Tolerance

How strange to be alive

Under a canopy of leaves

Facing the massacre of aging

As the trees stand their ground

Awaiting my certain extinction.


Peace to the men with their guns,

Peace to the women in tears,

Peace to the President blushing with rage,

Peace to the children in cages.

—with a word by Philip Roth

Summer Zen

Please click.

 

Never beg the wind for mercy,

It's not too late.

Ah, this world, that world,

Ah, the ordinary heart.

— after Ko Un

Hemlock Trail

Deep in the haze of the forest's false twilight,

At ease on a cushion of flat hemlock needles,

I look back into my life.

I hope I can say I did the right thing in the end,

No sound but the creek in the gorge rushing in shade,

At the end of it all.

Life with Meaning

Swimming in place as the earth rolls under us,

Farther and farther behind the escaping light,

Night at our backs

Rising to welcome us home.

Source

Amphibious enough

To claim two worlds

As home

Living in parallel

Hikmet's Lament

I thought I knew

The sentences of love

The sad-eyed judge

Asking if I understood

I tried not to tremble

I do not I do not

Love makes me weak

In the knees and others' eyes.

Man Vanishing

I am not leaving

I am not coming back

My tribe is the children of drunks

Awake in their beds at 3 a.m.

Lost in a city of fists

Carbon arc blocking the stars

Convinced me at last

To read her lines slowly

Climbed through a window again

Into the arms of night

At the top of the field among ashes

No one comes back

I am not leaving

And I am not coming back.

—with lines by Sharon Olds