Spring Night
Sara Teasdale 

The park is filled with night and fog,
   The veils are drawn about the world,
The drowsy lights along the paths
   Are dim and pearled.

Gold and gleaming the empty streets,
   Gold and gleaming the misty lake,
The mirrored lights light sunken swords,
   Glimmer and shake.

Oh, is it not enough to be 
Here with this beauty over me?
My throat should ache with praise, and I
should kneel in joy beneath the sky.
Oh, beauty, are you not enough?

Why am I crying after love
With youth, a singing voice and eyes
To take earth's wonder with surprise?
Why have I put off my pride,
Why am I unsatisfied,
I for whom the pensive night
Binds her cloudy hair with light,
I for whom all beauty burns
Like incense in a million urns?
Oh, beauty, are you not enough?
Why am I crying after love?

Sara Teasdale, born on August 8, 1884, in St. Louis, is the author 
of several poetry collections, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and 
the Poetry Society of America's Prize. She died on January 29, 1933.   


    

Gray Morning Light

the gray light 
of the morning
let it 
touch you
with a healing hand

© Byung A. Fallgren

What Insomnia Conjures

Ongoing sleep disorders
pluck the memories;
dilutes judgments.
the email from the publisher smashes my head:
“Although your book is written deftly and engagingly,
we can’t accept your book because
it has already been published elsewhere.”

Alas, I’ve forgotten about the poetry collection that
I had sent to the publisher six months before,
and self-published it at Amazon.

“If you have a manuscript that has not yet been published,
I want to see it,” she says.
O, yes, I will. I hurry to pick up poems from the old pile;
it takes time; editing; proofreading, etc.

Try to forget the unlucky collection; despite its beauty,
it is destined to be buried in a dump, unless…
I’ll pick it up, in my bosom, give it a warm bath, and
dress it in wonderful words before sending it to
a contest judge? Or, else.

©Byung A. Fallgren

In Reading & Writing at 3 AM

Hearing him babble in my 
half-asleep: "Out of pay the bill."
What does it mean?
The face of the young man appears
in my head: the young plumber with a smiley face.
Of course, we'll pay when he sends the bill.
What does it have to do with you? 

Are you implying that he is you? you
the usual demon-lazy ghost?
You are using the hard-working man to disguise you.
Not too bad. If that is your wish, wish means:
you wish you were him, not a demon-lazy ghost.
To encourage you to morph, even a bit of fragrance,
I will give you some, not much.

I must add: I cannot afford your demand:
I am frugal to the bone and soul. 

©Byung A. Fallgren