Rain on the Roof by Janet Frame

Mary

Megan

My nephew sleeping in a basement room

has put a sheet of iron outside his window

to recapture the sound of rain falling on the roof.

I do not say to him, The heart has its own comfort for grief.

A sheet of iron repairs roofs only. As yet unhurt by the demand

that change and difference never show, he is still able

to mend damages by creating the loved rain-sound

he thinks he knew in early childhood.

Nor do I say, In the travelling life of loss

iron is a burden, that one day he must find

within himself in total darkness and silence

the iron that will hold not only the lost sound of the rain

but the sun, the voices of the dead, and all else that has gone.

Hummingbird Sleep by Coleman Barks

Megan

Mary

A hummingbird sleeps among the wonders.

Close to dark, he settles on a roosting limb

and lowers his body temperature

to within a few degrees of the air's own.

As the bird descends into torpor,

he assumes his heroic sleep posture,

head back, tilted beak pointing to the sky,

angling steep, Quixotic, Crimean.

This noctivation, the ornithologist word for it,

is very like what bears do through the winter.

Hummingbirds live the deep drop every night.

You can yell in his face and shake the branch.

Nothing. Gone. Where? What does he dream of?

He dreams he is the great air itself, the substance

he swims in every day, and the rising light

coming back to be his astonishing body.

Next Time by Joyce Sutphen

Megan

Mary

I'll know the names of all of the birds

and flowers, and not only that, I'll

tell you the name of the piano player

I'm hearing right now on the kitchen

radio, but I won't be in the kitchen,

I'll be walking a street in

New York or London, about

to enter a coffee shop where people

are reading or working on their

laptops. They'll look up and smile.

Next time I won't waste my heart

on anger; I won't care about

being right. I'll be willing to be

wrong about everything and to

concentrate on giving myself away.

Next time, I'll rush up to people I love,

look into their eyes, and kiss them, quick.

I'll give everyone a poem I didn't write,

one specially chosen for that person.

They'll hold it up and see a new

world. We'll sing the morning in,

and I will keep in touch with friends,

writing long letters when I wake from

a dream where they appear on the

Orient Express. "Meet me in Istanbul,"

I'll say, and they will.

The Weight of Yesterday by Eric Pankey

Mary

Megan

Like a fish trap woven from grasses,

It allows passage of the element

In which it is suspended.

Like the light at Lascaux,

It is transparent

And dissolves as salt does on the tongue.

A fragile filament of graphite

Or three columbine seeds,

Or a dime would tip the scales.

Rolled between your fingers,

It crumbles like a dried sage leaf

To fragrant dust wind disperses.

You wonder how such a small thing,

Removed as if a mote from your eye,

Could have caused such irritation.

Held in your palm, it is a smidgen,

An iota, a whit, nothing

A tear could not wash away.