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O beautiful material,
Strong and navy blue,
Proteus himself is not as flexible,
Nor as persevering as thee.
Despite the abuse to which I subject you during the year,
Thou remain true to me in times of cheer and fear.

O steadfast zippers
Who seal off my effects,
And especially my precious secrets, from the world,
Without thee, how could I possibly survive?
When the pressures of the world bear down on me,
I unload them unto thee and know thou shalt protect them within.

And thee too noble straps
Help me bear the crushing weight of Atlas' burden.
When I feel like I may surrender and collapse,
Thou comfort my aching shoulders,
And give me the strength to tread forth and face life.
Without thee, where would I find the might to go on?

O dear, dear backpack,
But what a dreadful encumbrance thou can be
When our troubles combine and intermingle
To fashion agonizing torture upon thy constitution and upon my bones.
Through the pain, though, the supple bliss and warmth of they cushioning,
Maintains the everlasting bond of our love.

Ultimately, our constant proximity results in a bursting,
Of thy tolerance and my own patience.
The inconceivable strain disrupts Libra's balance,
And wears think upon thy threads of lenience.
But fear not, for Astraea's needle can stitch strong words
And restore the union of dear, sincere companions.

So though the struggle for reciprocity may endure,
I will stray from thy benevolence, backpack, nevermore.

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O beautiful material, Strong and navy blue, Proteus himself is not as flexible, Nor as persevering as thee. Despite the abuse to which I subject you during the year, Thou remain true to me in times of cheer and fear. O steadfast zippers Who

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My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.
You see, I like the music loud, the speakers
throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether
Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so
each bass note is like a hand smacking the gut.
But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four
and likes the music decorous, pitched below
her own voice-that tenuous projection of self.
With music blasting, she feels she disappears,
is lost within the blare, which in fact I like.
But at four what she wants is self-location
and uses her voice as a porpoise uses
its sonar: to find herself in all this space.
If she had a sort of box with a peephole
and looked inside, what she'd like to see would be
herself standing there in her red pants, jacket,
yellow plastic lunch box: a proper subject
for serious study. But me, if I raised
the same box to my eye, I would wish to find
the ocean on one of those days when wind
and thick cloud make the water gray and restless
as if some creature brooded underneath,
a rocky coast with a road along the shore
where someone like me was walking and has gone.
Loud music does this, it wipes out the ego,
leaving turbulent water and winding road,
a landscape stripped of people and language-
how clear the air becomes, how sharp the colors.

"Loud Music" by Stephen Dobyns from Cemetery Nights. © Penguin, 1987.

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My stepdaughter and I circle round and round. You see, I like the music loud, the speakers throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so each bass note is like a hand smacking the gut. But my stepdaughter disagrees.

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Dear Basketball - Kobe Bryant [1978-2020]

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Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe | Poetry Foundation