Robert Bly, "Surprised by Evening"

Surprised by Evening

There is unknown dust that is near us
Waves breaking on shores just over the hill
Trees full of birds that we have never seen
Nets drawn with dark fish.

The evening arrives; we look up and it is there
It has come through the nets of the stars
Through the tissues of the grass
Walking quietly over the asylums of the waters.

The day shall never end we think:
We have hair that seemed born for the daylight;
But at last the quiet waters of the night will rise
And our skin shall see far off as it does under water.

--Robert Bly (1962)

Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day"

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

Helen Chasin, "Joy Sonnet in a Random Universe"

Sometimes I'm happy: la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Tum tum ti tum. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Hey nonny nonny. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Vo do di o do. Poo poo pi doo. la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Whack a do. La la la la la la la la. Sh- boom, sh-boom. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Dum di dum. La la la la la la la la. la la la la la la la la. Tra la la. Tra la la la la la la la la la la la la. Yeah yeah yeah. --Helen Chasin, 1968

Jim Moore, "It is not the fact that I will die that I mind."

Link to an interesting choral version.

It is Not the Fact That I Will Die That I Mind

but that no on will love as I did

the oak tree out my boyhood window,

the mother who set herself

so stubbornly against life,

the sister with her serious frown

and her wish for someone at her side,

the father with his dreamy gaze

and his left hand idly buried

in the fur of his dog,

And the dog herself,

that mournful look and huge appetite,

her need for absolute stillness 

in the presence of a bird.

I know how each of them looks

when asleep. And I know how it feels

to fall asleep among them.

No one knows that but me,

no one knows how to love the way I do.

--Jim Moore, from Lightning at Dinner

James Wright, "A Blessing"

James Wright, "A Blessing"

"History of Desire," Tony Hoagland

“History of Desire”

When you're seventeen, and drunk

on the husky, late-night flavor

of your first girlfriend's voice

along the wires of the telephone

what else to do but steal

your father's El Dorado from the drive,

and cruise out to the park on Driscoll Hill?

Then climb the county water tower

and aerosol her name in spraycan orange

a hundred feet above the town?

Because only the letters of that word,

DORIS, next door to yours,

in yard-high, iridescent script,

are amplified enough to tell the world

who's playing lead guitar

in the rock band of your blood.

You don't consider for a moment

the shock in store for you in 10 A.D.,

a decade after Doris, when,

out for a drive on your visit home,

you take the Smallville Road, look up

and see RON LOVES DORIS

still scorched upon the reservoir.

This is how history catches up—

by holding still until you

bump into yourself.

What makes you blush, and shove

the pedal of the Mustang

almost through the floor

as if you wanted to spray gravel

across the features of the past,

or accelerate into oblivion?

Are you so out of love that you

can't move fast enough away?

But if desire is acceleration,

experience is circular as any

Indianapolis. We keep coming back

to what we are—each time older,

more freaked out, or less afraid.

And you are older now.

You should stop today.

In the name of Doris, stop.

--Tony Hoagland