The Dead of Winter
by Samuel Menashe

In my coat I sit
At the window sill
Wintering with snow
That did not melt
It fell long ago
At night, by stealth
I was where I am
When the snow began

#PoetryAtNight

The Sound of One Fork (excerpt)
by Minnie Bruce Pratt

The woman next door is eating supper alone.

She is sixty, perhaps, and for many years has eaten by herself the tomatoes, the corn and okra that she grows in her backyard garden...

She does not hurry, she does not linger.

Her younger neighbors think that she is lonely.

But I know what sufficiency she may possess.

#PoetryAtNight

Going Home: New Orleans (excerpt)
By Sheryl St. Germain

Some slow evenings when the light hangs late and stubborn in the sky,
gives itself up to darkness slowly and deliberately, slow cloud after slow cloud,
slowness enters me like something familiar,
and it feels like going home.

#QuietHour #PoetryAtNight #Wintering #Peace

Perfect for Any Occasion (excerpt)
by Alberto Rios

A pie gets one chance
And knows it, wearing as makeup

Those sparkling granules of sugar,
As a collar those diamond cutouts

Bespeaking Fair Day, felicity, contentment.
I tell you everything is great, says a pie,

Great, and fun, and fine.
And you smell nice, too, someone says.

A full pound of round sound, all ahh, all good.
Pies live a life of applause.

#PoetryatNight #TheQuietHour

i’m going back to Minnesota where sadness makes sense (excerpt)
by Danez Smith

i know, i’m strange, too much light makes me nervous

at least in this land where the trees always bear green.

i know something that doesn’t die can’t be beautiful.

#poetryatnight #hudsonvalley #traveljournal #poetry #photography #monday

Gibbous Moan

Give is a Three Quarter Moon
We wait for it impatiently
Give us now a Gibbous Moan
Sinking down below the Sea
#poetry #poet# #poetry #poetrylover #poetrylovers #poems #poetryreading #poetrymag #poetryatnight

Sensitive

Sensitive to your lovely sight
Sensitive to your gentle voice
Sensitive to the brush of your hand
Sensitive to the smell of your skin
Sensitive to the taste of your flesh
My love for you is complete
#poetryatnight #poetrylover

Country Kitchen
by Maxwell Mays

I believe in cord wood, iron stoves, and breakfast.

I believe in freshly baked bread and mail order catalogues,
ticking clocks, dogs and cats and corn right out of the garden.

I believe in families who laugh together and because of this
I believe in tomorrow and the day after and the goodness of man
and the joy of living.

#poetryatnight #castiron #cornbread #food #poetry #Tuesday

blessing the boats
by Lucille Clifton
(at St. Mary's)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back
may you open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

#poetryatnight #lucilleclifton #poetry #poems #quiet #wintering

November Night by Adelaide Crapsey

Listen. .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

#poetry #poetryatnight

Candles (excerpt)
by Carl Dennis

"If on your grandmother's birthday you burn a candle
To honor her memory, you might think of burning an extra
To honor the memory of someone who never met her,
A man who may have come to the town she lived in
Looking for work and never found it."

#poetry #poetryatnight