by Emily Dickinson
The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry’s cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I’ll put a trinket on.
You can find this poem in Favorite Poems Old and New.
By Li T’ai-po
In the clear green water–the shimmering moon.
In the moonlight–white herons flying.
A young man hears a girl plucking water-chestnuts;
They paddle home together through the night, singing.
You can find this poem in Amy Lowell: Selected Poems.
by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
You can find this poem in The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013.
Happy National Poetry Day, readers! I know it’s only a UK thing, but since the US doesn’t have one yet (what’s up with that?), I’m celebrating anyway.
by Jane Kenyon
I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years….
I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper….
When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me….
I am food on the prisoner’s plate….
I am water rushing to the well-head,
filling the pitcher until it spills….
I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden….
I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge….
I am the heart contracted by joy…
the longest hair, white
before the rest….
I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow….
I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit….
I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name.
You can find this poem in The Boat of Quiet Hours.
by Amy Lowell
Hold your soul open for my welcoming.
Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me
With its clear and rippled coolness,
That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,
Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.
Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me,
That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire,
The life and joy of tongues of flame,
And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune,
I may rouse the blear-eyed world,
And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten.
You can find this poem in Amy Lowell: Selected Poems.
by Jane Kenyon
A hot dry day in early fall…
The men have cut the vines
from the shutters, and scraped
the clapboards clean, and now
their heads appear all day
in all the windows…
their arms or shirtless torsos,
or a rainbow-speckled rag
swinging from a belt.
They work in earnest–
these are the last warm days.
Flies bump and buzz
between the screens and panes,
torpid from last night’s frost:
the brittle months advance…
ruts frozen in the icy drive,
and the deeply black and soundless
nights. But now the painters
lean out from their ladders, squint
against the light, and lay on
the thick white paint.
From the lawn their radio predicts rain,
then cold Canadian air….
One of them works way up
on the dormer peak,
where a few wasps levitate
near the vestige of a nest.
You can find this poem in The Boat of Quiet Hours by Jane Kenyon.
A hot dry day in early fall….
By Freya Manfred
On a hill overlooking the Rock River
my father’s pear tree shimmers,
in perfect peace,
covered with hundreds of ripe pears
with pert tops, plump bottoms,
and long curved leaves.
Until the green-haloed tree
rose up and sang hello,
I had forgotten. . .
He planted it twelve years ago,
when he was seventy-three,
so that in September
he could stroll down
with the sound of the crickets
rising and falling around him,
and stand, naked to the waist,
slightly bent, sucking juice
from a ripe pear.
You can find this poem in Swimming With a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle.
By Emily Bronte
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.
You can find this in The Complete Poems of Emily Bronte.
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.
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.
Life of Kim 