My doodled dragonfly tree
by Jeffrey Harrison
It's a gift, this cloudless November morning
warm enough for you to walk without a jacket
along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing
of your feet through fallen leaves should be
enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you
when you catch yourself telling off your boss
for a decade of accumulated injustices,
all the things you've never said circling inside you.
It's the rising wind that pulls you out of it,
and you look up to see a cloud of leaves
swirling in sunlight, flickering against the blue
and rising above the treetops, as if the whole day
were sighing, Let it go, let it go,
for this moment at least, let it all go.
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Witch-Wife
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
She is neither pink nor pale,
and she never will be all mine;
she learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
and her mouth on a valentine.
She has more hair than she needs;
in the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.
She loves me all that she can,
and her ways to my ways resign;
but she was not made for any man,
and she never will be all mine.
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