Autumn
By Amy Lowell
All day I have watched the purple vine leaves
Fall into the water.
And now in the moonlight they still fall,
But each leaf is fringed with silver.
You can find this poem in The Collected Poetical Works of Amy Lowell.
Books
Evening Poetry, September 27
Elemental
by John O’ Donohue
Is the world the work
Of someone who tills the blue field,
Unearth its dark plenitude
For the tight seed to release its thought
Into the ferment of clay,
Searching to earth the light
And come to voice in a word of grain
That can sing free in the breeze,
Bathe in the yellow well of the sun,
Avoid the attack of the bird,
And endure the red cell of the oven
Until memory leavens in the gift of bread?
You can find this poem in Conamara Blues.
Evening Poetry, September 26
Thirst
by Mary Oliver
Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the
hour and bell; grant me, in your
mercy, a little more time. Love for the
earth and love for you are having such a
long conversation in my heart. Who
knows what will finally happen or
where I will be sent, yet already I have
given a great many things away, expect-
ing to be told to pack nothing, except the
prayers which, with this thirst, I am
slowly learning.
You can find this in Thirst.
Evening Poetry, September 25
Before The Beginning
by John O’ Donohue
Unknown to us, there are moments
When crevices we cannot see open
For time to come alive with beginning.
As in autumn a field of corn knows
When enough green has been inhaled
From the clay and under the skill
Of an artist breeze becomes gold in a day,
When the ocean still as a mirror
Of a sudden takes a sinister curve
To rise in a mountain of wave
That would swallow a village.
How to a flock of starlings
Scattered, at work on grass,
From somewhere, a signal comes
And suddenly as one, they describe
A geometric shape in the air.
When the audience becomes still
And the soprano lets the silence deepen,
In that slowed holding, the whole aria
Hovers nearer, then alights
On the wings of breath
Poised to soar into song.
These inklings were first prescribed
The morning we met in Westport
And I was left with such sweet time
Wondering if between us something
Was deciding to begin or not.
You can find this poem in Conamara Blues.
Evening Poetry, September 24
Autumn
By Alice Cary
Shorter and shorter now the twilight clips
The days, as though the sunset gates they crowd,
And Summer from her golden collar slips
And strays through stubble-fields, and moans aloud,
Save when by fits the warmer air deceives,
And, stealing hopeful to some sheltered bower,
She lies on pillows of the yellow leaves,
And tries the old tunes over for an hour.
The wind, whose tender whisper in the May
Set all the young blooms listening through th’ grove,
Sits rustling in the faded boughs to-day
And makes his cold and unsuccessful love.
The rose has taken off her tire of red—
The mullein-stalk its yellow stars have lost,
And the proud meadow-pink hangs down her head
Against earth’s chilly bosom, witched with frost.
The robin, that was busy all the June,
Before the sun had kissed the topmost bough,
Catching our hearts up in his golden tune,
Has given place to the brown cricket now.
The very cock crows lonesomely at morn—
Each flag and fern the shrinking stream divides—
Uneasy cattle low, and lambs forlorn
Creep to their strawy sheds with nettled sides.
Shut up the door: who loves me must not look
Upon the withered world, but haste to bring
His lighted candle, and his story-book,
And live with me the poetry of Spring.
You can find this poem in American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century.
Evening Poetry, September 23
The Fist
by Mary Oliver
There are days
when the sun goes down
like a fist,
though of course
if you see anything
in the heavens
in this way
you had better get
your eyes checked
or, better still,
your diminished spirit.
The heavens
have no fist,
or wouldn’t they have been
shaking it
for a thousand years now,
and even
longer than that,
at the dull, brutish
ways of mankind–
heaven’s own
creation?
Instead: such patience!
Such willingness
to let us continue!
To hear,
little by little,
the voices–
only, so far, in
pockets of the world–
suggesting
the possibilities
of peace?
Keep looking.
Behold, how the fist opens
with invitation.
You can find this poem in Thirst.
Evening Poetry, September 22
I, 62
by Rainer Maria Rilke
(from The Book of a Monastic Life)
Only as a child am I awake
and able to trust
that after every fear and every night
I will behold you again.
However often I get lost,
however far my thinking strays,
I know you will be here, right here,
time trembling around you.
To me it is as if I were at once
infant, boy, man, and more.
I feel that only as it circles
is abundance found.
I thank you, deep power
that works me ever more lightly
in ways I can’t make out.
The day’s labor grows simple now,
and like a holy face
held in my hands.
You can find this poem in Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.
Evening Poetry, September 21
Fluent
by John O’ Donohue
I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.
You can find this poem in Conamara Blues.
Evening Poetry, September 20
Three Songs at the End of Summer
By Jane Kenyon
A second crop of hay lies cut
and turned. Five gleaming crows
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,
and like midwives and undertakers
possess a weird authority.
Crickets leap from the stubble,
parting before me like the Red Sea.
The garden sprawls and spoils.
Across the lake the campers have learned
to water ski. They have, or they haven’t.
Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone
suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”
Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod
brighten the margins of the woods.
Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.
*
The cicada’s dry monotony breaks
over me. The days are bright
and free, bright and free.
Then why did I cry today
for an hour, with my whole
body, the way babies cry?
*
A white, indifferent morning sky,
and a crow, hectoring from its nest
high in the hemlock, a nest as big
as a laundry basket …
In my childhood
I stood under a dripping oak,
while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,
waiting for the school bus
with a dread that took my breath away.
The damp dirt road gave off
this same complex organic scent.
I had the new books—words, numbers,
and operations with numbers I did not
comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled
by use, in a blue canvas satchel
with red leather straps.
Spruce, inadequate, and alien
I stood at the side of the road.
It was the only life I had.
You can find this in Collected Poems.
Evening Poetry, September 19
September Midnight
By Sara Teasdale
Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.
The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,
Tired with summer.
Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heavy.
Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,
While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,
Lest they forget them.
You can find this poem in The Collected Poems of Sara Teasdale.
Life of Kim 