last lines

Sometimes I love
an opening line,
flashing brilliant,
glorious annunciation,

but more often
it is the last line,
final exhale of words,
that grabs me by the throat

choking tears
from my surprised eyes,
like lights
coming on at the close of day, 

illuminating the bridge
to sleep, and to dreams
that are never quite forgotten
when I wake up.

Liz McFadzean

Here are some of the first and last lines from poetry that I’ve enjoyed lately:

First lines: 

“He is still being pierced by every nail we hammer home.”  Luci Shaw

“Time will not be ours forever, He, at length, our good will sever.”  Ben Jonson

“God goes, belonging to every riven thing he’s made sing his being simply by being the thing it is.”  Christian Wiman

“When I think of death it is a bright enough city, and every year more faces there are familiar.”  Mary Oliver

“Glory be to God for dappled things.”  Gerard Manley Hopkins

Last lines: 

“The dial cannot speak without the sun”  Calder Campbell

“If they ask you: “What is the sign of your Father in you?’  you say to them:  ‘It is a movement and a rest.’”  Annie Dillard

“We hope, we trust; death’s barbed nail on our nape still surprises us.” Anya Krugovoy Silver

“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.”  Maya Angelou

“I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”  Mary Oliver

“The green question of our lives alight and unfolding before us.”  Tania Runyan

And my favorite first AND last line: 

“When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.”  James Whitcomb Riley
( I am a Hoosier and have a soft spot for our Hoosier poet laureate.)