Kay Ryan Poems

Nothing exists as a block
and cannot be parceled up.
So if nothing's ventured
it's not just talk;
...

To the dragon
any loss is total.
...

It is at the edges
that time
thins.
...

As though
the river were
...

Patience is wider
than one once envisioned,
...

The chickens are circling
and blotting out the day.
...

Say when rain
cannot make
you more wet
...

Everything contains some silence.
Noise gets its zest from the small
...

Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
she can ill afford the chances she must take
in rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
a packing-case places, and almost any slope
defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
she's often stuck up to the axle on her way
to something edible. With everything optimal,
she skirts the ditch which would convert
her shell into a serving dish. She lives
below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only levity is patience,
the sport of truly chastened things.
...

Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable—
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness.
...