Happy Holidays, I guess.

Fishing in the Keep of Silence

There is a hush now while the hills rise up
and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship
of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully
as he lies dreaming in the lap of the world.
He knows the owls will guard the sweetness
of the soul in their massive keep of silence,
looking out with eyes open or closed over
the length of Tomales Bay that the herons
conform to, whitely broad in flight, white
and slim in standing. God, who thinks about
poetry all the time, breathes happily as He
repeats to Himself: There are fish in the net,
lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.

-Linda Gregg

Retarded Artifact

Give me reasons not to be
oblivion, irony.
Like something in Wisconsin,
I am all the dirt I know.
Having come to in someone
else’s boredom, I’m alive—
and it’s an all-new boredom,
a boredom of cathedral
proportion. Empty as folk,
I just make up, make over
everything. Lately, I don’t
even want a piece of me.

-Graham Foust

For Sheridan

We only live between
before we are and what we were.

In the lost negative
you exist,
a smile, a cypher,
an old-fashioned face
in an old-fashioned hat.

Three ages in a flash:
the same child in the same picture,
he, I, you,
chockablock, one stamp
like mother's wedding silver--

gnome, fish, brute cherubic force.

We could see clearly
and all the same things
before the glass was hurt.

Past fifty, we learn with surprise and a sense
of suicidal absolution
that what we intended and failed
could never have happened--
and must be done better.

-Robert Lowell

Near Sheridan

How neatly this world divides
in half after sunset in Wyoming.

All the loneliness
sinks below the plush, dark

silhouette of buttes and cottonwoods.
Into the huge, light sky rises

hope, our best intentions,
tomorrow's weather.

-Robin Becker