I stepped from Plank to Plank

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1. A single Clover Plank A single Clover Plank Was all that saved a Bee A Bee I personally knew From sinking in the sky ‘Twixt Firmament above And Firmament below The Billows of Circumference Were sweeping him away The idly swaying Plank Responsible to nought A sudden Freight of Wind assumed And Bumble Bee was not This harrowing event […]...
2. Lightly stepped a yellow star Lightly stepped a yellow star To its lofty place Loosed the Moon her silver hat From her lustral Face All of Evening softly lit As an Astral Hall Father, I observed to Heaven, You are punctual....
3. One Inch Tall If you were only one inch tall, you’d ride a worm to school. The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool. A crumb of cake would be a feast And last you seven days at least, A flea would be a frightening beast If you were one inch tall. If you were […]...
4. The only Ghost I ever saw The only Ghost I ever saw Was dressed in Mechlin so He wore no sandal on his foot And stepped like flakes of snow His Gait was soundless, like the Bird But rapid like the Roe His fashions, quaint, Mosaic Or haply, Mistletoe His conversation seldom His laughter, like the Breeze That dies away in […]...
5. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
6. The City of Perth Beautiful Ancient City of Perth, One of the fairest on the earth, With your stately mansions and scenery most fine, Which seems very beautiful in the summer time; And the beautiful silvery Tay, Rolling smoothly on its way, And glittering like silver in the sunshine – And the Railway Bridge across it is really sublime. […]...
7. A Last Confession What lively lad most pleasured me Of all that with me lay? I answer that I gave my soul And loved in misery, But had great pleasure with a lad That I loved bodily. Flinging from his arms I laughed To think his passion such He fancied that I gave a soul Did but our […]...
8. Tenuous And Precarious Tenuous and Precarious Were my guardians, Precarious and Tenuous, Two Romans. My father was Hazardous, Hazardous Dear old man, Three Romans. There was my brother Spurious, Spurious Posthumous, Spurious was Spurious, Was four Romans. My husband was Perfidious, He was Perfidious Five Romans. Surreptitious, our son, Was Surreptitious, He was six Romans. Our cat Tedious […]...
9. I am afraid to own a Body I am afraid to own a Body I am afraid to own a Soul Profound precarious Property Possession, not optional Double Estate entailed at pleasure Upon an unsuspecting Heir Duke in a moment of Deathlessness And God, for a Frontier....
10. Song FOR her gait, if she be walking; Be she sitting, I desire her For her state’s sake; and admire her For her wit if she be talking; Gait and state and wit approve her; For which all and each I love her. Be she sullen, I commend her For a modest. Be she merry, For […]...
11. 'Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch ‘Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch, That nearer, every Day, Kept narrowing its boiling Wheel Until the Agony Toyed coolly with the final inch Of your delirious Hem And you dropt, lost, When something broke And let you from a Dream As if a Goblin with a Gauge Kept measuring the Hours Until you […]...
12. The reticent volcano keeps The reticent volcano keeps His never slumbering plan Confided are his projects pink To no precarious man. If nature will not tell the tale Jehovah told to her Can human nature not survive Without a listener? Admonished by her buckled lips Let every babbler be The only secret people keep Is Immortality....
13. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
14. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
15. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
16. My Nose Is Growing Old Yup. A long lazy September look In the mirror Say it’s true. I’m 31 And my nose is growing Old. It starts about 1/2 An inch Below the bridge And strolls geriatrically Down For another inch or so: Stopping. Fortunately, the rest Of the nose is comparatively Young. I wonder if girls Will want me […]...
17. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
18. When First We Faced, And Touching Showed When first we faced, and touching showed How well we knew the early moves, Behind the moonlight and the frost, The excitement and the gratitude, There stood how much our meeting owed To other meetings, other loves. The decades of a different life That opened past your inch-close eyes Belonged to others, lavished, lost; Nor […]...
19. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
20. The Gift “He gave her class. She gave him sex.” Katharine Hepburn on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers He gave her money. She gave him head. He gave her tips on “aggressive growth” mutual funds. She gave him a red rose and a little statue of eros. He gave her Genesis 2 (21-23). She gave him Genesis […]...
21. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
22. Marine Snow At Mid-Depths And Down As you descend, slowly, falling faster past You this snow, Ghostly, some flakes bio- Luminescent (you plunge, And this lit snow doesn’t land At your feet but keeps falling below You): single-cell-plant chains, shreds Of zooplankton’s mucus food traps, Fish fecal pellets, radioactive fallouts, Sand grains, pollen….And inside These jagged falling islands Live more microlives, […]...
23. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
24. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
25. All or Nothing All or Nothing The final race. the final decision All disgrace or fortune all Either I fall or I stand tall; All or Nothing No compromises this time No catholic design Either I win or I lose; And I, don’t get to choose. All or Nothing The final fight All hells lose in this frenzied […]...
26. This is the place they hoped before This is the place they hoped before, Where I am hoping now. The seed of disappointment grew Within a capsule gay, Too distant to arrest the feet That walk this plank of balm Before them lies escapeless sea The way is closed they came....
27. Buttons I HAVE been watching the war map slammed up for Advertising in front of the newspaper office. Buttons red and yellow buttons blue and black buttons Are shoved back and forth across the map. A laughing young man, sunny with freckles, Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd, And then fixes […]...
28. The Teams A cloud of dust on the long white road, And the teams go creeping on Inch by inch with the weary load; And by the power of the green-hide goad The distant goal is won. With eyes half-shut to the blinding dust, And necks to the yokes bent low, The beasts are pulling as bullocks […]...
29. The overtakelessness of those The overtakelessness of those Who have accomplished Death Majestic is to me beyond The majesties of Earth. The soul her “Not at Home” Inscribes upon the flesh And takes her fair aerial gait Beyond the hope of touch....
30. Harlan Sewall You never understood, O unknown one, Why it was I repaid Your devoted friendship and delicate ministrations First with diminished thanks, Afterward by gradually withdrawing my presence from you, So that I might not be compelled to thank you, And then with silence which followed upon Our final Separation. You had cured my diseased soul. […]...
31. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
32. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
33. A House upon the Height A House upon the Height That Wagon never reached No Dead, were ever carried down No Peddler’s Cart approached Whose Chimney never smoked Whose Windows Night and Morn Caught Sunrise first and Sunset last Then held an Empty Pane Whose fate Conjecture knew No other neighbor did And what it was we never lisped Because […]...
34. How brittle are the Piers How brittle are the Piers On which our Faith doth tread No Bridge below doth totter so Yet none hath such a Crowd. It is as old as God Indeed ’twas built by him He sent his Son to test the Plank, And he pronounced it firm....
35. The Corridor It may have been the pride in me for aught I know, or just a patronizing whim; But call it freak of fancy, or what not, I cannot hide the hungry face of him. I keep a scant half-dozen words he said, And every now and then I lose his name; He may be living […]...
36. Letters To Dead Imagists EMILY DICKINSON: You gave us the bumble bee who has a soul, The everlasting traveler among the hollyhocks, And how God plays around a back yard garden. STEVIE CRANE: War is kind and we never knew the kindness of war till You came; Nor the black riders and clashes of spear and shield out Of […]...
37. Dead poet I’m sure it would be easier to survive as a dead poet, I mean it in the surmise that I won’t be tempted To revise or rewrite the poem I wrote last night, or the Poems I wrote last week (which make me cringe when I Read them again), or when I read poetry of […]...
38. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
39. Impromptu, to Lady Winchelsea In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore, And cite those Sapho’s we admire no more: Fate doom’d the Fall of ev’ry Female Wit, But doom’d it then when first Ardelia writ. Of all Examples by the World confest, I knew Ardelia could not quote the best; Who, like her Mistress on Britannia’s Throne; Fights, […]...
40. The Suicide's Argument Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no No question was asked me it could not be so! If the life was the question, a thing sent to try And to live on be YES; what can NO be? to die. NATURE’S ANSWER Is’t returned, as ’twas sent? Is’t no worse […]...