Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

- Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for the Right;
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, -- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! -- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

The Groundfall Pear

It is the one he chooses,
Yellow, plump, a little brusied
On one side from falling.
That place he takes first.

Jane Hirshfield (1953)

Driftwood

Come, warm your hands
From the cold wind of time.
I have built here under the moon,
a many-coloured fire
With fragments of wood
That have been part of a tree
And part of a ship.

Were leaves more real,
Or driven nails,
Of fingers of builders,
Than these burning violets?
Come, warm your hands
From the cold wind of time.
There’s a fire under the moon.

-Witter Bynner (1881-1968)

Ninja Anecdote

Poor ninja, unemployed (for the demand for assassinations has vanished). Now ninja is a janitor, working in the dark, flipping and maneuvering as trained, as desired, in solitude (working lonely graveyards creates cushion between ninja’s killer instinct and civilian meekness). One night while shadowing back to his lair, fly-floating as phantoms do, thru the streets & trees, the ninja notices a damsel in distress (breaking ninja’s stoic indifference for the 1st time). Ninja instantly and quickly disposes... without mercy. The savagery was over, her tears flowed no more, her eyes lit-up bright with life. Ninja becomes inspired to use the shadows for justice, fighting crime as heroes do, that is until crime ceased at night and continued only by day. Damn success. Now again, the ninja is a janitor, only now he glows.

- JJ (1981-)

Rubaiyat 51

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it

-Omar Khayyam (1048-1131)

Aedh Wishes For the Clothes of Heaven

Had I the heavens embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)