Poems by Theodore Roethke
My Papa's Waltz
... With a palm caked hard by dirt, ...
Root Cellar
... Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark, ...
The Waking
... And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow ...
Elegy For Jane
... (My student, thrown by a horse)I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils ...
I Knew A Woman
... When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them ...
The Survivor
... The way of killing men and beasts is the same ...
In A Dark Time
... Which I is I? A fallen man, I climb out of my fear ...
Cuttings
... I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, ...
Night Journey
... Wheels shake the roadbed stone, ...
The Storm
... Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness ...
Dolor
... Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium, ...
Journey Into The Interior
... Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley ...
Snake
... It quickened and was goneI felt my slow blood warm ...
The Far Field
... How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning, ...
The Geranium
... I said nothing.But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week, ...
