Sit back, grab a cup of tea and take a moment to enjoy some Poetry. I share a few more of my own and favorites by other poets. **Click on the titles to read the poems.**
What are your favorite poems? Which poets do you love? Share in the comments below.
(They Would Hate Me for Writing This) — a poem I wrote about my twin son and daughter when they were 16:
“They are 16, spread out on the couch:
her head resting on his hip,
his legs curled beneath her back,
in brother-sister unconsciousness.
Their faces are open, turned toward the TV…”
Sometimes Death Is a Foreign Country –a poem about the death of my husband’s birth mother:
“Sometimes death comes without pomp and circumstance, no large circle of support,
just a candle flame quietly extinguished, and only a few notice the world is darker now.
Left behind is a truck full of Things-Not-You, stuff you collected in life—
bought, received, saved, the bits of grass and string carried home in your beak to create a nest…”
Turning 50 — Me, a few years ago:
“I have been dreading this:
staring me in the face for months,
a ticking clock
tap-tap-tapping
like a finger scolding,
reminding me of all I haven’t done…”
Wishes for 11-Year-Old Me –– a tender-hearted look back at being 11, and the things I wish I’d been told:
“Weekends you visited relatives.
While the adults smoked, talked, played 500,
you grabbed the stack of women’s magazines
ubiquitous in homes of grandmas, aunts. You
were dazzled by shiny pages bright
with exclamations and color. Exquisite
models of femininity smiling, poised,
flawless, bodies curved and slim…”
Poems I Love, Written by Others:
Sex Ed by Betsy Sholl:
“Well-dressed, demure, jammed into those
politely arranged desks, it’s hard to be
serious, but we are. No one even parts lips
to acknowledge what used to drive us crazy
in the back seats of cars…”
A Blessing From my Sixteen Years’ Son by Mary Karr:
“I have this son who assembled inside me
during Hurricane Gloria. In a flash, he appeared,
in a tiny blaze. Outside, pines toppled…”
I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds:
“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip…”
St. Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell:
“The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness…”
I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours, we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay…”
Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot:
“What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo…”
The Journey by Mary Oliver:
“One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble…”
When Your Life Looks Back by Jane Hirshfield:
“When your life looks back–As it will, at itself, at you–what will it say?
Inch of colored ribbon cut from the spool.
Flame curl, blue-consuming the log it flares from.
Bay leaf. Oak leaf. Cricket. One among many.
Your life will carry you as it did always…”
Tired by Langston Hughes:
I am so tired of waiting,
Aren’t you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two –
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.
Good Bones by Maggie Smith
Ode to Dirt by Sharon Olds
Dear dirt, I am sorry I slighted you,
I thought that you were only the background f
or the leading characters—the plants
and animals and human animals.
It’s as if I had loved only the stars
and not the sky which gave them space…
Sonnet 146 by our good chap Shakespeare
Dear March – Come In by Emily Dickinson
How glad I am –
I hoped for you before –
Put down your Hat –
You must have walked –
How out of Breath you are – …
Mornings at Blackwater by Mary Oliver
For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.
And always it assuaged me …
Photo by Patrick Fore, courtesy of Unsplash.com
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