Clam by Mary Oliver
"Each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its / place in the universe is not found out."
Slow Dance by the Ocean by Linda Gregg
"The world moves, my Lord, and I stay still, / yielding as it passes through."
The Conditional by Ada Limón
"Say we spend our last moments staring / at each other, hands knotted together"
Leaf by Seán Hewitt
"For woods are forms of grief / grown from the earth. For they creak / with the weight of it."
Black Lead in a Nancy Meyers Film by Rio Cortez
"Aging, at all. I want that. And to fall / perhaps most honestly in love / beside the ocean"
If Life Is As Short As Our Ancestors Insist It Is, Why Isn’t Everything I Want Already At My Feet by Hanif Abdurraqib
"I am a simple man. I want, mostly, / a year that will not kill me when it is over."
The Attic and Its Nails by Naomi Shihab Nye
"It’s hard up there. You dig in a box for whatever the moment requires: sweater, wreath, the other half of the walky-talky, and find twelve things you forgot about