Rain in Alleghany
By Gary Snyde

standing in the thunder-pouring
heavy drops of water
—dusty summer—
drinking beer just after driving
all the way around the
watershed of rivers

rocky slopes and bumpy cars
its a skinny awkward land
like a workt-out miner's hand
& how we love it
have some beer and rain,
stopping on our way,
in Alleghany

Break
Dorianne Laux

We put the puzzle together piece
by piece, loving how one curved
notch fits so sweetly with another.
A yellow smudge becomes
the brush of a broom, and two blue arms
fill in the last of the sky.
We patch together porch swings and autumn
trees, matching gold to gold. We hold
the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair
of brown shoes. We do this as the child
circles her room, impatient
with her blossoming, tired
of the neat house, the made bed,
the good food. We let her brood
as we shuffle through the pieces,
setting each one into place with a satisfied
tap, our backs turned for a few hours
to a world that is crumbling, a sky
that is falling, the pieces
we are required to return to.

Cowardice
Robert Service

Although you deem it far from nice,
and it perchance may hurt you,
let me suggest that cowardice
can masquerade as virtue;
and many a maid remains a maid
because she is afraid.

And many a man is chaste because
he fears the house of sin;
and though before the door he pause,
he dare not enter in:
So worse than being dissolute
at home he plays the flute.

And many an old cove such as I
is troubled with the jitters,
and being as he's scared to die
gives up his gin and bitters;
while dreading stomach ulcers he
chucks dinner for high tea.

Well, we are wise. When life begins
to look so dour and dark
'tis good to jettison our sins
and keep afloat the bark:
But don't let us claim lack of vice
for what's plumb cowardice!

Water Table
by Billy Collins

It is on dry sunny days like this one that I find myself
thinking about the enormous body of water
that lies under this house,
cool, unseen reservoir,
silent except for the sounds of dripping
and the incalculable shifting
of all the heavy darkness that it holds.

This is the water that our well was dug to sip
and lift to where we live,
water drawn up and falling on our bare shoulders,
water filling the inlets of our mouths,
water in a pot on the stove.

The house is nothing now but a blueprint of pipes,
a network of faucets, nozzles, and spigots,
and even outdoors where light pierces the air
and clouds fly over the canopies of trees,
my thoughts flow underground
trying to imagine the cavernous scene.

Surely it is no pool with a colored ball
floating on the blue surface.
No grotto where a king would have
his guests rowed around in swan-shaped boats.
Between the dark lakes where the dark rivers flow
there is no ferry waiting on the shore of rock
and no man holding a long oar,
ready to take your last coin.
This is the real earth and the real water it contains.

But some nights, I must tell you,
I go down there after everyone has fallen asleep.
I swim back and forth in the echoing blackness.
I sing a love song as well as I can,
lost for a while in the home of the rain.

"The Old Maid"
Sarah Teasdale

I saw her in a Broadway car,
The woman I might grow to be;
I felt my lover look at her
And then turn suddenly to me.
Her hair was dull and drew no light,
And yet its color was as mine;
Her eyes were strangely like my eyes,
Tho' love had never made them shine.

Her body was a thing grown thin,
Hungry for love that never came;
Her soul was frozen in the dark,
Unwarmed forever by love's flame.

I felt my lover look at her
And then turn suddenly to me –
His eyes were magic to defy
The woman I shall never be.

A Thought
Robert Louis Stevenson

It is very nice to think
The world is full of meat and drink,
With little children saying grace
In every Christian kind of place.

1861
Walt Whitman

ARM'D year! year of the struggle!

No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses
for you, terrible year!

Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a
desk, lisping cadenzas piano;

But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue
clothes, advancing, carrying a rifle on your
shoulder,

With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and
hands—with a knife in the belt at your side,

As I heard you shouting loud--your sonorous
voice ringing across the continent;

Your masculine voice, O year, as rising amid
the great cities,

Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you, as one
of the workmen, the dwellers in Manhattan;

Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of
Illinois and Indiana,

Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait,
and descending the Alleghanies;

Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania,
or on deck along the Ohio river;

Or southward along the Tennessee or
Cumberland rivers, or at Chattanooga on
the mountain top,

Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs,
clothed in blue, bearing weapons, robust year;

Heard your determin'd voice, launch'd forth again
and again;

Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the
round-lipp'd cannon,

I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted
year.