Robert Schultz

From the stack outside the window’s frame,White smoke, mostly steam, breaks hard acrossA bright blue square of winter sky.It tumbles in gusts, and its knots untieThen vanish in air. They are strangely calming, these forms aboveThe skeletal trees, the drifted roofs,Above the houses where livesGo . . . . Continue Reading »

“Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.” —Pascal, Pensées Five degrees. Rough, shifting winds. Sunlight crashing Almost audibly, sky to snow-pack, snow-pack to sky. Eyes shrink hard to their smallest stop, but winter drills in. Brilliant splinters of ice in . . . . Continue Reading »

“There was a bole of an olive tree with long leaves growing Strongly in the courtyard, and it was thick, like a column. I laid down my chamber around this.” The Odyssey, Book XXIII Where but in bed does the world begin. Where man and woman know, like children. By touch and taste, by gentlest . . . . Continue Reading »

Now, in April, when lilacs shake in gusts of rain, the crown-like buds Waving thick and green on sceptre tips, I ask myself: What have we been. We two curled tight in winter’s dark? And when lilacs fully unfurl themselves. Their heart-shaped leaves. Their fragrant . . . . Continue Reading »