The body and the soul know how to play
In that dark world where gods have lost their way.

(Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. The Partner (l. 47-48). . . Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company.)

A little quaker, the whole body of him trembling,
His absurd whiskers sticking out like a cartoon-mouse,
His feet like small leaves,
Little lizard-feet,
Whitish and spread wide when he tried to struggle away,

(Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. The Meadow Mouse (l. 6-10). . . Naked Poetry; Recent American Poetry in Open Forms. Stephen Berg and Robert Mezey, eds. (1969) The Bobbs-Merrill Company.)

Do I imagine he no longer trembles
When I come close to him?
He seems no longer to tremble.

(Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. The Meadow Mouse (l. 18-20). . . Naked Poetry; Recent American Poetry in Open Forms. Stephen Berg and Robert Mezey, eds. (1969) The Bobbs-Merrill Company.)

I'm cold. I'm cold all over. Rub me in father and mother.
Fear was my father, Father Fear.
His look drained the stones.

(Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. The Lost Son (l. 74-76). . . Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry, The. Helen Vendler, ed. (1985) The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.)

A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.

(Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. The Lost Son (l. 159-163). . . Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry, The. Helen Vendler, ed. (1985) The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.)

The living all assemble! What's the cue??
Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!

(Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. The Partner (l. 41-42). . . Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company.)

Water's my will, and my way,
And the spirit runs, intermittently,
In and out of the small waves,

(Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. Meditation at Oyster River (l. 63-65). . . Modern American Poetry. Louis Untermeyer, ed. (8th rev. ed., 1962) Harcourt, Brace and Company.)

I think of the nestling fallen into the deep grass,
The turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway,
The paralytic stunned in the tub, and the water rising,?
All things innocent, hapless, forsaken.

(Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. The Meadow Mouse (l. 27-30). . . Naked Poetry; Recent American Poetry in Open Forms. Stephen Berg and Robert Mezey, eds. (1969) The Bobbs-Merrill Company.)

bacterial creepers
Wriggling through wounds
Like elvers in ponds,
Their wan mouths kissing the warm sutures,
Cleaning and caressing,
Creeping and healing.

(Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. The Minimal (l. 6-11). . . Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company.)

And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,

(Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), U.S. poet. Dolor (l. 9-11). . . Oxford Book of Short Poems, The. P. J. Kavanagh and James Michie, eds. Oxford University Press.)