"The Visitor," by W.H. Davies

"Broadway," by Carl Sandburg

"Brown Penny," by William Butler Yeats

"The Maldive Shark," by Herman Melville

As the Indian Ocean has been in the news, with the Malaysian Airline plane missing, I thought of Melville's poem, the Maldives being situated in the Indian Ocean.

CIA Spies on U.S. Congress

I'm not sure why people are so upset about the CIA's allegedly spying on Congressional staffers. Citizens in general get spied on all the time, sans warrants. And the fact that the concentration camp at Guantanamo is still open is incalculably more egregious.

Besides, at least the CIA is spying on the enemy: Congress.

"The Road to Avrillé," by Edna St. Vincent Millay

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"Something Left Undone," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Bitter Thoughts on Receiving a Slice of Cordelia's Wedding Cake," by Robert Graves

"Island Fever"

"Mistakes"

"A White Blossom," by D.H. Lawrence

"Lucid Mansion"

Grace creates a spaciousness,

a spacious nest like a meadow

between cedar groves, or a placid

piazza—a place, that is, 

for consciousness to consider

its conscious nest, 

its fortunate fest of being. In

the howling storm of time,

grace manages to accrue

some space, in dark 

vacuity manages to

maintain a lucid mansion.

hans ostrom 1984/2014

"Winter Moon," by Langston Hughes