Porch Swing in September

Porch Swing in September
by Ted Kooser


The porch swing hangs fixed in a morning sun
that bleaches its gray slats, its flowered cushion
whose flowers have faded, like those of summer,
and a small brown spider has hung out her web
on a line between porch post and chain
so that no one may swing without breaking it.
She is saying it’s time that the swinging were done with,
time that the creaking and pinging and popping
that sang through the ceiling were past,
time now for the soft vibrations of moths,
the wasp tapping each board for an entrance,
the cool dewdrops to brush from her work
every morning, one world at a time.

The Trial of a Man

The Trial of a Man
By: Sylvia Plath


The ordinary milkman brought that dawn
Of destiny, delivered to the door
In square hermetic bottles, while the sun
Ruled decree of doomsday on the floor.

The morning paper clocked the headline hour
You drank your coffee lke original sin,
And at the jet-plane anger of God's roar
Got up to let the suave blue policeman in.

Impaled upon a stern angelic stare
You were condemned to serve the legal limit
And burn to death within your neon hell.

Now, disciplined in the strict ancestral chair,
You sit, solemn-eyed, about to vomit,
The future an electrode in your skull.

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A Noiseless Patient Spider
By: Walt Whitman
From: Leaves of Grass



A Noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.