"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" - Wallace Stevens

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,   

The only moving thing   

Was the eye of the blackbird.   


II

I was of three minds,   

Like a tree   

In which there are three blackbirds.   


III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.   

It was a small part of the pantomime.   


IV

A man and a woman   

Are one.   

A man and a woman and a blackbird   

Are one.   


V

I do not know which to prefer,   

The beauty of inflections   

Or the beauty of innuendoes,   

The blackbird whistling   

Or just after.   


VI

Icicles filled the long window   

With barbaric glass.   

The shadow of the blackbird   

Crossed it, to and fro.   

The mood   

Traced in the shadow   

An indecipherable cause.   


VII

O thin men of Haddam,   

Why do you imagine golden birds?   

Do you not see how the blackbird   

Walks around the feet   

Of the women about you?   


VIII

I know noble accents   

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;   

But I know, too,   

That the blackbird is involved   

In what I know.   


IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,   

It marked the edge   

Of one of many circles.   


X

At the sight of blackbirds   

Flying in a green light,   

Even the bawds of euphony   

Would cry out sharply.   


XI

He rode over Connecticut   

In a glass coach.   

Once, a fear pierced him,   

In that he mistook   

The shadow of his equipage   

For blackbirds.   


XII

The river is moving.   

The blackbird must be flying.   


XIII

It was evening all afternoon.   

It was snowing   

And it was going to snow.   

The blackbird sat   

In the cedar-limbs.

From "A Silent Treatment" - Jeannie Vanasco

“I think back to that first example. I remember unloading the plants Chris and I had picked out from Home Depot (clematis, honeysuckle, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemum), some of which would attract the hummingbirds [my mother] enjoyed watching. I’d also bought two birdbaths. I hid those in the garage because they were her Easter gift. I then went inside to call downstairs, but her door was locked.

She must have seen the plants on the deck—maybe when she walked [her dog] or took out her trash—and assumed we’d ignored or forgotten her.

I texted: We couldn’t fit everything in the car in one trip. We still planned to take you today.

I repeated this in a letter that I left in her private entryway: I’m sorry I didn’t explain our plans first. We still planned to take you to Home Depot.

It’s easy to say how ridiculous she was being, but it’s harder, and almost unutterably heartbreaking, to see Home Depot’s significance through her point of view. For Chris and me, it was another errand. She looked forward to the trip all week.”

From "The Return of Faraz Ali" - Aamina Ahmad

“He walked out into the garden, which was small but well tended. There were new trees, and the lawn was lush and green. Swept up in the celebration of his return, he’d forgotten how foul, how filthy he was from the travel, the camp. He felt it now. He took off his shoes. In the camp, he had spent a long time wondering what he would do when he got home. What is the first thing, the men liked to ask one another. Food, sex. And it was true, in prison you recognized the appetites you were denied; you longed for those things above all because after a time you got used to not having them, your longing declining, and in that decline you recognized you were not the man you were before. You feared you would never be that man again. What had he thought of? The same, yes, of course, but also this: the outline of the trees in the evening, the cool grass against his feet, an open door, and walking through it and back in again as he pleased.”

James Wright - "A Blessing"

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness   
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.   
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.   
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me   
And nuzzled my left hand.   
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.