Holding On
by Philip Levine
Green fingers
holding the hillside,
mustard whipping in
the sea winds, one blood-bright
poppy breathing in
and out. The odor
of Spanish earth comes
up to me, yellowed
with my own piss.
40 miles from Málaga
half the world away
from home, I am home and
nowhere, a man who envies
grass.
Two oxen browse
yoked together in the green clearing
below. Their bells cough. When
the darkness and the wet roll in
at dusk they gather
their great slow bodies toward
the stalls.
If my spirit
descended now, it would be
a lost gull flaring against
a deepening hillside, or an angel
who cries too easily, or a single
glass of seawater, no longer blue
or mysterious, and still salty.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Impromptu on Mrs. Riddell’s Birthday by Robert Burns
- Rhyme by the Bog by Robby Charters
- Limerick: Once a Great Leader with empty pockets by T. Wignesan
- He is more than a hero by Sappho
- Inter-religion Wedding by Nisha Gopalakrishnan
- Human Spirit by Shawn Ervin
- Ballade Of The Royal Game Of Golf poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Lover’s Gifts XLVII: The Road Is by Rabindranath Tagore
- Elegy Written At Hotwells, Bristol by William Lisle Bowles
- The Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux poem – A. E. Housman
- White in the Moon the Long Road Lies poem – A. E. Housman
- Epitaph on William Muir by Robert Burns
- Near The Wall Of A House by Yehuda Amichai
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 99. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Aunt Jennifer039s Tigers
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