Some verses that make me wonder...

First of the Last Chances

I stand back as the Skipton train advances,
having to choose too fast

between the scorn and sympathetic glances
of my supporting cast

all of whom think boarding this train enhances
my odds. I wave it past

If I don't take the first of the last chances
I will not fear the last


By Sophie Hannah


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Early in the Morning

While the long grain is softening
in the water, gurgling
over a low stove flame, before
the salted Winter Vegetable is sliced
for breakfast, before the birds,
my mother glides an ivory comb
through her hair, heavy
and black as calligrapher's ink.

She sits at the foot of the bed.
My father watches, listens for
the music of comb
against hair.

My mother combs,
pulls her hair back
tight, rolls it
around two fingers, pins it
in a bun to the back of her head.
For half a hundred years she has done this.
My father likes to see it like this.
He says it is kempt.

But I know
it is because of the way
my mother's hair falls
when he pulls the pins out.
Easily, like the curtains
when they untie them in the evening.


By Li-Young Lee



------

Chasing shadows

My love was made of glass;
But I am blackened coal:
Stained and hardened by time,
Opaque against her translucence

She found my shadow,
Staring, shivering.
The sun sought her out;
She gently refracted and gave me light;

Slowly she took my darkness, and I her light;
Now I hold her in my bloodied hands:
Shattered pieces that bring life,
Jagged edges that leave me scarred.

I bleed still, from old wounds she bound;
Tiptoe on bridges over salt tear seas of fears
Is it enough to love ‘we’
When it’s too much to love me?


By J R Keane

--------

Tie your heart at night to mine, love

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.

Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,

So that our dream might reply
to the sky’s questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow.


By Pablo Neruda