by Eleanor Farjeon
The night will never stay,
The night will still go by,
Though with a million stars
You pin it to the sky;
Though you bind it with the blowing wind
And buckle it with the moon,
The night will slip away
Like a sorrow or a tune.
You can find this poem in Eleanor Farjeon’s Poems For Children.
by David White
When I wake under the moon,
I do not know who I have become unless
I move closer to you, obeying the give and take
Of the earth as it breathes the slender length
Of your body, so that in breathing with the tide that breathes
In you, and moving with you as you come and go,
And following you, half in light and half in dark,
I feel the first firm edge of my floating palm touch
And then trace the pale light of your shoulder
To the faint, moonlit shadow of your smooth cheek
And drawing my finger through the pearl water of your skin,
I sense the breath on your lips touch and then warm
The finest, furthest, most unknown edge of my sense of self,
So that I come to you under the moon as if I had
Swum under the deepest arch of the ocean,
To find you living where no one could possibly live,
And to feel you breathing, where no one could
Possibly breathe, and I touch your skin as I would
Touch a pale whispering spirit of the tides that my arms
Try to hold with the wrong kind of strength and my lips
Try to speak with the wrong kind of love and I follow
You through the ocean night listening for your breath
In my helpless calling to love you as I should, and I lie
Next to you in your sleep as I would next to the sea,
Overwhelmed by the rest that arrives in me and by the weight
That is taken from me and what, by morning,
Is left on the shore of my waking joy.
You can find this poem in the collection The Sea in You.
At night, when the wind is blowing
And the Chestnut’s new leaves are rustling
I think of the first time I climbed the hill
to this house and met you on the steps.
How the spirit of the place made room for me and
invited me to become part of its story.
I remember happy and conflicted days
of everything new and everything
breaking apart. Of wrenching grief and
the starry-eyed hope of starting over.
And I have started over with you.
Who were the first people to walk over
this ground and build their homes here?
To plant fields and grow food for themselves?
Did they feel the land welcome them too?
Did they walk down this road,
when it became a road, hand in hand
in the moonlight, whispering promises?
Did they kiss under the stars and imagine
a life where every day burned bright
like a summer afternoon because they had
found their hearts hidden in each other,
and their home in this place?
The land beneath my feet and the sky over my head
have moved on since that day,
unconcerned through the seasons
summer, fall, winter, spring.
How I have changed and how I have remained myself,
how we have grown together and have begun to live out
the truth about us–that we belong to one another,
that Fate put us in each other’s paths.
I think about this and other things,
at night, when the wind is blowing.
Poem by Kim Pollack/©2019 All Rights Reserved
by Rumi
Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.
So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.
This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.
Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!
They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.
Stop the words now
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.
You can find this poem and many more in The Essential Rumi.
by Robert Louis Stevenson
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside–
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown–
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!
You can find this poem in the collection Eloise Wilkin’s Poems to Read to the Very Young, illustrated by Josette Frank.
by Langston Hughes
In the morning the city
Spreads its wings
Making a song
In stone that sings.
In the evening the city
Goes to bed
Hanging lights
About its head.
You can find this poem on Favorite Poems: Old and New.
by Emily Dickinson
I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.
You can find this poem on Favorite Poems: Old and New.
by Jane Kenyon
The talkative guest has gone,
and we sit in the yard
saying nothing. The slender moon
comes over the peak of the barn.
The air is damp, and dense
with the scent of honeysuckle….
The last clever story has been told
and answered with laughter.
With my sleeping self I met
my obligations, but now I am aware
of the silence, and your affection,
and the delicate sadness of dusk.
You can find this poem in the collection Otherwise by Jane Kenyon.
by John O’Donohue
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
You can find this in To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue.
by J.R.R. Tolkien
I am off down the road
Where the fairy lanterns glowed
And the little pretty flitter-mice are flying:
A slender band of gray
It runs creepily away
And the hedges and the grasses are a-sighing.
The air is full of wings,
And of blunders beetle-things
That warn you with their whirring and their humming.
O! I hear the tiny horns
Of enchanted leprechauns
And the padded feet of many gnomes a-coming!
O! the lights! O! the gleams! O! the little tinkly sounds!
O! the rustle of their noiseless little robes!
O! the echo of their feet—of their happy little feet!
O! their swinging lamps in the little starlit globes.
I must follow in their train
Down the crooked fairy lane
Where the coney-rabbits long ago have gone,
And where silvery they sing
In a moving moonlit ring
All a-twinkle with the jewels they have on.
They are fading round the turn
Where the glow-worms palely burn
And the echo of their padding feet is dying!
O! it’s knocking at my heart—
Let me go! O! Let me start!
For the little magic hours are all a-flying.
O! the warmth! O! the hum! O! the colours in the dark!
O! the gauzy wings of golden honey-flies!
O! the music of their feet—of their dancing goblin feet!
O! the magic! O! the sorrow when it dies.
You can find this poem in Favorite Poems Old and New.
Life of Kim 