James Wright - "A Blessing"

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness   
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.   
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.   
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me   
And nuzzled my left hand.   
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

In Italy, On a Boat, In a Cave, On a Boat, In Italy - Molly Johnsen

God carved the virgin from this
stone, apparently. My heart was
made in the dark of my mother; her
body surrounded the start of my own
—the way the earth holds the
horizon. Birth is the beginning of an
echo. In this divinity of dark, God’s
daughter won’t take shape for me—
like the woman trapped in my own
body cage. I yearn to give birth to
her. Anchored here, we bend our
knees to stay steady. We point up at
rock—at where the sky should be—
while our boat rocks in the wake of
another.

Austen Leah Rose - "Seventh Meditation on the Existence of God"

It’s the thing that happened that was never solved.
It’s the thing that happened that was solved
years later on an apple farm outside of town. It was somebody’s birthday,
the bus broke down, and an animal swept across the sky.
Then it hid inside a vowel sung by a woman in a bar at midnight.
That’s when it led me to its secret chamber.

Now it sighs; it’s becoming self-conscious.
Now it’s humming because it hasn’t got the words.
Now it’s telling me its middle name, which it’s never told anyone.
When it says pain, it means all pain.
When it says longing, it means every type of longing.
It’s stored in a golden vessel in the shape of a cat with sapphire eyes.

It can only be thought of from the inside.
At dusk, it disappears in an explosion of screeching blue light;
that’s why we’re all so sad,
that’s why we stare into empty cups.
You can still find it in a motel room in Wyoming while the TV plays softly,
and you look in the mirror and notice how you’ve changed.

Frans Hals - Two Paintings ("Regentesses of the Old Men's Alms House" and "Regents of the Old Men's Alms House") - c. 1664

“Hans, an old man of over eighty, was destitute. Most of his life he had been in debt. During the winter of 1664, the year he began painting these pictures, he obtained three loads of peat on public charity, otherwise he would have frozen to death. Those who now sat for him were the administrators of such public charity… In this confrontation of the Regents and Regentesses stare at Hals, a destitute old painter who has lost his reputation and lives off public charity; he examines them through the eyes of a pauper who must nevertheless try to be objective, i.e., must try to surmount the way he sees as a pauper. This is the drama of these paintings.”
- John Berger, from Ways of Seeing