Garrison Keillor

If you have seen the snow under the lamppost piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table or somewhere slowly falling into the brook to be swallowed by water, then you have seen beauty and know it for its transience. And if you have gone out in the snow for only the... Read more »

But I, too, want to be a poet to erase from my days confusion & poverty fiction & a sharp tongue To sing again with the tones of adolescence demanding vengeance against my enemies, with words clear & austere To end this tumultuous quest for reasonable solutions to situations mysterious & sore To have the... Read more »

I never thought we’d end up Living this far north, love. Cold blue heaven over our heads, Quarter moon like chalk on a slate. This week it’s the art of subtraction And further erasure that we study. O the many blanks to ponder Before the night overtakes us once more On this lonely stretch of... Read more »

She rises up above the strapless, her dewy flesh like a soul half out of a body. It makes me remember her one week old, soft, elegant, startled, alone. She stands still, as if, if she moved, her body might pour up out of the bodice, she keeps her steady gaze raised when she walks,... Read more »

They have photographed the brain and here is the picture, it is full of branches as I always suspected, each time you arrive the electricity of seeing you is a huge tree lumbering through my skull, the roots waving. It is an earth, its fibres wrap things buried, your forgotten words are graved in my... Read more »

How kind people are! How few in the crowd truly hope the tightrope will break. Rare’s the man who’ll shoot the Pope or throw his shoe at a liar, though joining in—that’s natural. An audience of St. Paul’s sparrows is easily bored, easily frightened. One blasphemy and off they fly. Even a polite dog will... Read more »

My father chops with his axe and the leaves fall off the trees. It’s nineteen forty-three. He’s splitting wood for the winter. His gun leans behind the door, beside his goose-greased workboots. Smoke comes out of the metal chimney. At night I sleep in a bunk bed. The waves stroke the lake. In the mornings... Read more »

A friend sends me a picture of herself from the 70s—bell bottoms, platform shoes a patterned button down shirt, hair puffed up from a perm. I can see the outline of the person she is now and she reminds me of myself in the 70s— married for eight years to a man I knew I... Read more »

They float, these white trees— a few petals, fallen to the street, not stars fading, not snow. The trees have blossomed in a freezing east wind. None, I think, has any regrets or choice. If the night frost comes too thick, too fast, they’ll give what they have to, as if it were nothing— these... Read more »

Even in this sharp weather there are lovers everywhere holding onto each other, hands in one another’s pockets for warmth, for the sense of I’m yours, the tender claim it keeps making—one couple stopping in the chill to stand there, faces pressed together, arms around jacketed shoulders so I can see bare hands grapple with... Read more »

From the porch at dusk I watched a kingfisher wild in flight he could only have made for joy. He came down the river, splashing against the water’s dimming face like a skipped rock, passing on down out of sight. And still I could hear the splashes farther and farther away as it grew darker.... Read more »

I have been spared another day to come into this night as though there is a mercy in things mindful of me. Love, cast all thought aside. I cast aside all thought. Our bodies enter their brief precedence, surrounded by their sleep. Through you I rise, and you through me, into the joy we make,... Read more »

That I did always love I bring thee Proof That till I loved I never lived – Enough – That I shall love alway – I argue thee That love is life – And life hath Immortality – This – dost thou doubt – Sweet – Then have I Nothing to show But Calvary –

For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959 and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959 Gone, I say and walk from church, refusing the stiff procession to the grave, letting the dead ride alone in the hearse. It is June. I am tired of being brave. We drive to the Cape. I cultivate myself where the sun gutters from the sky, where the sea swings in like an iron gate and we touch. In another country people die. My darling, the wind falls in like stones from the whitehearted water and when we touch we enter touch entirely. No one’s alone. Men kill for this, or for as much. And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in their stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

my daughter says. Unless the car could float. Unless by car you mean boat. Unless the ocean turned to ice and promised not to crack. Unless Greenland floated over here, having lifted its anchor. Unless we could row our country there. Our whole continent would have to come along, wouldn’t it? Unless we cut ourselves free. What kind of saw could we use for that? What kind of oars could deliver one country to another? She asks, Why is Greenland called Greenland if it’s not green? Why is Iceland called Iceland if it’s greener than Greenland? Unless it’s a trick, a lie: the name Greenland is an ad for Greenland. Who would go promised nothing but ice? Who would cut her home to pieces and row away for that?