Waiting for the Storm

Timothy Steele

Breeze sent a wrinkling darkness

Across the bay. I knelt

Beneath an upturned boat,

And moment by moment felt

The sand at my feet grow colder

The damp air chill and spread.

Then the first raindrops sounded

On the hull over my head.

It Could Happen To You

David Lehman (2019)

It's June 15, 2017, a Thursday,

fortieth anniversary of the infamous day

the Mets traded Tom Seaver to Cincinnati

and they're still losing

I mean we are

7 to 1 to the Washington Nationals

a team that didn't exist in 1977

the summer of a little tour in France

with Henry James

in a yellow Renault douze

the light a lovely gray

the rain a violin

concerto (Prokofiev's No. 2 in D Major)

and I had books to read

Huxley Woolf Forster and their enemy F.R. Leavis

Empson a little dull for my taste

also Freud on errors, Norman Mailer on orgasms,

James Baldwin in Paris

Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground Part 1

and John Ashberry tells me he is reading The Possessed

translated as The Demons in the newfangled translation

while Ron and I stay faithful to Constance Garnett

I went upstairs stood on the terrace ate some cherries

admired the outline of trees in the dark

and Rosemary Clooney

sang "It Could Happen To You"

and I was a healthy human being, not a sick man

for the first summer in three years.

Silver Spoon Ode

Sharon Olds (2018)

I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth

and a silver knife, and a silver fork.

I would complain about it—the spoon was not greasy,

it tasted like braces, my shining access

to cosmetic enhancement. And I complained about

the taste of my fillings in my very expensive

mouth, as if only my family was paying 

where did I think the rich got

their money but from everyone else?

My mother beat me in 4/4 time,

and I often, now, rant to her beat—I wear

her rings as if I killed her for them, as my

people killed, and climbed up over

the dead. And I sound as if I am bragging

about it. I was born with a spoon instead of a

tongue in my mouth—dung spoon,

diamond spoon. And who would I be

to ask forgiveness? I would be a white girl.

And I hear Miss Lucille, as if on the mountain

where I'd stand beside her, and brush away the insects,

and sometimes pick one off her, sometimes

by the wings, and toss it away. And Lucille

is saying, to me, You have asked for enough,

and been given in excess. And that thing in your mouth,

open your mouth and let that thing go,

let if fly back into the mine where it was brought

up from the underworld at the price of

lives, beloved lives. And now,

enough, Shar, now a little decent silence.