Daily Dose

From Essays After Eighty, by Donald Hall

SENSIBLE

"It is sensible of me to be aware that I will die one of these days. I will not pass away."

From Death (Hall died on June 23, 2018, at the age of 89 at his home in Wilmot.)

Daily Dose

From Essays After Eighty, by Donald Hall

MY FRIEND

"My friend Carole smokes cigarettes, the only friend who does.  When she visits we sit opposite each other, smoking and talking about death."

From No Smoking

Daily Dose

From Without, by Donald Hall

I WANT

"I want to sleep like the birds,
then wake to write to you again
without hope that you read me."

From  Midwinter Letter

Daily Dose

From The Old Life, by Donald Hall

IN

"In the bliss of routine
-- coffee, love, pond afternoons, poems --
we feel we will live
forever, intil we know we feel it."

From page 88, first edition.

Daily Dose

From Essays After Eighty, by Donald Hall

IT'S OKAY

"It's okay to be pleased when an audience loves you, or treats you as deathless, but you must not believe it."

From Thank You, Thank You

Daily Dose

From Principal Products of Portugal: Prose Pieces, by Donald Hall

YET

"Yet, it's true: When we read poems we often feel more emotion than we can reasonably account for."

From The Unsayable Said

A Caricature

Daily Dose

From Christmas at Eagle Pond: A Story, by Donald Hall

ANOTHER

"I picked up another package, slim but heavy."

Daily Dose

From White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946 - 2006, by Donald Hall

LET

"Let many bad poets praise the Grand Canyon, the Panama
Canal, the Statue of Liberty, Mount
Hood, the Napa Valley with its products of fermentation,
Sicily, Connecticut, and themselves."

from Let Many Bad Poets

Daily Dose

From The Four Seasons: Poems, edited by J. T. McClatchy

SNOW

"Snow is what fills
the oak, and what covers
the grass and the bare garden.
Snow is what reverses
sidewalk, house and lawn
into the substance of whiteness."

Donald Hall

From The Snow