Poetry

lakepoem # 2 haiku trio wind on the water a pink transparent beach ball skims across the pond you kingfishers you why this angry chittering food enough for all hills hide the sunrise but sunsets oh the sunsets gold and gray tonight © Jacqueline Jackson 2005

There are thousands upon thousands of poems about love, many of them using predictable words, predictable rhymes. Ho-hum. But here the Illinois poet Lisel Mueller talks about love in a totally fresh and new way, in terms of table salt. Love Like Salt It lies in our hands in crystals too intricate to decipher It […]

featherspoem #2 whip-poor-WILL whip-poor-WILL whip-poor-WILL whip-poor-WILL won’t you SHUT your little BILL your midnight SONG has ceased to THRILL won’t you FIND another HILL whip-poor-WILL whip-poor WILL won’t you TAKE a sleeping PILL whip-poor-WILL whip-poor-WILL I have SUREly had my FILL little FRIEND o please be STILL whip-poor-WILL whip-poor-WILL if I could FIND you I […]

featherspoem #1 behind as I swim the dawn chorus calls feebee feebee pee-a-wee pee-a-wee cheerup cheerily cheerup hey sweetie hey sweetie sam peabody peabody peabody all affirming their right to these vermont woods while nearby in addison county whooping crane number three-o-nine snowy plumage jet wing tips red skullcap yellow eyes legbands white and green […]

jamaicanpoem # 4 (an emily dickinson wannabe) I met a landcrab on the road — its hole was not in sight — it waved its saffron claw in front — protection? or in fright? I plain could see around its girth its chitin band of blue — and underneath a patch of red to let […]

Pray for Rain The windows have not slept for days no cooling breath. Parched plants bend their heads like supplicants. Elevated tempers rise, heat in unforgiving skies. Pray for rain. The tip of a fingernail sparks a match. In the dark, an indrawn breath exhales. Dun flies beat their wings like empty sails. Pray for […]

aroundthecosmos poem #3 (jamaicanpoem #2) the sun dangling from the schoolroom’s ridgepole is a styrofoam fisherman’s float big and yellow as a grapefruit it sits at the hub of a hurricane- ravaged umbrella the crazy outspread spokes each skewering a planet mercury a small red christmas ornament farther out jupiter a fat papier-mâché breadfruit saturn’s […]

jamaicanpoem #1 the heat is searing but these many-hued glossy-skinned liquid-eyed jamaican schoolkids in tan shirts and trousers in green pleated jumpers and snowy blouses   are like crickets the hotter it gets the higher they leap the shriller they chirp © Jacqueline Jackson 2005

environmentpoem #1 when I turn on the flame beneath my iron frying pan to dry the puddle in the middle so the skillet won’t rust I stand and watch the water shrivel in from the edges like the aral sea © Jacqueline Jackson 2005

In the Earth She calls in the night, in the blindness of three AM, her black loam throbbing . . . This is not the first time I’ve slipped away to be with her. We’ve made love on the breasts of hills and wrapped ourselves in thickets at high noon. Not always gently, I have […]

clutterpoem #1 you have to look to your heroes mine is nobel laureate alan guth who says I would rather keep a pile of junk assuming there is something there I want than throw the whole thing away and regret it he is pictured in his MIT office awash in a paper sea I am […]

wetlandspoem #1 the waters are returning with the waters the plants with the waters and plants the fish with the waters and plants and fish the birds from the east has come phyllis singing bird danny fire crow from the south from the west lionel little eagle chuck running elk from the north to spread […]