A Woman Waking
by Philip Levine
She wakens early remembering
her father rising in the dark
lighting the stove with a match
scraped on the floor. Then measuring
water for coffee, and later the smell
coming through. She would hear
him drying spoons, dropping
them one by one in the drawer.
Then he was on the stairs
going for the milk. So soon
he would be at her door
to wake her gently, he thought,
with a hand at her nape, shaking
to and fro, smelling of gasoline
and whispering. Then he left.
Now she shakes her head, shakes
him away and will not rise.
There is fog at the window
and thickening the high branches
of the sycamores. She thinks
of her own kitchen, the dishwasher
yawning open, the dripping carton
left on the counter. Her boys
have gone off steaming like sheep.
Were they here last night?
Where do they live? she wonders,
with whom? Are they home?
In her yard the young plum tree,
barely taller than she, drops
its first yellow leaf. She listens
and hears nothing. If she rose
and walked barefoot on the wood floor
no one would come to lead her
back to bed or give her
a glass ofwater. If she
boiled an egg it would darken
before her eyes. The sky tires
and turns away without a word.
The pillow beside hers is cold,
the old odor of soap is there.
Her hands are cold. What time is it?
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Sonnet LXIX by William Shakespeare
- Владимир Британишский – Никитенко
- Bobsled by Ruth Madievsky
- Friday Night At The Royal Station Hotel by Philip Larkin
- Омар Хайям – Много зла и коварства таится кругом
- quickstep.html
- Astigmatism poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- On the Beach at Night, Alone. by Walt Whitman
- Sleep
- For All We Have And Are by Rudyard Kipling
- Стефан Малларме – Милостыня
- Robert Burns: The Farewell To the Brethren of St. James’ Lodge, Tarbolton:
- From The Long Sad Party by Mark Strand
- The Birth Of Love by William Wordsworth
- How I Walked Alone in the Jungles of Heaven by Vachel Lindsay
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
Philip Levine ( 1928 – 2015) was an American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for more than thirty years in the English department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well. He served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2000 to 2006, and was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States for 2011–2012