any idea?

season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

conspiring with him how to load and bless

with fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

to bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

and fill all fruits with ripeness to the core;

to swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

with a sweet kernel; to set budding more;

and still more, later flowers for the bees,

until they think warm days will never cease,

for summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

who hath not seen thee of amid thy store?

sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

and sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

steady thy laden head across a brook;

or by a cider-press, with patient look,

thou watchest the last oozing, hours by hours.

where are the songs of the springs? ay, where are they?

think not of them, thou hast thy music too—

while barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

and touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

then in wailful choir the small gnats mourn

among the river sallows, borne aloft

or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

and full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

the redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

and gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Juliet:

conceit, more rich in matter than in words,

brags of his substance, not of ornament:

they are but beggars that can count their worth;

but my true love is grown to such excess

I cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.

Friar Laurence:

These violent delights have violent ends,

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,

Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey

is loathsome in his own deliciousness

And in the taste confounds the appetite:

Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;

Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire,

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice,

is also great,

And would suffice.

by Robert Frost

two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

and sorry I could not travel both.

and be one traveler, long I stood

and looked down one as far as I could

to where it bent in the undergrowth;

then took the other, as just as fair,

and having perhaps the better claim,

because it was grassy and wanted wear;

though as for that the passing there

had worn them really about the same,

and both that morning equally lay

in leaves no step had trodden black.

oh, I kept the first for another day!

yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

somewhere ages and ages hence:

two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

and that has made all the difference.

by Christina Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away,
   Gone far away into the silent land;
   When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
   You tell me of our future that you planned:
   Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
   And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
   For if the darkness and corruption leave
   A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
   Than that you should remember and be sad.

Footprint on Your Heart

by Gary Lenhart

Someone will walk into your life,
Leave a footprint on your heart,
Turn it into a mudroom cluttered
With encrusted boots, children's mittens,
Scratchy scarves—
Where you linger to unwrap 
Or ready yourself for rough exits 
Into howling gales or onto 
Frozen car seats, expulsions
Into the great outdoors where touch
Is muffled, noses glisten,
And breaths stab,
So that when you meet someone
Who is leaving your life
You will be able to wave stiff
Icy mitts and look forward
To an evening in spring
When you can fold winter away
Until your next encounter with
A chill so numbing you strew
The heart's antechamber
With layers of rural garble.

by Ami Uyematsu

 —Is where space ends called death or infinity?
                         Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions


A mere eyelid’s distance between you and me.

It took us a long time to discover the number zero.

John’s brother is afraid to go outside.
He claims he knows
the meaning of zero.

I want to kiss you.

A mathematician once told me you can add infinity 
to infinity.

There is a zero vector, which starts and ends
at the same place, its force
and movement impossible
to record with
rays or maps or words.
It intersects yet runs parallel
with all others.

A young man I know 
wants me to prove
the zero vector exists.
I tell him I can't,
but nothing in my world
makes sense without it.