Kay Ryan

Connections

Connections lie in wait—
something that in
the ordinary line of offenses
makes offense more great.
They entrap, they solicit
under false pretenses,
they premeditate.
They tie one of
your shoelaces
to one of a stranger,
they tie strings to purses
and snatch as
you lean down, eager
for a little something gratis.


Volume XLVIII, Number 4
Winter 1994

Kay Ryan

Waste

Not even waste
is inviolate.
The day misspent
the love misplaced
has inside it
the seed of redemption.
Nothing is exempt
from resurrection.
It is tiresome
how the grass
re-ripens, greening
all along the punched
and mucked horizon
once the bison
have moved on,
leaning into hunger
and hard luck.

Volume LI, Number 2
Summer 1997

Kay Ryan

Losses

Most losses add something—
a new socket or silence,
a gap in a personal
archipelago of islands.

We have that difference
to visit—itself
a going-on of sorts.

But there are other losses
so far beyond report
that they leave holes
in holes only

like the ends of the
long and lonely lives
of castaways
thought dead but not.

Volume XLVIII, Number 3
Fall 1994

Kay Ryan

Full Measure

You will get your full measure.
But, as when asking fairies for favors,
there is a trick: it comes in a block.
And of course one block is not
like another. Some respond to water,
giving everything wet a little flavor.
Some succumb to heat, like butter.
A few give in to steady pressure.
Other shatter at a tap. But
some resist; nothing in nature softens up
their bulk, and no personal attack works.
People whose gift will not break
live by it all their lives. It shadows
every empty act they undertake.

Volume XLIX, Number 4
Winter 1995