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.