F G S

"The second time,
The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all
there is..."

From "My God, It's Full of Stars" by Tracy K. Smith (and here, half-way down the page)

Barred

"...I said to my heart,
Ravaged by darkness, 'Now, Soon, and Later have become
Each other—doors all closed, the windows blocked and barred for good—
All and sink down together to the bottom of the sea.
Do I wake or sleep? It is late tonight as it will ever be.'"

From "A Late History" by Weldon Kees

Entry

"Creak creak, the hinges need oil.
     Creak creak,
my heart swings open with praise for losers we are
      and those we’re not
by grace of a thousand fancy chances..."

From "In the Kingdom of Perpetual Repair" by Kevin Stein

Sweeps

"...at least
elsewhere those able for holiness—
its signs and rigors—are at work."

From "Linoleum" by Tess Gallagher

Meters

"...ironic in their outcast
dignity—as though, like some pine chests,

they might be prized in disuse..."

From "American Solitude" by Grace Schulman

Golf

"...Sidney
and Dizzy, Uncle Ben and Papa Yancey, are
over by Sylvester's Grot making the sweetest,
cheerfulest blues you ever heard. The air,
so called, is full of it. Poems are fluttering
everywhere like seed from a cottonwood tree."

From "The Afterlife: Letter to Sam Hamill" by Hayden Carruth

Embedded

"...we might coax you with pebbles
kept warm in the hand
or coins or the relics
of vanished animals..."

From "To Luck" by W. S. Merwin

Buona fortuna

"...the stables
where horseshoes hold

not just luck, but
beyond."

From "Book of Hours" by Kevin Young

Lactuca

"...within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me."

From "In Jerusalem" by Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Fady Joudah

Fantasia

"Well, come here towards the light.
Let me get a good look
at the ghosts in the grave of your palm."

From "Cruising 99" by Garrett Hongo

***

I never get tired of winter light.
Saw this on my way back from a Home Depot, house paint and brushes in the trunk of the car (hopefully it will be sunny tomorrow) and camera on the passenger seat.

Peek-a-boo

"Hello, hello, what to tell you was
The world's invisible..."

From "Historical Disquisitions" by Philip Whalen

Wrapper

"...there’s

hardly a vocabulary left to wonder, uncertain
as we are of so much in this existence, this
botched, cumbersome, much-mended,
not unsatisfactory thing."

From "A Hermit Thrush" by Amy Clampitt

Sweeter after the frost

"...opening itself
as if to eat the air, or speak in cabbage
language of the meanings within meanings..."

From "The Cabbage" by Ruth Stone

***

It's New Years in Central Texas, which means cornbread, and cabbage, and something with pork, and something with dark greens. And a bottle of "lucky champagne" from a dear friend, and time to think about the past years' adventures, and the adventures ongoing and to come. Happy 2013, all - may your year be full of joy, and freedom from want, and full of love and creativity.