by Mary Oliver
Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
You can find this poem in Why I Wake Early.
From The Book of a Monastic Life
by Rainer Maria Rilke
You darkness, of whom I am born–
I love you more than the flame
that limits the world
to the circle it illumines
and excludes all the rest.
But the dark embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me.
people, nations–just as they are.
It lets me imagine
a great presence stirring beside me.
I believe in the night.
You can find this poem in Rilke’s Book of Hours.
by Mary Oliver
You can
die for it–
an idea,
or the world. People
have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound
to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.
You can find this poem in Dream Work.
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.
Life of Kim 