The Wind-tapped like a tired Man/A Pace Like That/Metaphor/Right Hand

The Wind-tapped like a tired Man

By Emily Dickinson

The Wind-- tapped like a tired Man-

And like a Host, 'Come in,'

I boldly answered-- entered then

My Residence within

A Rapid-- footless Guest--

To offer whom a Chair

Were as impossible as hand

A Sofa to the Air.

No Bone had He to bind Him-

His Speech was like the Push

Of numerous Humming Birds at once

From a superior Bush-

His Countenance-- a Billow-

His Fingers, if He pass,

Let go a music-- as of tunes

Blown tremulous in Glass-

He visited-- still flitting-

Then, like a timid Man,

Again He tapped--'t was flurriedly--

And I became alone-

A Pace Like That

by Yehuda Amichai

I'm looking at the lemon tree I planted.

A year ago. I need a different pace, a slower one,

To observe the growth of its branches, its leaves as they open.

I want a pace like that.

Not like reading a newspaper

But the way a child learns to read,

Or the way you quietly decipher the inscription

On an ancient tombstone.

And what a Torah scroll takes an entire year to do

as it rolls its way from Genesis to the death of Moses,

I do each day in haste

or in sleepless nights, rolling over from side to side.

The longer you live, the more people there are

who comment on your actions. Like a worker

in a manhole: at the opening above him

people stand around giving free advice

and yelling instructions,

but he's all alone down there in his depths.

Metaphor

By Eve Merriam

Morning is

a new sheet of paper

for you to write on.

Whatever you want to say,

all day,

until night

folds it up

and files it away.

The bright words and the dark words

are gone

until dawn

and a new day

to write on.

Right Hand

By Philip Fried

Grandfather carried his voice in the seamed

palm of his right hand, the one

that had ironed countless taciturn trousers.

What an eloquent hand, it broke into grins

and self-assured narration whenever

it opened--how could a hand carry nothing,

bear away nothing from its nation?

When it entered a room, even the corners

mumbled in Yiddish, the very dust

had sifted from consonants' guttural rubbing.

The poems this hand had proclaimed to shirts

as it moved back and forth like a Greek chorus

across the stage of the ironing board--

these poems had diffused in clouds of steam.

Grandpa himself had long been struck dumb

by the garrulity of this hand,

but sometimes he'd thrust it deep in his pocket

and, straightening up, display an uncanny

knack for spelling English words.