The Poetry Playground

telling our stories

the fox came every evening to my door
asking for nothing. my fear
trapped me inside, hoping to dismiss her
but she sat till morning, waiting.

at dawn we would, each of us,
rise from our haunches, look through the glass
then walk away.

did she gather her village around her
and sing of the hairless moon face,
the trembling snout, the ignorant eyes?

child, i tell you now it was not
the animal blood i was hiding from,
it was the poet in her, the poet and
the terrible stories she could tell.

~ Lucille Clifton

Bad Day

Not every day
is a good day
for the elfin tailor.
Some days
the stolen cloth
reveals what it
was made for:
a handsome weskit
or the jerkin
of an elfin sailor.
Other days
the tailor
sees a jacket
in his mind
and sets about
to find the fabric.
But some days
neither the idea
nor the material
presents itself;
and these are
the hard days
for the tailor elf.

~ Kay Ryan

Requiem

Today
is the
perfect day

The sky
just so
clouds moving
fast

Drops of water
on leaves
of Russian sage

Dog sitting
her chin
on crossed paws

Light streams
through branches
of locust tree

I sit
just so
at the
small table

Everything is
perfect
just like this
you would have said

~ Abigail Gramig

Chapter One

I love how books begin; those passages
that lead us by the hand across
the luxurious lawns, that portage us
gently up the gravel drive,
toward the manor house.

The author is still a kind host here,
anxious that we mingle
with the other weekend guests, that we note
how even the banisters are polished for us,
that we feel free to walk out
with the lady of the house and smoke
a cigarette, down the grand alley of elms.

We’re not expected to have things down pat
yet, like the family tree, or the route to the old Abbey.
Nothing really happens now,
beyond the delivery of breakfast trays.
It’s not scheduled to rain
for two more chapters, and no one
who matters to us has died yet.

~ Mark Aiello

Two Friends

The last word this one spoke
was my name. The last word
that one spoke
was my name.

My two friends
had never met. But when they said
that last word
they spoke to each other.

I am proud to have given them a language
of one word, a narrow space
in which, without knowing it,
they met each other at last.

~ Norman Maccaig

Poem to Raymond Carver

comforter thrown
over my legs
late morning
cats asleep at my feet
I am reading a tattered copy
of A NEW PATH TO THE WATERFALL
you said you wanted this
all of your life
waking each day to
everything new
choosing whether to
fish or write or play
with your cat Morris.
I look outside at the new snow —
the same Syracuse snow
that you must have watched
and I too feel like
lobotomizing the morning
rising only to cook brook trout
for breakfast.

~ joan cofrancesco

Hope

After everything I find it intact
like a chimney
standing beside a basement
jumbled with black
and smoking rafters.
It is the bubble that rises
from a sunken ship as a diver
cracks into the wreck.
It is the bird that builds
in a fallen tree, the tracks of anything
crossing a desert, a tortoise
tucked into its orange shell
as a burning meadow sweeps over it.
It is the blinking light
of my answering machine,
the beer that was
hiding beneath the squash.
It is nightlights and cribs
and milky breath — the spider missing
from the bedroom wall
when I come back
with a tissue to crush it out.

~ Charles Rafferty

Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight

One ran,
her nose to the ground,
a rusty shadow
neither hunting nor playing.

One stood; sat; lay down; stood again.

One never moved,
except to turn her head a little as we walked.

Finally we drew too close,
and they vanished.
The woods took them back as if they had never been.

I wish I had thought to put my face to the grass.

But we kept walking,
speaking as strangers do when becoming friends.

There is more and more I tell no one,
strangers nor loves.
This slips into the heart
without hurry, as if it had never been.

And yet, among the trees, something has changed.

Something looks back from the trees,
and knows me for who I am.

~ Jane Hirshfield

Moscow

For a while I was alone,
so I dated whoever’s work I was reading,
but the relationships always ended badly.
I wasn’t smart enough for Wayne,
I wasn’t caustic enough for David,
Kevin & I were doing well,
but then I met his real boyfriend,
and it turns out I’m not his type.
Sometimes I broke it off.
Jean got to be too depressing.
Fyoder was a bad provider.
After Franz, I started dating myself,
and that was nice. Of course, then I met you
and I had to stop being the man in my life.
I miss me sometimes, but we’ll always have Moscow.

~ Jason Schneiderman