Mary Jo Salter Poems

My husband has a crush on Myrna Loy,
and likes to rent her movies, for a treat.
It makes some evenings harder to enjoy.
...

Wind whistling, as it does
in winter, and I think
nothing of it until
...

6:48 a.m., and leaden
little jokes about what heroes
we are for getting up at this hour.
Quiet. The surf and sandpipers running.
...

Because it hadn't seemed enough,
after a while, to catalogue
more Christmases, the three-layer cakes
ablaze with birthday candles, the blizzard
...

The music was already turning sad,
those fresh-faced voices singing in a round
the lie that time could set its needle back
...

From now on they always are, for years now
they always have been, but from now on you know
they are, they always will be,
...

They've perched for hours
on that window-ledge, scarcely
moving. Beak to beak,

a matched set, they differ
...

President Roosevelt, touring Ellis Island
in 1906, watched the people from steerage
line up for their six-second physical.
...