A Cold Rain the Day Before Spring

From heaven it falls on the gray pitted ice
that has been here since December.
In the gutter rivulets erode piles
of dirt and road salt into small countries
and the morning is so dark, in school

teachers turn on fluorescent lights
and everyone comes in smelling of damp wool.
From heaven it falls, just the opposite
of prayer, which I send up
at the traffic light: please

let me begin over again, one
more time over again, wipe the slate
clean, the same way after school
janitors, keys jangling from
belt loops, will use a wet rag and wipe

the school day off, so there is only
the residue, faint white on the smooth
surface. It's the same way
the infield looks before the game
begins, or the ice on a rink

between periods. All new again
for the moment and glistening.
Imagine each day you get to start
again and again. Again. How many
days does the janitor enter the room

of your soul, wipe it clean
go out into the hallway
and push his broom
down the long corridor, full
of doors to so many rooms.

--Stuart Kestenbaum

Blandeur

If it please God,
let less happen.
Even out Earth's
rondure, flatten
Eiger, blanden
the Grand Canyon.
Make valleys
slightly higher,
widen fissures
to arable land,
remand your
terrible glaciers
and silence
their calving,
halving or doubling
all geographical features
toward the mean.
Unlean against our hearts.
Withdraw your grandeur
from these parts.

--Kay Ryan

Dear Day

Lately I am more aware of how easily
you might lope carelessly off into a fog
of never and gray, and so when you come

in the morning with your pincers on,
when you wake me with your snorts
and hacks, when you lie down next to me

with your scales poking all my soft places,
I hold you to me. The bruises will heal,
and it isn’t your fault you’re so spiny.

Day, you lower your monstrous head
and let me pat it. You are gleaming
and everything. You are genus unknown,

phylum unnamed. You glint and lumber,
you drool and growl. Soon, maybe,
you’ll let me climb on your back. Soon,

maybe, we’ll bullet together into forests
and glades and gladness. So stay. Walk
beside me with your armor on, breathe

flames at the beasts that bite. If I get singed,
it’s okay. I’d pay levy upon levy
for your glittering shadow beside me.

--Catherine Pierce

Toward Empathy

Surely every couple has one:
the gripe with the most traction.
Ours regards order in the apartment,
and the friction between it and us
is plenty, enough.

On returning home, you deposit
the day’s gains with casual hand—
change, tissues, papers scattered
across the kitchen table,
a formlessness I can’t accept.

We circled it again the other day.
I explained how a cleared chair,
a hung coat fills in for arms
I can’t control; a weak proxy,
but still.

When it was your turn,
you invoked possibility,
made your case for easy access:
when things are sent to their homes
immediately, I worry I’ll forget.

In days since, a memory:
family meals at the local Denny’s—
trays with pastel sugar packets,
golden nuggets of butter, tiny tubs of jam;
all for us. How the only option
for my brother and me was
everything on our toast.

--me

Your Own Power

"I always loved running. It was something you could do by yourself, and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs." --Paula Radcliffe

Live Oaks, New Orleans

They square off along Napoleon avenue,
opposing armies of dark women, leaning out
so far their branches meet at the top, like hands
grabbing fistfuls of tangled hair;
and some of them are old, with the thick,
scarred trunks of Storyville madams, and
roots so strong their suck heaves
up the sidewalk like so many broken
saltines. And some are young, with the
straightbacked bodies of girls who dream
of horses and the brown arms of the neighbor boys,
but underground the red roots grow together,
fuse in a living circuitry spun deep and
stronger than the whims of emperors, as if
they've known all along that earth's the right
place for love, as though, planted in battle lines,
they incline toward the circle, and hold it open,
vaulted and welcoming.

--Jennifer Maier

Order

"I would feel dead if I didn't have the ability periodically to put my world in order with a poem. I think to be inarticulate is a great suffering, and is especially so to anyone who has a certain knack for poetry." --Richard Wilbur