Wisteria - by Philip Levine - The first purple wisteria I recall from boyhood hung on a wire outside the windows of the breakfast room next door at the home of Steve Pisaris. I loved his tall, skinny daughter, or so I thought, and I would wait beside the back... Read more →

Study of Two Pears - by Wallace Stevens - 1 Opusculum paedagogum.* The pears are not viols, Nudes or bottles. They resemble nothing else. 2 They are yellow forms Composed of curves Bulging toward the base. They are touched red. 3 They are not flat surfaces Having curved outlines They... Read more →

Tomatoes - by Stephen Dobyns - A woman travels to Brazil for plastic surgery and a face-lift. She is sixty and has the usual desire to stay pretty. Once she is healed, she takes her new face out on the streets of Rio. A young man with a gun wants... Read more →

Le Panneau - by Oscar Wilde - Under the rose-tree’s dancing shade There stands a little ivory girl, Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl With pale green nails of polished jade. The red leaves fall upon the mould, The white leaves flutter, one by one, Down to a blue... Read more →

My grandfather was a talented gardener and though I remember plenty of marigolds planted in his yard, I don't think he grew any roses. Still, he always had catalogs from nurseries and rose growers laying around. I have always been a bit of a reference material freak, and for me,... Read more →

...O come, then, quickly come, We are budding, we are blowing, And the wind which we perfume Sings a tune that’s worth thy knowing. Ralph Waldo Emerson "To Ellen at the South" Poetry was my first passion and has outlived many other of my obsessions. But in recent years it... Read more →