Easter Morning poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
a stone at dawn cold water in the basin these walls’ rough plaster imageless after the hammering of so much insistence on the need for naming after the travesties that passed as faces, grace: the unction of sheer nonexistence upwelling in this hyacinthine freshet of the unnamed the faceless Amy ClampittAmy Clampitt, […]
Beach Glass poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
While you walk the water’s edge, turning over concepts I can’t envision, the honking buoy serves notice that at any time the wind may change, the reef-bell clatters its treble monotone, deaf as Cassandra to any note but warning. The ocean, cumbered by no business more urgent than keeping open old accounts that never […]
The Sun Underfoot Among The Sundews poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
An ingenuity too astonishing to be quite fortuitous is this bog full of sundews, sphagnum- lined and shaped like a teacup. A step down and you’re into it; a wilderness swallows you up: ankle-, then knee-, then midriff- to-shoulder-deep in wetfooted understory, an overhead spruce-tamarack horizon hinting you’ll never get out of here. But […]
A Silence poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
past parentage or gender beyond sung vocables the slipped-between the so infinitesimal fault line a limitless interiority beyond the woven unicorn the maiden (man-carved worm-eaten) God at her hip incipient the untransfigured cottontail bluebell and primrose growing wild a strawberry chagrin night terrors past the earthlit unearthly masquerade (we shall be changed) […]
Syrinx poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Like the foghorn that’s all lung, the wind chime that’s all percussion, like the wind itself, that’s merely air in a terrible fret, without so much as a finger to articulate what ails it, the aeolian syrinx, that reed in the throat of a bird, when it comes to the shaping of what we […]
Salvage poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Daily the cortege of crumpled defunct cars goes by by the lasagna- layered flatbed truckload: hardtop reverting to tar smudge, wax shine antiqued to crusted winepress smear, windshield battered to intact ice-tint, a rarity fresh from the Pleistocene. I like it; privately I find esthetic satisfaction in these ceremonial removals from the […]
A Hermit Thrush poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Nothing’s certain. Crossing, on this longest day, the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling up the scree-slope of what at high tide will be again an island, to where, a decade since well-being staked the slender, unpremeditated claim that brings us back, year after year, lugging the makings of another picnic— the cucumber sandwiches, the sea-air-sanctified […]
A Hedge Of Rubber Trees poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
The West Village by then was changing; before long the rundown brownstones at its farthest edge would have slipped into trendier hands. She lived, impervious to trends, behind a potted hedge of rubber trees, with three cats, a canary—refuse from whose cage kept sifting down and then germinating, a yearning seedling choir, around the […]
On The Disadvantages Of Central Heating poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
cold nights on the farm, a sock-shod stove-warmed flatiron slid under the covers, mornings a damascene- sealed bizarrerie of fernwork decades ago now waking in northwest London, tea brought up steaming, a Peak Frean biscuit alongside to be nibbled as blue gas leaps up singing decades ago now damp sheets in Dorset, fog-hung […]
A Catalpa Tree On West Twelfth Street poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
While the sun stops, or seems to, to define a term for the indeterminable, the human aspect, here in the West Village, spindles to a mutilated dazzle— niched shards of solitude embedded in these brownstone walkups such that the Hudson at the foot of Twelfth Street might be a thing that’s done with mirrors: […]
Nothing Stays Put poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
In memory of Father Flye, 1884-1985 The strange and wonderful are too much with us. The protea of the antipodes—a great, globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom— for sale in the supermarket! We are in our decadence, we are not entitled. What have we done to deserve all the produce of the tropics— this […]
Fog poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
A vagueness comes over everything, as though proving color and contour alike dispensable: the lighthouse extinct, the islands’ spruce-tips drunk up like milk in the universal emulsion; houses reverting into the lost and forgotten; granite subsumed, a rumor in a mumble of ocean. Tactile definition, however, has not been totally banished: hanging tassel by […]
Exmoor poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Lost aboard the roll of Kodac- olor that was to have super- seded all need to remember Somerset were: a large flock of winter-bedcover-thick- pelted sheep up on the moor; a stile, a church spire, and an excess, at Porlock, of tenderly barbarous antique thatch in tandem with flower- beds, relentlessly pictur- esque, […]
Easter Morning poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
a stone at dawn cold water in the basin these walls’ rough plaster imageless after the hammering of so much insistence on the need for naming after the travesties that passed as faces, grace: the unction of sheer nonexistence upwelling in this hyacinthine freshet of the unnamed the faceless Amy ClampittAmy Clampitt, […]
Beach Glass poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
While you walk the water’s edge, turning over concepts I can’t envision, the honking buoy serves notice that at any time the wind may change, the reef-bell clatters its treble monotone, deaf as Cassandra to any note but warning. The ocean, cumbered by no business more urgent than keeping open old accounts that never […]
A Silence poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
past parentage or gender beyond sung vocables the slipped-between the so infinitesimal fault line a limitless interiority beyond the woven unicorn the maiden (man-carved worm-eaten) God at her hip incipient the untransfigured cottontail bluebell and primrose growing wild a strawberry chagrin night terrors past the earthlit unearthly masquerade (we shall be changed) […]
A Hermit Thrush poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
Nothing’s certain. Crossing, on this longest day, the low-tide-uncovered isthmus, scrambling up the scree-slope of what at high tide will be again an island, to where, a decade since well-being staked the slender, unpremeditated claim that brings us back, year after year, lugging the makings of another picnic— the cucumber sandwiches, the sea-air-sanctified […]
A Hedge Of Rubber Trees poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
The West Village by then was changing; before long the rundown brownstones at its farthest edge would have slipped into trendier hands. She lived, impervious to trends, behind a potted hedge of rubber trees, with three cats, a canary—refuse from whose cage kept sifting down and then germinating, a yearning seedling choir, around the […]
A Catalpa Tree On West Twelfth Street poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
While the sun stops, or seems to, to define a term for the indeterminable, the human aspect, here in the West Village, spindles to a mutilated dazzle— niched shards of solitude embedded in these brownstone walkups such that the Hudson at the foot of Twelfth Street might be a thing that’s done with mirrors: […]
Soliloquy In A Tub poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry
Tonight I possess the gliding tides of water: Translucent and true. Their perfect perfumes Foam and bubble To coat the surface. Beneath the surface The wondrous water Knows no streak of daylight. Diligently Like a drink It hydrates My awakening face My brown curls And that intangible wonder Dubbed ‘a mind.’ Like a sun of […]
Reviving My Feminity poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry
Lifeless – she lies on the cold-blooded floor Like a rug without its warmth and comfort. Nothing but an old ceiling fan gladly stirs the air And lets it tap the ends of her still soft hair. Creaking – the wooden floor beneath my Chilled feet smells of old tradition. I creep – tip-toeing in […]
Portrait of Rage and Age poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry
The couple stands still – Hand-drawn And perky like dawn. Femininity had silently signed The brown paper-like frame Into her own – Using her signature Nail-polish-painted red rose And almost cherry lipstick. Age has her black hair Up in twin buns – Almost a couple themselves. Rage manages – Somehow To sneak no peek at […]
Introspection In Evening poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry
I acquire the sensational psychology in me Which reliably wraps my mind and me Up in a blissful blanket of yarn – Hand-knitted by Creativity herself. Heater-like – The blanket bathes Us in a glow Of what light feels like. My mind and I breathe united as An inseparable couple. Friend-like – We gleefully greet […]
For Fixation Who Loves Me Back poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry
The evening dips – Dips into mourners blue Like Childhood’s perfect paint. Fury. Fireflies Flash like tiny cameras. A lonely car Swishes its windy way down The real road. You – You pop your smiling Cushion face out the window. Now you shrink Into Depths of distance – But there you go again. Again. And […]
A March Afternoon poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry
The lovely terrific ground Wears a paved path And a glamorous glow: Unblocked by barren branches Of premature spring. Somewhere The woods terminate – Giving a kind of birth to a field. And on that flat field The grass still licks And drinks the Rain of revival From last night’s Shimmering showers. A young girl’s […]
A February Night poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry
Like an alley The street hides between Trees of brown rattling leaves In the daring depths of dark. The swirling wind above Wrestles itself: Spinning its airy way Down the vacant road. Aged rain water Leaves its signature in mirror-like puddles On the unpure pavement And in the mind I call mine. I fake possession […]
A Cat Perched on the Railing poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry
A cat perched on the Railing – To enamor my every moment – Was all it took – to make my way – Out of Jumping’s ‘jailing.’ A distant singer on the stage – To swoon me immortally – Was all it took – to make my day – And end my enemy – Rage. […]
You Can Have It by Philip Levine
You Can Have It by Philip Levine My brother comes home from work and climbs the stairs to our room. I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop one by one. You can have it, he says. The moonlight streams in the window and his unshaven face is whitened like the face of […]
Wisteria by Philip Levine
Wisteria by Philip Levine The first purple wisteria I recall from boyhood hung on a wire outside the windows of the breakfast room next door at the home of Steve Pisaris. I loved his tall, skinny daughter, or so I thought, and I would wait beside the back door, prostrate, begging to be taken in. […]
Where We Live Now by Philip Levine
Where We Live Now by Philip Levine 1 We live here because the houses are clean, the lawns run right to the street and the streets run away. No one walks here. No one wakens at night or dies. The cars sit open-eyed in the driveways. The lights are on all day. 2 At home […]
What Work Is by Philip Levine
What Work Is by Philip Levine We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is–if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to […]
Waking In March by Philip Levine
Waking In March by Philip Levine Last night, again, I dreamed my children were back at home, small boys huddled in their separate beds, and I went from one to the other listening to their breathing — regular, almost soundless — until a white light hardened against the bedroom wall, the light of Los Angeles […]
Told by Philip Levine
Told by Philip Levine The air lay soffly on the green fur of the almond, it was April and I said, I begin again but my hands burned in the damp earth the light ran between my fingers a black light like no other this was not home, the linnet settling on the oleander the […]
They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine
They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread, Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar, Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies, They Lion grow. Out of the gray hills Of industrial barns, out of rain, […]
Then by Philip Levine
Then by Philip Levine A solitary apartment house, the last one before the boulevard ends and a dusty road winds its slow way out of town. On the third floor through the dusty windows Karen beholds the elegant couples walking arm in arm in the public park. It is Saturday afternoon, and she is waiting […]
The New World by Philip Levine
The New World by Philip Levine A man roams the streets with a basket of freestone peaches hollering, “Peaches, peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale.” My grandfather in his prime could outshout the Tigers of Wrath or the factory whistles along the river. Hamtramck hungered for yellow freestone peaches, downriver wakened from a dream of […]
The Helmet by Philip Levine
The Helmet by Philip Levine All the way on the road to Gary he could see where the sky shone just out of reach and smell the rich smell of work as strong as money, but when he got there the night was over. People were going to work and back, the sidewalks were lakes […]
The Distant Winter by Philip Levine
The Distant Winter by Philip Levine from an officer’s diary during the last war I The sour daylight cracks through my sleep-caked lids. “Stephan! Stephan!” The rattling orderly Comes on a trot, the cold tray in his hands: Toast whitening with oleo, brown tea, Yesterday’s napkins, and an opened letter. “Your asthma’s bad, old man.” […]
Gangrene by Philip Levine
Gangrene by Philip Levine Vous êtes sorti sain et sauf des basses calomnies, vous avey conquis les coeurs. Zola, J’accuse One was kicked in the stomach until he vomited, then made to put back into his mouth what they had brought forth; when he tried to drown in his own stew he was recovered. “You […]
Noon by Philip Levine
Noon by Philip Levine I bend to the ground to catch something whispered, urgent, drifting across the ditches. The heaviness of flies stuttering in orbit, dirt ripening, the sweat of eggs. There are small streams the width ofa thumb running in the villages of sheaves, whole eras of grain wakening on the stalks, a roof […]