All of these poets and poems have been on the home page, or are headed there soon.
Here is a recitation of Billy Collins’ poem Litany that never fails to make me happy. “There is just no way that you’re the pine scented air.”
About the faith our dogs have in usBiscuit
Jane Kenyon
The dog has cleaned his bowl and his reward is a biscuit, which I put in his mouth like a priest offering the host. I can’t bear that trusting face! He asks for bread, expects bread, and I in my power might have given him a stone.
(or a beet)◊◊◊
This sounds so much better that novacaineAnxiety About Dying
Alicia Ostriker
It isn’t any worse than what I discover in the dentist’s chair under the nitrous oxide. The whole jaw is going, I complain, the gums, the bone, two enormous fillings lost. What do I need? Maybe a guillotine? says my dentist, the joker. The only thing I have to fear is fear itself, I tell him. You believe that bullshit? he says setting to work on my rotting bicuspid. Now comes the good part. Breathing the happy gas. I get answers to all the questions I had about death but was afraid to ask. Will there be pain? Yes. Will my desires still be unsatisfied? Yes. My human potential remain unrealized? Yes. Can a person stop minding about that? Certainly. Can I commend my spirit to the seventeen angels whistling outside the dentist’s window? Of course. How nice the happy gas. What a good friend. I unclench my sweaty little hand. I wave goodbye to my teeth. It seems they are leaving by train for a vacation. I’ll meet them in the country when I can.
◊◊◊
I’m 57 now. That blows my mind.Mary Oliver
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
◊◊◊