Eyes closed at first,/ wintering inside the earth,/ black matted fur/ dampness pressing soft eyelids/ shut to outlast frost/ heaving around him.
a light sparkles/ a tiny diamond/ from a house/ across the river/ through winter woods/ the other side of town…
I was driving through the fields of Heaven when I realized I was still on Earth, because Earth was all I had ever known of Heaven and no other place would do for living forever.
Former Middlebury resident Susan Jefts has published a new book of poetry, “Breathing Lessons,” put out by Shanti Arts.
“The roof has come off the church/ and rain is falling in the baptistry.”
Most of the time the dark waters will rise,/ then fall into sun and birdsong, everything/ glistening, vivid as broken glass in fresh mud…
I was going to explain why I’m repelled by children/ who have been taught to say all the right things/ about Edward Hopper’s night café—some paintings/ need to be earned and this is one of them— but here,/ instead, are three stanzas about Iceland.
It was twilight all day./ Sometimes the smallest things weigh us down,/ small stones that we can’t help/ admiring and palming.
A Poet, In a Field Near Robert Frost’s Cabin, Lifts Enormous Boulders with his Mind
All that is beautiful/ that slips away––/ a December night/ that before was November/ and September and before that,/ July when days were blue silver/ waves we swam through.
If I remember the lake yesterday, the tanager/ deep in the woods, it feels like a memory/ lost in a series of new ones, each singular event/ simply a tanager in a tree.
There’s something to be said for banality,/ the way it keeps everything on a level plane,/ one cliché blithely following another/ like cows heading toward the pasture.
follow sun/ breaking through sky-edged mountains/ into the heart of a stone fruit
A saturated meadow,/ Sun-shaped and jewel-small,/ A circle scarcely wider/ Than the trees around were tall…
Downy Woodpecker, a small guy,/ pecks at big wood./ A storm is brewing/ and I’m still half a mile from Minerva Hinchey.
