Belle Isle, 1949 (Philip Levine Poems)
We stripped in the first warm spring night and ran down into the Detroit River to baptize ourselves in the ...
Philip Levine Poems on Home (21 Poems)
The Rains (Philip Levine Poems)
The river rises and the rains keep coming. My Papa says it can't flood for the water can run away ...
Smoke (Philip Levine Poems)
Can you imagine the air filled with smoke? It was. The city was vanishing before noon or was it earlier ...
House Of Silence (Philip Levine Poems)
The winter sun, golden and tired, settles on the irregular army of bottles. Outside the trucks jostle toward the open ...
Any Night (Philip Levine Poems)
Look, the eucalyptus, the Atlas pine, the yellowing ash, all the trees are gone, and I was older than all ...
For The Country (Philip Levine Poems)
THE DREAM This has nothing to do with war or the end of the world. She dreams there are gray ...
A Woman Waking (Philip Levine Poems)
She wakens early remembering her father rising in the dark lighting the stove with a match scraped on the floor. ...
The Return (Philip Levine Poems)
All afternoon my father drove the country roads between Detroit and Lansing. What he was looking for I never learned, ...
They Feed They Lion (Philip Levine Poems)
Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread, Out of the acids ...
Where We Live Now (Philip Levine Poems)
1 We live here because the houses are clean, the lawns run right to the street and the streets run ...
Among Children (Philip Levine Poems)
I walk among the rows of bowed heads-- the children are sleeping through fourth grade so as to be ready ...
Wisteria (Philip Levine Poems)
The first purple wisteria I recall from boyhood hung on a wire outside the windows of the breakfast room next ...
An Ending (Philip Levine Poems)
Early March. The cold beach deserted. My kids home in a bare house, bundled up and listening to rock music ...
Magpiety (Philip Levine Poems)
You pull over to the shoulder of the two-lane road and sit for a moment wondering where you were going ...
The Simple Truth (Philip Levine Poems)
I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes, took them home, boiled them in their jackets ...
Told (Philip Levine Poems)
The air lay soffly on the green fur of the almond, it was April and I said, I begin again ...
Waking In March (Philip Levine Poems)
Last night, again, I dreamed my children were back at home, small boys huddled in their separate beds, and I ...
Holding On (Philip Levine Poems)
Green fingers holding the hillside, mustard whipping in the sea winds, one blood-bright poppy breathing in and out. The odor ...
The Present (Philip Levine Poems)
The day comes slowly in the railyard behind the ice factory. It broods on one cinder after another until each ...
The Mercy (Philip Levine Poems)
The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island Eighty-three years ago was named "The Mercy." She remembers trying to ...
The Dead (Philip Levine Poems)
A good man is seized by the police and spirited away. Months later someone brags that he shot him once ...