Kay Ryan: "New Rooms"

The mind must
set itself up
wherever it goes
and it would be
most convenient
to impose its
old rooms—just
tack them up
like an interior
tent. Oh but
the new holes
aren’t where
the windows
went.






"New Rooms" by Kay Ryan. Text as published in Poetry (July/August 2012). 

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.

Kay Ryan: "Why We Must Struggle"

If we have not struggled
as hard as we can
at our strongest
how will we sense
the shape of our losses
or know what sustains
us longest or name
what change costs us,
saying how strange
it is that one sector
of the self can step in
for another in trouble,
how loss activates
a latent double how
we can feed
as upon nectar,
upon need?






 
"Why We Must Struggle" by Kay Ryan. Text as published in Say Uncle: Poems (Grove Press, 2000).

Art credit: "Village child is climbing on the tree," photograph taken in west India on March 2, 2007, by ommishra.

Kay Ryan: "Stardust"

Stardust is
the hardest thing
to hold out for.
You must
make of yourself
a perfect plane—
something still
upon which
something settles—
something like
sugar grains on
something like
metal, but with
none of the chill.
It’s hard to explain.

"Stardust" by Kay Ryan, from The Niagara River. © Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2005.

Photography credit: From a work in progress entitled "Stardust," by graphic designer Rosa Hernández (originally color).