Look at You

You get used to a thing,

A way, a course, a scene,

And you get tired of it.

You get used to the light.

It looks just like it does,

You think to your half self,

You know, the half that looks

Back from a pane of glass

And makes you start. That half.

And then it’s not the thing

You thought you knew—it was

A new thing a while now.

That old, warm sun is new,

Not so warm, not too warm,

And that old wall’s so gold.

Will Thoughts Swim the Lost Links?

Us folks, us apes, we’re the links
In the chain from world to words—
Some day that link may be gone,

And we words, we names, these lines
Left to time, might have to find
Our own way back to the world.

A bird I don’t know trills waves
Of small tunes bright as rain drops
From a safe place in the shade.

A maze of fall leaves spreads hues
Up the slope from the bird’s voice,
As if the song spread a quilt.

These are just words, not the world,
Of course, or, out there’s just world,
Not words. When this small monk’s bridge

That binds them both and is both
Falls, will they stand clear, drift off,
Or try to meet? Words, here’s world.

No Tears to Write, No Tears to Read

Good, let’s keep it that way.
Who needs more grief and pain?

I don’t think Frost praised form
In verse and toil in tales

To tell us a hard truth—
He was good at some forms

And he wished us to think
All his poems were hard won.

Some good poems are hard won.
Some bad poems are hard won.

Some good poems, dark-souled,
Calm, and dry-eyed, just come

Of our own will, to show
How cold we are, and numb.