What to do with words
that have no object behind them
nothing to touch or taste
on which to rest the eyes
nothing to relate to human temperature

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness
Mary Oliver

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

'Tis no good pretending that this Midwinter is a merry one.

Stanzas

by John Keats

IN a drear-nighted December
Too happy happy tree
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Bob Dylan
Come gather around people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
And if your breath to you is worth saving
Read more about Lyricrature

Jabberwocky

BY LEWIS CARROLL

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.

Alexander Theroux
Darconville's Cat Read more about A Line for September

I can almost picture Thomas Hardy, working late one summer night, the window open to cool the heat from an August day when, perhaps, it had been a bit too hot to work. And I was delighted to find that a dumbledore is not only a wizard, but also a bumblebee.

An August Midnight

I Read more about An August Midnight

While quoting last week from a novel by Toni Morrison, I was reminded of this poem. An old favorite of mine. You must forgive - even, I think, accept - the occasional use of language we don't like to use today. Benet died in the year that I was born, not quite a month later actually. No wonder I feel a connection. Read more about American Names

I didn't know my friend Hall's father, Jim Lovell, as well as I might have liked to. I know that he liked birding - we went together, he and I and Hall and his wife, Hall's mother, she in a wheelchair. She counted off more birds than any one of us. The too few times I visited Pete and Hall on my own, Jim would take us all out to dinner. He was a nice man. He was a learned man. He was an English professor, in his working days, and we might have had some delightful conversations had time and chance allowed. But not too long ago, time ran out. Read more about For Jim Lovell

Robin Coste Lewis drew on a multitude of sources for her . These lines remind me vividly of captions in National Geographic of years past.

Catalogs

A Negro Slave Woman
Carrying a Cornucopia
Representing Africa