Unit 3: Part 2 Vocabulary

What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.

A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
luminous pink petals that have
never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.

Past fluffs of sandy
Minnow feed!

With a swerve and a twist,
A flip of the flipper,
A flick of the wrist!

Before you can utter
Words like “Dill pickle”
Or “Apple butter,”
Back up he swims

The fragrant blossoms remain.

Life is but a toy that swings on a bright gold chain
Ticking for a little while
To amuse a fascinated infant

The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Back through groves
Back through garlands
Back by rivers
Back below mountains

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made

Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel
Gluppy glumps of cold oat meal, pizza crust and withered greens
And soggy beans and tangerines and crust of black burned buttered toast

Curdled milk and crusts of pie, moldy melons, dried-up mustard, eggshells mixed with lemon custard

The rusty spigot
sputters,
utters
a splutter

spatters a smattering of drops

The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me

And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—
Do you think, at your age, it is right?

And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door

I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.