The Poetry Playground

I take your T-shirt to bed again . . . 
 
and by now it has almost lost its scent-
your scent, as when you were here and turned
towards the wall while I pressed my body
into your body and sighed, “You smell like candy”
into your T-shirted back. Yes, the smell is yours
the shirt warmed by your lean torso, tufted
and delicious. I’ve washed my clothes in your soap,
but that wasn’t it – there must be something sweet your pores
pour forth. In three days you will be here and we will drink
from and with each other, sleep in close quarters,
naked, awake to heat and singing cells and slickness. But now,
too tired even to please myself, I breathe the shirt that covers
my pillow and dream – our yes and yes and yes opening and opening –

~ Amy Lemmon 

 Elevator Music

A tune with no more substance than the air,
performed on underwater instruments,
is proper to this short lift from the earth.
It hovers as we draw into ourselves
and turn our reverent eyes toward the lights
that count us to our various destinies.
We’re all in this toghether, the song says,
and later we’ll descend. The melody
is like a name we don’t recall just now
that still keeps on insisting it is there

~ Henry Taylor

From you have I been absent in the spring (Sonnet 98)

From you have I been absent in the spring,

When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,

That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him,

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odor and in hue,

Could make me any summer’s story tell,

Or from the proud lap pluck them where they grew.

Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,

Nor praise the deep vermillion in the rose;

They were but sweet, but figures of delight,

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

   Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,

   As with your shadow I with these did play.

~ William Shakespeare

~ Helen Hay Whitney

~ e.e. cummings