Leaping across a winter sky on fragments of poetry

" Now I know
I have been eating apple-pie for breakfast
In the New England
Of your sexuality."
-Orrick Johns (from "Olives")

"...But I lack calm, I lack rose
Though I do not lack extreme delicacy of rose petal
Who is it that I wish to astonish?"
- Kenneth Koch (from "Alive for an Instant")

"I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from your dream, from the grief
at the center."
-Margaret Atwood (from "Variation on the Word Sleep")

"Be undisturbed - you heard only half the story.
But be compassionate - do whatever you can do
and learn to swim if you live near the ocean.
Many have drowned even in tiny rivers."
- Ann Stanford (from "Watching The Breakup")

So, inspired, hunt down the full beauty of these poems and happy Leap Year.