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name --
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner --
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

--Billy Collins, 2002

To The Days

From you I want more than I've ever asked,
all of it- the newscasts' terrible stories
of life in my time, the knowing it's worse than that,
much worse- the knowing what it means to be lied to.

Fog in the mornings, hunger for clarity,
coffee and bread with sour plum jam.
Numbness of soul in placid neighborhoods.
Lives ticking on as if.

A typewriter's torrent, suddenly still.
Blue soaking through fog, two dragonflies wheeling.
Acceptable levels of cruelty, steadily rising.
Whatever you bring in your hands, I need to see it.

Suddenly I understand the verb without tenses.
To smell another woman's hair, to taste her skin.
To know the bodies drifting underwater.
To be human, said Rosa- I can't teach you that.

A cat drinks from a bowl of marigolds- his moment.
Surely the love of life is never-ending,
the failure of nerve, a charred fuse?
I want more from you than I ever knew to ask.

Wild pink lilies erupting, tasselled stalks of corn
in the Mexican gardens, corn and roses.
Shortening days, strawberry fields in ferment
with tossed-aside, bruised fruit.


--Adrienne Rich

Insomnia

The moon in the bureau mirror

looks out a million miles

(and perhaps with pride, at herself,

but she never, never smiles)

far and away beyond sleep, or

perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,

she'd tell it to go to hell,

and she'd find a body of water,

or a mirror, on which to dwell.

So wrap up care in a cobweb

and drop it down the well

into that world inverted

where left is always right,

where the shadows are really the body,

where we stay awake all night,

where the heavens are shallow as the sea

is now deep, and you love me.

--Elizabeth Bishop, 1955