Jane Kenyon Poems

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
...

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
...

1FROM THE NURSERY


When I was born, you waited
...

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.
...

I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.

Now there is no more catching
...

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . .
...

We lie back to back. Curtains
lift and fall,
like the chest of someone sleeping.
Wind moves the leaves of the box elder;
...

Like primitives we buried the cat
with his bowl. Bare-handed
we scraped sand and gravel
back into the hole.
...

I scrub the long floorboards
in the kitchen, repeating
the motions of other women
who have lived in this house.
...

The dog has cleaned his bowl
and his reward is a biscuit,
which I put in his mouth
like a priest offering the host.
...