Water Strider
Water-Strider by Aaron Baker Though winged, he walks on water. Skates between elements, skitters like thought through the cattails. A snake slips unseen through the underbrush. The forest shifts and sighs, once again won’t speak its secret. Between the trees, my father glides through sunlight, then shadow. Surface tension: the strider rows forward with middle […]
The Infernal Regions
The Infernal Regions by Aaron Baker Relax. No more the thinness of ceremony. Largemouth bass at the bottom of Kapowsin Lake grow still as his thoughts. No swish and silt, no father and flail. And once perfectly still, they grow even stiller. Nothing’s wasted, says the Lord of the Underworld. Stillness is economy, and economy […]
Honeycomb
Honeycomb by Aaron Baker Here is the dream where dust, gathered and blowing over the field, turns suddenly against the wind and moves with the shape of a body. Here the shape of a body forms and reforms as it crosses the sky, and then you hear it, the hum of the swarm, the resurrection […]
Dark Matter
Dark Matter by Aaron Baker We say the heart is sick, meaning something else. But when we say the body is broken, and it is, the poem, like a great engine long given up to the weather, begins to move. Outside, fireweed among the ruins. We’ve known the seed of failure in action, how […]
When I Was Young the Silk poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
When I was young the silk of my mind hard as a peony head unfurled and wind bloomed the parachute: The air-head tugged me up, tore my roots loose and drove high, so high I want to touch down now and taste the ground I want to take in my silk and ask where I […]
Weathering poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
A day without rain is like a day without sunshine Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking Writing Monster’s Page – Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh Poems in English More external links […]
Their Sex Life poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
One failure on Top of another Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking Writing Monster’s Page – Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh Poems in English More external links (open in a new […]
The City Limits poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold itself but pours its abundance without selection into every nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider that birds’ bones make no awful noise against the light but lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider the radiance, […]
Still poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
I said I will find what is lowly and put the roots of my identity down there: each day I’ll wake up and find the lowly nearby, a handy focus and reminder, a ready measure of my significance, the voice by which I would be heard, the wills, the kinds of selfishness I could freely […]
So I Said I Am Ezra poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
So I said I am Ezra and the wind whipped my throat gaming for the sounds of my voice I listened to the wind go over my head and up into the night Turning to the sea I said I am Ezra but there were no echoes from the waves The words were swallowed up […]
Small Song poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
The reeds give way to the wind and give the wind away Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking Writing Monster’s Page – Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh Poems in English More […]
Shit List; Or, Omnium-gatherum Of Diversity Into Unity poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
You’ll rejoice at how many kinds of shit there are: gosling shit (which J. Williams said something was as green as), fish shit (the generality), trout shit, rainbow trout shit (for the nice), mullet shit, sand dab shit, casual sloth shit, elephant shit (awesome as process or payload), wildebeest shit, horse shit (a favorite), caterpillar […]
Rogue Elephant poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
The reason to be autonomous is to stand there, a cleared instrument, ready to act, to search the moral realm and actual conditions for what needs to be done and to do it: fine, the best, if it works out, but if, like a gun, it comes in handy to the wrong choice, why then […]
Rivulose poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
You think the ridge hills flowing, breaking with ups and downs will, though, building constancy into the black foreground for each sunset, hold on to you, if dreams wander, give reality recurrence enough to keep an image clear, but then you realize, time going on, that time’s residual like the last ice age’s cool still […]
Release poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
After a long muggy hanging day the raindrops started so sparse the bumblebee flew between them home Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking Writing Monster’s Page – Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all […]
Recovery poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
All afternoon the tree shadows, accelerating, lengthened till sunset shot them black into infinity: next morning darkness returned from the other infinity and the shadows caught ground and through the morning, slowing, hardened into noon. Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking […]
Rapids poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
Fall’s leaves are redder than spring’s flowers, have no pollen, and also sometimes fly, as the wind schools them out or down in shoals or droves: though I have not been here long, I can look up at the sky at night and tell how things are likely to go for the next hundred million […]
Poetics poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
I look for the way things will turn out spiralling from a center, the shape things will take to come forth in so that the birch tree white touched black at branches will stand out wind-glittering totally its apparent self: I look for the forms things want to come as from what black wells of […]
Mule Song poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
Silver will lie where she lies sun-out, whatever turning the world does, longeared in her ashen, earless, floating world: indifferent to sores and greengage colic, where oats need not come to, bleached by crystals of her trembling time: beyond all brunt of seasons, blind forever to all blinds, inhabited by brooks still she may wraith […]
In Memoriam Mae Noblitt poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
This is just a place: we go around, distanced, yearly in a star’s atmosphere, turning daily into and out of direct light and slanting through the quadrant seasons: deep space begins at our heels, nearly rousing us loose: we look up or out so high, sight’s silk almost draws us away: this is just a […]
Identity poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
1) An individual spider web identifies a species: an order of instinct prevails through all accidents of circumstance, though possibility is high along the peripheries of spider webs: you can go all around the fringing attachments and find disorder ripe, entropy rich, high levels of random, numerous occasions of accident: 2) the possible settings of […]
Hymn poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth and go on out over the sea marshes and the brant in bays and over the hills of tall hickory and over the crater lakes and canyons and on up through the spheres of diminishing air past the blackset noctilucent clouds where […]
Gravelly Run poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
I don’t know somehow it seems sufficient to see and hear whatever coming and going is, losing the self to the victory of stones and trees, of bending sandpit lakes, crescent round groves of dwarf pine: for it is not so much to know the self as to know it as it is known by […]
Eyesight poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
It was May before my attention came to spring and my word I said to the southern slopes I’ve missed it, it came and went before I got right to see: don’t worry, said the mountain, try the later northern slopes or if you can climb, climb into spring: but said the mountain it’s not […]
Design poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
The drop seeps whole from boulder-lichen or ledge moss and drops, joining, to trickle, run, fall, dash, sprawl in held deeps, to rush shallows, spill thin through heights, but then, edging, to eddy aside, nothing of all but nothing’s curl of motion spent. Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s […]
Crowride poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
When the crow lands, the tip of the sprung spruce bough weighs so low, the system so friction-free, the bobbing lasts way past any interest in the subject. Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking Writing Monster’s Page – Batty Writing – […]
Called Into Play poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
Fall fell: so that’s it for the leaf poetry: some flurries have whitened the edges of roads and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: & turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to find something to write about I haven’t already written away: I will have to stop short, look down, look […]
An Improvisation For Angular Momentum poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
Walking is like imagination, a single step dissolves the circle into motion; the eye here and there rests on a leaf, gap, or ledge, everything flowing except where sight touches seen: stop, though, and reality snaps back in, locked hard, forms sharply themselves, bushbank, dentree, phoneline, definite, fixed, the self, too, then caught real, clouds […]
After Yesterday poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
After yesterday afternoon’s blue clouds and white rain the mockingbird in the backyard untied the drops from leaves and twigs with a long singing. Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking Writing Monster’s Page – Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, […]
Vestiges poem – A. Van Jordan poems
I would like to swim in the Atlantic, to swim with someone who understood why my fear of drowning plays less dire than my fear of bones, walking the ocean floor. I would like to sync my stroke with a beloved. I’d like to stand on deck on a boat and jump in the sea […]
Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) poem – A. Van Jordan poems
Because a razor cuts across a frame of film, I wince, squinting my eye, and because my day needs assembly to make sense of the scenes anyway, making a story from some pieces of truth, I go outside to gather those pieces. Thousands of moments spooling out frames of mistakes in my day. As if […]
The Flash Reverses Time poem – A. Van Jordan poems
When I’m running across the city on the crowded streets to home, when, in a blur, the grass turns brown beneath my feet, the asphalt steams under every step and the maple leaves sway on the branches in my wake, and the people look, look in that bewildered way, in my direction, I imagine walking […]
Que Sera Sera poem – A. Van Jordan poems
In my car, driving through Black Mountain, North Carolina, I listen to what sounds like Doris Day shooting heroin inside Sly Stone’s throat. One would think that she fights to get out, but she wants to stay free in this skin. Fresh, The Family Stone’s album, came out in ’73, but I didn’t make sense […]
Old Boy poem – A. Van Jordan poems
If one rainy night you find yourself leaving a phone booth, and you meet a man with a lavender umbrella, resist your desire to follow him, to seek shelter from the night in his solace. Later, don’t fall victim to the Hypnotist’s narcotic of clarity, which proves a curare for the heart; her salve is […]
Einstein Defining Special Relativity poem – A. Van Jordan poems
INSERT SHOT: Einstein’s notebook 1905—DAY 1: a theory that is based on two postulates (a) that the speed of light in all inertial frames is constant, independent of the source or observer. As in, the speed of light emitted from the truth is the same as that of a lie coming from the lamp of […]
A Tempest in a Teacup poem – A. Van Jordan poems | Poetry Monster
Prospero Assume, just for a moment, I am denied a job in the factory of my dreams under the fluorescent lights of a porcelain white foreman. It’s orderly and neat. I feed my family. No one questions my face. I raised my son in my likeness, so he would never go unseen, bobbing on […]
A Tempest in a Teacup poem – A. Van Jordan poems | Best Poems
Prospero Assume, just for a moment, I am denied a job in the factory of my dreams under the fluorescent lights of a porcelain white foreman. It’s orderly and neat. I feed my family. No one questions my face. I raised my son in my likeness, so he would never go unseen, bobbing on a […]