by Alicia Ostriker To be blessed said the old woman is to live and work so hard God’s love washes right through you like milk through a cow To be blessed said the dark red tulip is to knock their…
Pepper and Poems
94 Articles
94
“It was a couple of springs ago. I was driving into New York City from New Jersey on one of those crowded, fast-moving turnpikes you enter it by,” writes Frederick Buechner. “It was very warm. There was brilliant sunshine, and…
This Sunday finds me in Atlanta helping a daughter move into a new apartment. Unpacking yesterday, she couldn’t find an Important pair of black jeans. Her favorite pair. It’s kind of a disaster! (They’ll turn up, of course; surely they…
What do you yearn for? Here’s a little poem by Louise Glück that made me think twice… Lament Suddenly, after you die, those friends who never agreed about anything agree about your character. they’re like a houseful of singers rehearsing…
“Think of poetry as fishing. What really pulls is the fascination of touching a deep, unseen world with monofilament line. It’s wonderfully dark down there, so I can’t see what might be coming along that I can possibly hook and…
Students have left campus following the end of the term, and summer classes have yet to begin. An eerie quiet holds in the early morning… The daylilies think about greeting the day, the last of the columbine ring their tiny…
Mary Oliver, as always, says it best…. When I Am Among The Trees When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of…
Because the mower did not come the wild things grew and sang wild songs and the tulips remembered the melodies. A grandmother’s bluebells (long since forgotten) woke up, looked around, told some jokes because the mower did not come. Because…
Each year, come spring, a turkey hen appears in our neighborhood. She browses and grazes with a calm demeanor and kind-of acts like she owns the place. Where does she live the rest of the year? Not telling. Come spring,…