I have featured William Stafford’s poetry a number of times before. You can use the search bar if you want to read the other poems. I enjoy his down-to-earth style and frequent use of nature images. He has been compared to Robert Frost and I can see why that is true. Someone you trusted has treated you bad.Someone has used you to vent their ill temper.Did you expect anything different?Your work—better than some others'—has languished,neglected. Or a job you tried was too hard,and you failed. Maybe weather or bad luckspoiled what you did. That grudge, held against youfor years after you patched up, has flared,and you've lost a friend for…

Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio in1952. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1987 and served as the United States Poet Laureate from 1993-1995. Dove has served on the board for several writer’s organizations, written a weekly column for The Washington Post, and been the poetry editor for The New York Times Magazine. Her work “cannot be confined to a specific era or school in contemporary literature; her wide-ranging topics and the precise poetic language with which she captures complex emotions defy easy categorization.” Snow would be the easy way way out—that softeningsky like a sigh of reliefat finally being allowedto yield. No dice.We stack twigs for burningin glistening…