These poems by James Richardson left me weak with wonder and the intense love that only words weaved in the way that perfectly resonates with my particular soul can cause. LOVE.

All the Right Tools

That good slow tool the sun,
with a trumpeter’s strict breath,
swells hemispheres of fruits
to scarlet or dusk or amber
imperceptibly,
not breaking one.

That good slow tool the moon
pulls the quiet
wide-eyed face of the ocean
to its face,
not a drop through its long fingers
slipping down.

That good slow tool that turns
trees and lives to wreckage
brilliant and strange,
that train so smooth and slow
we hardly know we’re on
is Time, but is there one

slower still
that would reverse
these words and call
your breaths and all
your strayed thoughts home
to be you, standing again?
Late Aubade

So what do you think, Life, it seemed pretty good to me,
though quiet, I guess, and unspectacular.
It’s been so long, I don’t know any more how these things go.
I don’t know what it means that we’ve had this time together.

I get that the coffee, the sunlight on glassware, the Sunday paper
and our studious lightness, not hearing the phone, are iconic
of living regretless in the Now. A Cool that’s beyond me:
I’m having some trouble acting suitably poised and ironic.

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Tagged: All the Right Tools poem, contemporary poet, contemporary poetry, James Richardson, James Richardson poetry, Late Aubade, Late Aubade after Hardy, Late Aubade James Richardson, modern poetry, poetry, The Yale Review, Thomas Hardy