By Hershman John
Last Easter, I gave my mother-in-law a large, brown, simple ceramic
Navajo water pot, shiny with pine…
Navajo water pot, shiny with pine…
Explore Poems: Pastoral
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- By Stephen Ratcliffelight coming into fog against invisible
top of ridge, blue jay on redwood fence
in foreground, sound of wave in channel
starting from this concept,
anything that is not
on... - By Cole Swensena river slips
in shifting leaves
sifting. a river sifts
and falls to pieces
in which not seen
... - By J. V. CunninghamI am no shepherd of a child’s surmises.
I have seen fear where the coiled serpent rises,
Thirst where the grasses burn in early May
And thistle, mustard, and the wild oat stay.
There is dust in this air. I saw in the heat
Grasshoppers... - By Ted HughesI climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,
Not a leaf, not a bird,—
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood
Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining... - By Tracy K. Smith200 cows more than 600 hilly acres
property would have been even larger
had J not sold 66 acres to DuPont for
waste from its Washington Works factory
where J was employed
... - By James Longenbach1
Just as there were reeds along the riverbank,
Just as there were clouds
Above my head, my lute was lying beside me on the grass.
I placed the little finger of my right hand on the soundboard,
Just below the strings.
Not the tip... - By Rita DoveI acknowledge my status as a stranger:
Inappropriate clothes, odd habits
Out of sync with wasp and wren.
I admit I don’t know how
To sit still or move without purpose.
I prefer books to moonlight, statuary to trees.
But this lawn has been leveled for... - By Malcolm CowleyFarmhouses curl like horns of plenty, hide
scrawny bare shanks against a barn, or crouch
empty in the shadow of a mountain. Here
there is no house at all—
only the bones of a house,
lilacs growing beside them,
roses in clumps between them,
honeysuckle over;
a gap... - By James TateDo you have adequate oxen for the job?
No, my oxen are inadequate.
Well, how many oxen would it take to do an adequate job?
I would need ten more oxen to do the job adequately.
I'll see if I can get them for... - By Louise GlückDon’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken.
I don’t see anything objectively.
I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist.
When I speak passionately,
that’s when I’m least to be trusted.
It’s very sad, really: all my life, I’ve been praised
for my... - By Allen GrossmanAt that time the sheep called to him
From their wormy bellies, as they
Lay bloating in the field. He was
A pastoralist,
The schoolhouse hardly handsize
In a sky of flax.
He began
Then to keep the sayings of man
(The left hand writing; the right... - By Percy Bysshe ShelleyFrom the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The... - By Maureen N. McLaneand sex once
a day a week a
month a year
goes by and one
hyacinth only
returns, frail
blue against the militant
grass that does cover all
in the residential
precinct of the
New England town
its roads long paved
old Indian trails the steps
they took toward
us the first
exchange for a... - By Elizabeth BishopThink of the storm roaming the sky uneasily
like a dog looking for a place to sleep in,
listen to it growling.
Think how they must look now, the mangrove keys
lying out there unresponsive to the lightning
in dark, coarse-fibred families,
where occasionally a heron... - By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang)
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit... - By Alfred, Lord TennysonThere lies a vale in Ida, lovelier
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.
The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand
The lawns... - By Lisa RobertsonWhat is this tint that in the shrill cress
Will never cease to trouble us and in the fields
Gives prick and praise for Beauty?
And said birds that feed on berries
Are pervious—and shook the snow from his thighs.
I thought of nothing carefully,... - By Kay RyanEverything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark's-tooth
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in... - By Louise GlückOnce I believed in you; I planted a fig tree.
Here, in Vermont, country
of no summer. It was a test: if the tree lived,
it would mean you existed.
By this logic, you do not exist. Or you exist
exclusively in warmer climates,
in fervent...