Beside the bank where black swans often lie
in twos, beneath wild fruit trees near the stream
where Chinese geese move single file across
the water like a strand of flags that gleam
with little angled feathertips of light,
I heard her speak. It was a quiet voice,
like summer clouds that weep along low hills
of poplar groves then peacefully rejoice
in [...]
Déjame que te cuente cómo me compré esta casa
Verás
Habíamos visto ya cuarenta y nueve pisos en dos meses
Algunos vacíos
Otros recién abandonados, con frascos de colonia
Aún expuestos en el baño y un añejo olor a tabaco
En las paredes desconchadas.
Otros seguían repletos de vida, con fotos enmarcadas
Mientras tú intentabas prestar atención a la chica de la inmobiliaria.
Era [...]
April’s beauty carries with it rain
Wet tear drops falling from the sky
Its premier today, showing up shy
Sliding into slits in buds
Mixing itself with different muds
Slipping down my forehead
Touching my eyelashes ahead
I close my eyes to nature’s gift
While they were closed I did drift
To the month of May’s sweet, sweet scent
To view flowers and green is [...]
Summer’s here.
Where snow petals blew
From winter orchards swallows’
Wings fledge summer light.
(for Dad)
Late afternoon came floating down the creek.
Appalachia’s air chilled gradually,
The valley’s likenesses on deeper pools
Shivering as mayflies burst the watercolor
Skins, and theirs, taking to air, trailing
Papery past selves after them in flight.
Brown trout missiled the sylphs, arched and slapped
The surface, falling back, while I cast toward
A trembling pool, slowly wound my line in,
Looked up. [...]
As everyone probably knows, the winner of the Spring Poetry Runoff’s Most Popular Vote Award is Karen Kelsay for her poem, “Waiting for Spring.” In fact, Karen’s fans filled the top three spots with her poems, all of which, as I’ve noted before, have lovely minstrel qualities. “Waiting for Spring” exhibits not only Karen’s trademark [...]
I would like to thank personally each participant in the 2010 Spring Poetry Runoff Celebration. You helped make the Runoff a very successful event this year, not just for me but for readers and other participants. I hope everyone enjoyed the poetry and all-around gathering of talent as much as I did. The list of [...]
Thanks to great participation, WIZ’s Spring Poetry Runoff Celebration ran halfway through spring. Now it’s time for followers of and participants in the contest to make their preferences known. Here at WIZ, we all get to be poetry judges for five days–part of the informal nature of this contest. But rather than restrict each judge [...]
In one of my favorite haunts, Crossfire Canyon, the creek is flooding as at the lake upstream water jets from the dam’s spillway for the first time ever. The spring runoff is not even halfway through as a record snowpack melts from the Abajo Mountains upstream and runs down into the desert.
But here at WIZ, [...]
I would say I feel cold but no
That’s not right—I feel dark.
Winter has begun glooming bone
Half so bright with fire as once cheered.
This arm and shoulder upon which I fell—
They make a rough fit. Especially
I feel it there. My eyes rummage
Squat days for glints. In my chest
There’s a catch, these lungs losing
Appetite, thin instants off [...]