Sublime

Year’s End - Richard Wilbur

Now winter downs the dying of the year,

And night is all a settlement of snow;

From the soft street the rooms of houses show

A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,

Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin

And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake

The late leaves down, which frozen

So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.

- Ellen Bass, “Relax”

One by Mary Oliver The mosquito is so small it takes almost nothing to ruin it. Each leaf, the same. And the black ant, hurrying. So many lives, so many fortunes! Every morning, I walk softly and with forward glances down to the ponds and through the pinewoods. Mushrooms, even, have but a brief hour before the slug creeps to the feast, before the