1. The Rain by Robert Creeley http://5thin.gs/HKBEk4
All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.
What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it
that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me
something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.
Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out
of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.
Robert Creeley, “The Rain” from Selected Poems of Robert Creeley. Copyright © 1991 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted with the permission of the University of California Press.
Source: Selected Poems of Robert Creeley (University of California Press, 1991)
2. The Clasp by Sharon Olds http://5thin.gs/HmSQsD
3. The Gift by Li-young Lee http://5thin.gs/HmSt13
4. What the Bones Know by Carolyn Kizer http://5thin.gs/HdGnNK
5. Duende by Tracey K. Smith http://5thin.gs/jVbB8F
