Poetry – other animals

please ask me to
kill for you ask
me to imprint
each foot with the
ridges of my
best teeth ask me
to comb the clouds
into candy
for the joy of
toothless trash cans
throughout the land

my burning eyes how do I escape from
I and all this time in circles
not wanting to make punchlines or
origami and the balloon
losing air we could have put to some use

who knows if this design will agree to
finally fly but the caves in
the round curves of the vast rolling
hills of the summer clouds call so
sweetly to the lonely bird in my chest

Sonnet

skimmed emails we deleted too quickly
may have mentioned the forest of bright spears
and ships ready to launch, but once we saw the
reports on the quarterly report from
Ichthyosaur & Associates we
had no doubt what they were up to with those
color-shifting lobbyists and gift baskets
reeking of brine and though they wrote of missed
opportunities no one missed the flotsam
flecked with blood, tossed by ceaseless waves that could
break on our belovèd beans just learning
to climb towards those heavy clouds pierced by sun—

he stopped, mumbled something roses fingers
dawn and walked away from the empty chairs

The Carrier of Ladders
Poems by W. S. Merwin

DISCARD

Ferguson Library
Date Due

Jun – 3 1975

Jun 9 1976

Nov 16 ’76
Jan 24 1977
Aug 15 1977
Feb 21 ’78

Jan 11 1979

May 19 1979

Jun 13 1979
Nov 22 1980

May 6 1981
Jun 22 1982
Dec 4 1982

May 25 1983
May 28 1987
RENEWAL
Jun 17 1987

RENEWAL

Jul 7 – 1987

Jul 28 1987
RENEWAL
Aug 17 1987
Nov 2 1989
Jun 11 1990
RENEWAL
Jul 2 1990

RENEWAL
Jul 16 1990

RENEWAL

Jul 30 1990
Sep 7 1990
Oct 11 1990

Oct 31 1990

light blue dark blue sky peppered stars
the dog lingers sniffs a neighbor’s
pumpkin and music from somewhere
far or near I once loved the feel
of night on my body wanders
under what little light comes through
though I still haven’t found it

TV from
before the
crisis and
maybe knocked

down by the
storm a small
round fluff bird
cries past the

window and
the fat dog
awake now
with eyes wide

though my eyes blur in this light there is a
certain after-cataclysm path that
feels as though you were walking upstairs
but maybe I’m not explaining it right
it’s like now that sex is out of fashion
how do you explain movies from the 80s
but let me stop you right there before I
need to write a ticket though you are my friend

sometimes there’s nothing human you can do

the white sky mo(u)rning a single bird across
the courtyard bricks for a new pyramid

so where can you go how can you

think after they refuse to be
born it

won’t help
steer this weary ox from

the prized flowers won’t re
construct the squirrel’s bones

what thread dropped after
the cicada passed
or what mist started
to build in the part
of the story where
your eyes blur and your
feet grow clammy on
the earth of fresh graves