Category Archives: Poems

November by William Cullen Bryant

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From today’s Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets comes this 19th century gem from William Cullen Bryant.

Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapory air,
Ere, o’er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o’er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.

Those old guys had some chops!

Prothesis and ekfora

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prothesis and ekfora

The visitation was grand
All about me, wailing,
Giving the glad hand to
Each long lost long ago.

Afterwards
I lay flat in the coffin, feet first,
You leading the parade,
Somber with relief at such endings.

You were angry when I squirmed,
All the same,
Unable to keep my straight-laced face

In spite of the
Droning
Tolling
Bell.

I shouldn’t have taken it all
So lightly.
I should have let the gray noon settle slowly
On my unbeating heart
Like distant longing.

But you have to admit
The element of absurdity:
Me, refusing to lie still,
You, beside yourself
With propriety.

Chance

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…the universe is a big place, where improbable things happen all the time. Look at you.
– John Matson

At its deepest core
Reality is mere chance
A riot of bubbles boiling
And bursting, all unguessed

Unless the ever disappearing
Always borning bodies flung
Into pointless being, seething
In the cosmic whistling teakettle

Unless by the grace of improbability
By statistical nethering whimsy
By the merest intractable stroke
Of lunacy
We come back for the next moment

Again
And
Again

Wisdom, it’s said

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How odd, when teacher becomes pupil.
How startling, when a depth of meaning
Lay on the surface all along.

Wisdom, it’s said, is indistinguishable
From farce in the fullness of youth
Or unmitigated age, bent on redemption.

Could it be we’ve seen all of it?
No use adding footage to pore over
In search of cheap salvation.

There, written on a careless breeze
Was the whole of it,
Gone until the next moment.

Autumn haiku

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Sometimes it seems like a good idea to let go of the strict syllable count, though not always.

At my doorstep
In the autumn chill
A dead bumblebee