The Poet With His Face in His Hands - Mary Oliver

You want to cry aloud for your

mistakes. But to tell the truth the world

doesn’t need any more of that sound.

So if you’re going to do it and can’t

stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t

hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines

of rocks and water to the place where

the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that

jubilation and water-fun and you can

stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can

drip with despair all afternoon and still,

on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,

puffing out its spotted breast, will sing

of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

The Voices - Richard Shelton

Suddenly dawn

had to get up and build the trees.

I could no longer deny

the voices so I came

to terms with them: glistening

votaries dipped in madness,

a blue eye in the wrong socket,

an old chair

rocking by itself,

leather with its memory and silk

which forgets everything,

a machine producing time

in the factory.

This does not mean

I learned to trust them

but I came to terms with them

because, as they said,

we are the only family you have.

After Years - Ted Kooser

Today, from a distance, I saw you

walking away, and without a sound

the glittering face of a glacier

slid into the sea. An ancient oak

fell in the Cumberlands, holding only

a handful of leaves, and an old woman

scattering corn to her chickens looked up

for an instant. At the other side

of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times

the size of our own sun exploded

and vanished, leaving a small green spot

on the astronomer's retina

as he stood in the great open dome

of my heart with no one to tell.

DAUGHTER - Lisel Mueller

My next poem will be happy,

I promise myself. Then you come

with your deep eyes, your tall jeans,

your narrow hands, your wit,

your uncanny knowledge, and

your loneliness. All the flowers

your father planted, all

the green beans that have made it,

all the world’s recorded pianos

and this exhilarating day

cannot change that.

The Sirens - Lawrence Raab

After a while we got tired of singing.

One morning out on the rocks

with not a ship in sight, we all felt it—

a certain weariness, a malaise,

if you will. We felt it together,

sympathy having become

one of the finer aspects

of our nature. We’ve drifted apart

since those days, yet we’re happy

being remembered as impossible

to resist. The legends used to claim

we knew the future as well—all things

which shall be hereafter upon the earth,

as our song put it. Everyone only assumed

we were beautiful. But we were, and are,

though not unlike so many other

women now, those who promise much less,

but let you live. It was a relief

to give up our powers willingly.

That didn’t happen often in our world,

where the gods went on amusing themselves

with their meddling, and the hero

plowed ahead, lashed to the mast,

dying to be tempted. Did we enjoy the clamor

of shipwreck? The cries of the disillusioned?

It was our job, our particular talent.

We weren’t supposed to want anything else.

The Witch's Story - Lawrence Raab

Everything you have heard about me

is true, or true enough.

You shouldn’t think

I’d change my story now.

A stubborn, willful little girl

comes sneaking

around my house, peering

in all the windows. She’s disobeyed

her parents, who knew

where the witch lived. “If you go,

you’re not our daughter any more.”

That’s what they told her. I have

my ways of knowing. All pale

and trembly then, she knocks at my door.

“Why are you so pale?”

I ask, although of course

I know that too.

She'd seen what she’d seen—

a green man on the stairs, and the other one,

the red one, and then the devil himself

with his head on fire, which was me,

the witch in her true ornament, as I

like to put it. Oh, she’d seen what she needed

to send her running home

but she walked right in, which is the part

I never understand completely. Maybe

she believed, just then,

that she was no one’s daughter any more,

and had to take her chances, poor thing,

inside with me. “So you’ve come

to brighten up my house,”

I said, and changed her into a log.

It was an easy trick, and gave me little pleasure.

But I’d been waiting all day.

I was cold, and even that

small fire was bright, and warm enough.