Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me by Mary Oliver

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Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,

what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again

in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,

smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches

and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing

under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,

and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment,
at which moment

my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars

and the soft rain—
imagine! imagine!
the wild and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.

When First We Faced, And Touching Showed by Philip Larkin

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When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much our meeting owed
To other meetings, other loves.

The decades of a different life
That opened past your inch-close eyes
Belonged to others, lavished, lost;
Nor could I hold you hard enough
To call my years of hunger-strife
Back for your mouth to colonise.

Admitted: and the pain is real.
But when did love not try to change
The world back to itself–no cost,
No past, no people else at all–
Only what meeting made us feel,
So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange?

From Out of the Cave by Joyce Sutphen

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When you have been
at war with yourself
for so many years that
you have forgotten why,
when you have been driving
for hours and only
gradually begin to realize
that you have lost the way,
when you have cut
hastily into the fabric,
when you have signed
papers in distraction,
when it has been centuries
since you watched the sun set
or the rain fall, and the clouds,
drifting overhead, pass as flat
as anything on a postcard;
when, in the midst of these
everyday nightmares, you
understand that you could
wake up,
you could turn
and go back
to the last thing you
remember doing
with your whole heart:
that passionate kiss,
the brilliant drop of love
rolling along the tongue of a green leaf,
then you wake,
you stumble from your cave,
blinking in the sun,
naming every shadow
as it slips.

The Patience of Ordinary Things by Pat Schneider

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It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

shan by Momtaza Mehri

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Morning papers say debris has washed up on the coastline,
and I do not know if they mean plastic or flesh.
Some of us blur these lines.
We, who live outside the membrane of being,
beyond articulation,
inside the hum of our nightly prayers,
everything we are fearful of has already happened. Is already happening.
I couldn’t tell you all the ways
land imprints on a body,
on a memory,
but each dollar sent back home carries a watermark I can’t ignore.
This sea has always swallowed us,
boats have always failed us,
land has always meant barbed wire and queuing and contributing and contributing
and contributing
until the pillar-box red gloss of documentation
lends us a humanity our fathers never had.
Shouldn’t we be grateful, brother?
At least, for this?
Breathe across a telephone line,
dream to cast this currency this birthright forth at an uncle’s feet. Know I do not mean to.
Know that this is what they name “luck”

Sunrise by Ejiọfọr Ugwu

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The sun was reluctant to rise
holding grudges
from the dead night.
The gloom spread,
catching up with all of us.
I scooped water
from the mud pot
to rinse my face
and help the sun rise
and speak our cause
I fear my demons too.
They keep erupting
everywhere.
Even in my dreams
I see whiteness
and blinding lights.
The angels came.
They see decays,
we see dancers.
My dreams are diseased.
My dreams grow moths.
The rope almost loops
in an obvious feast of beheading.

absent by Ashely Makue

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i dont know what it is
about leaving
and unavailable
and out of reach
and someone else’s
and begging
and desperate
and alone
and torturous
that lures me to you
i know that you’re not mine
i think that’s the thing

i am sorry
that i will lie
and build a home around you
i am sorry
that i will swallow you
and keep you in
at the cost of all my breath
i am sorry
that i will not blink
i will not move
i am sorry
that you cannot trust
me
i am sorry
that I will ask you to

i don’t know what it is
about fighting to lose
about fighting and losing
and burning
and fire
and waves
crashing into a body
sleeping with corpses
being dead
and wanting you
for as long
as you don’t want me
i think that’s the thing

Samurai Song by Robert Pinsky

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When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.

When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.

When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.

When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.

When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.

Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.

On 52nd Street by Philip Levine

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Down sat Bud, raised his hands,
the Deuces silenced, the lights
lowered, and breath gathered
for the coming storm. Then nothing,
not a single note. Outside starlight
from heaven fell unseen, a quarter-
moon, promised, was no show,
ditto the rain. Late August of ’50,
NYC, the long summer of abundance
and our new war. In the mirror behind
the bar, the spirits—imitating you—
stared at themselves. At the bar
the tenor player up from Philly, shut
his eyes and whispered to no one,
“Same thing last night.” Everyone
been coming all week long
to hear this. The big brown bass
sighed and slumped against
the piano, the cymbals held
their dry cheeks and stopped
chicking and chucking. You went
back to drinking and ignored
the unignorable. When the door
swung open it was Pettiford
in work clothes, midnight suit,
starched shirt, narrow black tie,
spit shined shoes, as ready
as he’d ever be. Eyebrows
raised, the Irish bartender
shook his head, so Pettiford eased
himself down at an empty table,
closed up his Herald Tribune,
and shook his head. Did the TV
come on, did the jukebox bring us
Dinah Washington, did the stars
keep their appointments, did the moon
show, quartered or full, sprinkling
its soft light down? The night’s
still there, just where it was, just
where it’ll always be without
its music. You’re still there too
holding your breath. Bud walked out.