When a Friend Dies

When a friend dies

By Marge Piercy

When a friend dies the salmon run no fatter.

The wheat harvest will feed no more bellies.

Nothing is won by endurance but endurance.

A hunger sucks at the mind

for gone color after the last bronze

chrysanthemum is withered by frost.

A hunger drains the day,

a homely sore gap

after a tooth is pulled,

a red giant gone nova,

an empty place in the sky

sliding down the arch

after Orion in night as wide

as a sleepless staring eye.

When pain and fatigue wrestle

fatigue wins. The eye shuts.

Then the pain rises again at dawn.

At first you can stare at it,

Then it blinds you.

the noise in the pool

"You ask of my companions.


Hills, sir, and the sundown, and
a dog large as myself, that my



father bought me. They are better
than beings because they know, but do not

tell; and the noise



in the pool at noon excels my piano."

-a letter from Emily Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson

garden song

Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make this garden grow
All it takes is a rake and a hoe
And a piece of fertile ground
Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
Till the rain comes tumbling down
Pulling weeds and picking stones
Man is made of dreams and bones
Feel the need to grow my own
Cause the time is close at hand
Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature's chain
Tune my body and my brain
To the music from the land
Plant your rows straight and long
Temper them with prayer and song
Mother Earth will make you strong
If you give her love and care
Old crow watching hungrily
From his perch in yonder tree
In my garden It's as free
As that feathered thief up there

-David Mallet

still beating

I know the dog days of the summer

Have you ten to one outnumbered

Seems like everybody up and left

And they're not coming back

The shadow that you're standing on's still here

Sometimes that's all that you can ask

And your heart's still beating

You're not the fastest draw in town now

How many times you been shot down now?

Seems like everybody else could see

The things you never did

But if you could yourself

You'd probably never have made it through the things you did

And your heart still beating, yeah

I know the dog days of the summer

Have you ten to one outnumbered

It seems like everybody else saw

Trouble sneaking up behind

Left you half dead in the street

But that just means you're half alive

And your heart's still beating

Still beating, still beating

Still beating, still beating

Still beating, still beating

And your heart's still beating, yeah

- Josh Ritter

30 Line Orphan Song

Thirty Line Orphan Song

I’m not an orphan
Though my folks are gone
Left me with a softness
In the center,
Their lilt to a laugh

No orphan in that blood
Still flowing through
Veins mixing vintages
Into a varietal of temperment
Can’t or won't fake those

Sometimes you will see them
Without searching too hard
A certain tilt of the head
When lifting up a kid
Or kneeling in the loose dirt

Orphans don’t look
Like my Mother
When she explained
How mistakes are not permanent
Such a difference for me

Love doesn’t always last
But the bond stays strong
In these chromosomes
Things handed down
We hold like a fledgling

I’m no orphan
Not in this album
Tattooed in my memory
Cobalt indelible inside

Not an orphan, never

I'm not lonely

I'm Not Lonely

I'm not lonely sleeping all alone

you think i'm scared

but i'm a big girl

i don't cry or anything
I have a great big bed to roll around in

and lots of space

and i don't dream bad dreams

like i used to have

that you were leaving me anymore
Now that you're gone

i don't dream

and no matter what you think

i'm not lonely sleeping all alone

Written by Nikki Giovanni

One Step Backward Taken

Not only sands and gravels

Were once more on their travels,

But gulping muddy gallons

Great boulders off their balance

Bumped heads together dully

And started down the gully.

Whole capes caked off in slices.

I felt my standpoint shaken

In the universal crisis.

But with one step backward taken

I saved myself from going.

A world torn loose went by me.

Then the rain stopped and the blowing,

And the sun came out to dry me.

-Robert Frost