Northern Pike

Related poetry:

1. The Pike In the brown water, Thick and silver-sheened in the sunshine, Liquid and cool in the shade of the reeds, A pike dozed. Lost among the shadows of stems He lay unnoticed. Suddenly he flicked his tail, And a green-and-copper brightness Ran under the water. Out from under the reeds Came the olive-green light, And orange […]...
2. The City of Sleep “The Brushwood Boy” The Day’s Work Over the edge of the purple down, Where the single lamplight gleams, Know ye the road to the Merciful Town That is hard by the Sea of Dreams Where the poor may lay their wrongs away, And the sick may forget to weep? But we pity us! Oh, pity […]...
3. XXXIV (You are the daughter of the sea) You are the daughter of the sea, oregano’s first cousin. Swimmer, your body is pure as the water; Cook, your blood is quick as the soil. Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth. Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise; Your hands go out to the earth […]...
4. Christmas in a box the policeman on the streets Found christmas in a box Tipped it down a manhole It wasn’t wearing socks A little old lady nearby – The poor sod’s done no harm She got hit with a truncheon For spreading false alarm The policeman then went home Pleased his job was done Called for his christmas […]...
5. A Note Left In Jimmy Leonard's Shack Near the dry river’s water-mark we found Your brother Minnegan, Flopped like a fish against the muddy ground. Beany, the kid whose yellow hair turns green, Told me to find you, even if the rain, And tell you he was drowned. I hid behind the chassis on the bank, The wreck of someone’s Ford: I […]...
6. Punch Song (To be sung in the Northern Countries) On the mountain’s breezy summit, Where the southern sunbeams shine, Aided by their warming vigor, Nature yields the golden wine. How the wondrous mother formeth, None have ever read aright; Hid forever is her working, And inscrutable her might. Sparkling as a son of Phoebus, As the fiery source of light, From the vat it […]...
7. To The Commissioners Of Northern Lights I SEND to you, commissioners, A paper that may please ye, sirs (For troth they say it might be worse An’ I believe’t) And on your business lay my curse Before I leav’t. I thocht I’d serve wi’ you, sirs, yince, But I’ve thocht better of it since; The maitter I will nowise mince, But […]...
8. O Dull Cold Northern Sky O DULL cold northern sky, O brawling sabbath bells, O feebly twittering Autumn bird that tells The year is like to die! O still, spoiled trees, O city ways, O sun desired in vain, O dread presentiment of coming rain That cloys the sullen days! Thee, heart of mine, I greet. In what hard mountain […]...
9. The Left Bank Don’t walk away, Renee, I’m just getting warmed up Your body is like a river And I’m going to swim across I want to explore the left Bank of you then the right You’re the only woman in This room with a sunflower In her hair and you take Forever in the bathroom Making me […]...
10. Answered Prayers I prayed for riches, and achieved success; All that I touched turned into gold. Alas! My cares were greater and my peace was less, When that wish came to pass. I prayed for glory, and I heard my name Sung by sweet children and by hoary men. But ah! the hurts – the hurts that […]...
11. Layover Making love in the sun, in the morning sun In a hotel room Above the alley Where poor men poke for bottles; Making love in the sun Making love by a carpet redder than our blood, Making love while the boys sell headlines And Cadillacs, Making love by a photograph of Paris And an open […]...
12. A Blessing Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, […]...
13. A Martian Sends A Postcard Home Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings And some are treasured for their markings They cause the eyes to melt Or the body to shriek without pain. I have never seen one fly, but Sometimes they perch on the hand. Mist is when the sky is tired of flight And rests its soft machine on […]...
14. Our biggest fish When in the halcyon days of old, I was a little tyke, I used to fish in pickerel ponds for minnows and the like; And oh, the bitter sadness with which my soul was fraught When I rambled home at nightfall with the puny string I’d caught! And, oh, the indignation and the valor I’d […]...
15. The Bull Moose Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain, Lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar, Stumbling through tamarack swamps, Came the bull moose To be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture. Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware There was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle. They, […]...
16. The Fish The first fish I ever caught Would not lie down Quiet in the pail But flailed and sucked At the burning Amazement of the air And died In the slow pouring off Of rainbows. Later I opened his body and separated The flesh from the bones And ate him. Now the sea Is in me: […]...
17. In Memoriam A. H. H.: 83. Dip down upon the northern shore Dip down upon the northern shore O sweet new-year delaying long; Thou doest expectant nature wrong; Delaying long, delay no more. What stays thee from the clouded noons, Thy sweetness from its proper place? Can trouble live with April days, Or sadness in the summer moons? Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire, The little speed […]...
18. Northern Farmer: New Style Dosn’t thou ‘ear my ‘erse’s legs, as they canters awaäy? Proputty, proputty, proputty that’s what I ‘ears ’em saäy. Proputty, proputty, proputty Sam, thou’s an ass for thy paaïns: Theer’s moor sense i’ one o’ ‘is legs, nor in all thy braaïns. Woä theer’s a craw to pluck wi’ tha, Sam; yon ‘s parson’s ‘ouse […]...
19. This Gloomy Northern Day THIS gloomy northern day, Or this yet gloomier night, Has moved a something high In my cold heart; and I, That do not often pray, Would pray to-night. And first on Thee I call For bread, O God of might! Enough of bread for all, – That through the famished town Cold hunger may lie […]...
20. The Wind took up the Northern Things The Wind took up the Northern Things And piled them in the south Then gave the East unto the West And opening his mouth The four Divisions of the Earth Did make as to devour While everything to corners slunk Behind the awful power The Wind unto his Chambers went And nature ventured out Her […]...
21. The Antique To The Northern Wanderer Thou hast crossed over torrents, and swung through wide-spreading ocean, Over the chain of the Alps dizzily bore thee the bridge, That thou might’st see me from near, and learn to value my beauty, Which the voice of renown spreads through the wandering world. And now before me thou standest, canst touch my altar so […]...
22. The Ballad Of The Northern Lights One of the Down and Out that’s me. Stare at me well, ay, stare! Stare and shrink say! you wouldn’t think that I was a millionaire. Look at my face, it’s crimped and gouged one of them death-mask things; Don’t seem the sort of man, do I, as might be the pal of kings? Slouching […]...
23. Stripes POLICEMAN in front of a bank 3 A. M. … lonely. Policeman State and Madison… high noon… mobs… cars… parcels… lonely. Woman in suburbs… keeping night watch on a sleeping typhoid patient… only a clock to talk to… lonesome. Woman selling gloves… bargain day department store… furious crazy-work of many hands slipping in and out […]...
24. Gannets I am watching the white gannets Blaze down into the water With the power of blunt spears And a stunning accuracy Even though the sea is riled and boiling And gray with fog And the fish Are nowhere to be seen, They fall, they explode into the water Like white gloves, Then they vanish, Then […]...
25. The Demon In Me The demon in me’s not dead, He’s living, and well. In the body as in a hold, In the self as in a cell. The world is but walls. The exit’s the axe. (“All the world’s a stage,” The actor prates.) And that hobbling buffoon Is no joker; In the body as in glory, In […]...
26. Heaven Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June, Dawdling away their wat’ry noon) Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear, Each secret fishy hope or fear. Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond; But is there anything Beyond? This life cannot be All, they swear, For how unpleasant, if it were! One may not doubt that, somehow, […]...
27. The River In my first sleep I came to the river And looked down Through the clear water – Only in dream Water so pure, Laced and undulant Lines of flow On its rocky bed Water of life Streaming for ever. A house was there Beside the river And I, arrived, An expected guest About to explore […]...
28. A Tall Man THE MOUTH of this man is a gaunt strong mouth. The head of this man is a gaunt strong head. The jaws of this man are bone of the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians. The eyes of this man are chlorine of two sobbing oceans, Foam, salt, green, wind, the changing unknown. The neck of this […]...
29. Charlene-n-Booker 4ever And the old men, supervising grown grandsons, nephews, Any man a boy given this chance of making A new sidewalk outside the apartment building where Some of them live, three old men and their wives, The aging unmarrying children, and the child Who is a cousin, whose mother has sent her here Because she doesn’t […]...
30. A dull sound, varying now and again And then we began eating corn starch, Chalk chewed wet into sirup. We pilfered Argo boxes stored away to stiffen My white dress shirt, and my cousin And I played or watched TV, no longer annoyed By the din of never cooling afternoons. On the way home from church one fifth Sunday, Shirt outside my […]...
31. Water Lily My whole life is mine, but whoever says so Will deprive me, for it is infinite. The ripple of water, the shade of the sky Are mine; it is still the same, my life. No desire opens me: I am full, I never close myself with refusal- In the rythm of my daily soul I […]...
32. Trafficker Among the shadows where two streets cross, A woman lurks in the dark and waits To move on when a policeman heaves in view. Smiling a broken smile from a face Painted over haggard bones and desperate eyes, All night she offers passers-by what they will Of her beauty wasted, body faded, claims gone, And […]...
33. On The Picture Of Two Dolphins In A Fountayne These dolphins twisting each on either side For joy leapt upp, and gazing there abide; And whereas other waters fish doe bring, Here from the fishes doe the waters spring, Who think it is more glorious to give Than to receive the juice whereby they live: And by this milk-white bason learne you may That […]...
34. Dream Song 176: All that hair flashing over All that hair flashing over the Atlantic, Henry’s girl’s gone. She’ll find Paris a sweet place As many times he did. She’s there now, having left yesterday. I held Her cousin’s hand, all innocence, on the climb to the tower. Her cousin is if possible more beautiful than she is. All over the world grades […]...
35. Nadowessian Death-Lament See, he sitteth on his mat Sitteth there upright, With the grace with which he sat While he saw the light. Where is now the sturdy gripe, Where the breath sedate, That so lately whiffed the pipe Toward the Spirit great? Where the bright and falcon eye, That the reindeer’s tread On the waving grass […]...
36. To A Blossoming Pear Tree Beautiful natural blossoms, Pure delicate body, You stand without trembling. Little mist of fallen starlight, Perfect, beyond my reach, How I envy you. For if you could only listen, I would tell you something, Something human. An old man Appeared to me once In the unendurable snow. He had a singe of white Beard on […]...
37. The Road That Runs Beside The River follows the river as it bends Along the valley floor, Going the way it must. Where water goes, so goes the road, If there’s room (not in a ravine, Gorge), the river On your right or left. Left is better: when you’re driving, It’s over your elbow across The road. You see the current, which […]...
38. The Blue Water Buffalo One in 250 Cambodians, or 40,000 people, Have lost a limb to a landmine. -Newsfront, U. N. Development Programme Communications Office On both sides of the screaming highway, the world Is made of emerald silk-sumptuous bolts of it, Stitched by threads of water into cushions That shimmer and float on the Mekong’s munificent glut. In […]...
39. Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell Down through the tomb’s inward arch He has shouldered out into Limbo To gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber: The merciful dead, the prophets, The innocents just His own age and those Unnumbered others waiting here Unaware, in an endless void He is ending Now, stooping to tug at their hands, To pull them from […]...
40. A BREAK IN THE RHYTHM OF LIFE Bhaskar Roy Barman When the world itself looked exhausted, Revolving round the sun; When a bumble-bee sounded tired Of humming round a ternate leaf; When a few fishermen were venting their rage on their net -they looked fed up of mending their net off and on – And when the fish were leaping and playing […]...