by Dixie Wilson
I like the fall,
The mist and all.
I like the night owl’s
Lonely call–
And wailing sound
of wind around.
I like the gray
November day,
And bare, dead boughs
That coldly sway
Against my pane.
I like the rain.
I like to sit
And laugh at it–
And tend
My cozy fire a bit.
I like the fall–
The mist and all.–
You can find this poem in Favorite Poems Old and New.
by Carl Sandburg
I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o’-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.
You can find this poem in Poetry For Kids: Carl Sandburg.
by Freya Manfred
The owl cries at night,
and I imagine her wide gold eyes
and feathered ears tuned
to the trembling woods and waters,
seeing and hearing what
I will never see or hear:
a red fox with one bloody paw,
a hunch-backed rabbit running,
sand grains grating on the shore,
a brown leaf crackling
under a brown mouse foot.
With so much to learn,
I could stop writing forever,
and still live well.
You can find this poem in Swimming With a Hundred Year Old Turtle.
by Freya Manfred
My poems are written by a spirit on a stone,
and there are many tellers, many stories, and many stones,
in honor of our braided paths and solitary ways.
Now, at sunset, I’m called to where water merges with land and sky,
where an eagle drops from a tall pine, dips her beak into darkening waves,
rises with a flapping silver fish, and flies away.
I wish you work that weaves a spell, and love,
and breath–uncounted, irretrievable, sacred breath,
flying from its cage of bones–eagle falling, fish-rising, free.
You can find this poem in Swimming With a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle.
by Walter de la Mare
See this house, how dark it is
Beneath its vast-boughed trees!
Not one trembling leaflet cries
To that Watcher in the skies—
‘Remove, remove thy searching gaze,
Innocent of heaven’s ways,
Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright,
On secrets hidden from sight.’
‘Secrets,’ sighs the night-wind,
‘Vacancy is all I find;
Every keyhole I have made
Wails a summons, faint and sad,
No voice ever answers me,
Only vacancy.’
‘Once, once … ’ the cricket shrills,
And far and near the quiet fills
With its tiny voice, and then
Hush falls again.
Mute shadows creeping slow
Mark how the hours go.
Every stone is mouldering slow.
And the least winds that blow
Some minutest atom shake,
Some fretting ruin make
In roof and walls. How black it is
Beneath these thick boughed trees!
You can find this poem in The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare.
by John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
You can find this poem in The Complete Poems of John Keats.
by David Whyte
This is not
the age of information.
This is not
the age of information.
Forget the news,
and the radio,
and the blurred screen.
This is the time
of loaves
and fishes.
People are hungry,
and one good word is bread
for a thousand.
You can find this poem in The House of Belonging.
by Mary Oliver
This morning the goldenrod are all wearing
their golden shirts
fresh from heaven’s soft wash in the chill night.
So it must be a celebration.
And here comes the wind, so many swinging wings!
Has he been invited, or is he the intruder?
Invited, whisper the golden pebbles of the weeds,
as they begin to fall
over the ground. Well, you would think the little murmurs
of the broken blossoms would have said
otherwise, but no. So I sit down among them to
think about it while all around me the crumbling
goes on. The weeds let down their seedy faces
cheerfully, which is the part I like best, and certainly
it is as good as a book for learning from. You would think
they were just going for a small sleep. You would think
they couldn’t wait, it was going to be
that snug and even, as all their lives were, full of
excitation. You would think
it was a voyage just beginning, and no darkness anywhere,
but tinged with all necessary instruction, and light,
and all were shriven, as all the round world is,
and so it wasn’t anything but easy to fall, to whisper
Good Night.
You can find this poem in Why I Wake Early.
by Emily Dickinson
When night is almost done,
And sunrise grows so near
That we can touch the spaces,
It’s time to smooth the hair
And get the dimples ready,
And wonder we could care
For that old faded midnight
That frightened but an hour.
You can find this in Hope is the Thing With Feathers.
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.
Life of Kim 