Poems that I love

by Robert Frost Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it And spills the upper boulder in the sun, And make gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there, I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!" We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side. It co

by Rebecca del Rio You are hanging from a branch by your teeth. No way to save yourself or others who hang, too. Arms that cannot reach any branch, legs stretch but cannot find the smooth safe trunk. All around, your loved ones, friends, strangers hang-- teeth clamp bony twigs that suspend necessary hopes and plans. It is hopeless. No rescue will arrive. So you relax, taste the clean, unfamiliar tang of sap, feel the forgiving wind against your waving arms, arms that swim through emptiness. Without hope, life is focused, fluid, a ledge of fragile earth suspended over the ocean of unknowing, the end of the branch. Life is the glorious moment before the fall when all plans are abandoned, the love you give as you hang, loving those who hang with you.

by Mary Oliver Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Listen to Ms. Oliver read her own poem. If you want to read more of Mary Oliver’s poems, here are some that I like. Copyri

by Robert Frost Although this was one of the first poems I learned by heart, when I was a teenager Frost's poems seemed too sentimental for my austere soul. Now I find myself turning to his elegant New England verses more and more. Is that a sign of growing older or some inner thawing? When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust-- Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to brea

by Robert Frost Frost tried to read a poem he wrote for Kennedy's Inauguration . When the sun and wind stopped him, he recited "The Gift Outright" from memory. Three cheers f or the wind and the sun! The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England's, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become. To read this poem in Frost's own hand... Please click here to g

by Robert Frost [sometimes you have to hear a poem.] Out of the mud two strangers came And caught me splitting wood in the yard, And one of them put me off my aim By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!" I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind And let the other go on a way. I knew pretty well what he had in mind: He wanted to take my job for pay. Good blocks of oak it was I split, As large around as the chopping block; And every piece I squarely hit Fell splinterless as a cloven rock. The blows that a life of self-control Spares to strike for the common good, That day, giving a loose my soul, I spent on the unimportant wood. The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You're one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you're two months back in the middle of March. A bl

by Robert Frost I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain — and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night. Stieglitz: ‘Reflections—Night’, New York, 1896 (in Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies, 1897) Please click here to go to a page I created for more of Frost’s poems.

by Alberto Caeiro Fernando António Nogueira Pêssoa (1888 - 1935) The frightful reality of things Is my everyday discovery. Each thing is what it is. How can I explain to anyone how much I rejoice over this, and find it enough? To be whole, it is enough to exist. I have written quite a number of poems And may write many more, of course. Each poem of mine explains it, Though all my poems are different, Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it. Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone, I don't begin thinking whether it feels. I don't force myself to call it my sister, But I enjoy it because of its being a stone, I enjoy it because it feels nothing, I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me. At times I also hear the wind blow by And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes it worth having been born. I don't know what others will think who read this; But I find it must be go

by Stephen Levine for little Whitney of 5 weeks God does not answer prayer. It is a sacrilege to think so. An insult to the god-drenched hearts of all who pray through the night and in the morning are nonetheless handed a dead child. The churches in Salem used to burn heretics to increase attendance. Now those who feel their prayer didn't reach quite far enough, that they were not pure enough, are victims of a merciless atheism that says all good fortune comes from God though the brutal often prosper and it is not uncommon to torture the pure of heart. We pray for the best, forgetting the unpredictable unfolding that must occur for us to learn prayer for others works better than for ourselves. Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane and is refused. Ten thousand, ten million prayers rise in Latin, Arabic, Hindi, and Hebrew yet their husbands and wives, children and sisters, fathers and brothers do not survive well if at all though in their chest bea

by Walt Whitman Come, said my Soul, Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,) That should I after death invisibly return, Or, long, long hence, in other spheres, There to some group of mates the chants resuming, (Tallying Earth's soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,) Ever with pleas'd smile I may keep on, Ever and ever yet the verses owning---as, first, I hear and now, Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name, photo by Barbara Mensch Walt Whitman said that the Brooklyn Bridge was “the best, most effective medicine my soul has yet partaken”.

Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I Pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles by Billy Collins It seems these poets have nothing up their ample sleeves they turn over so many cards so early, telling us before the first line whether it is wet or dry, night or day, the season the man is standing in, even how much he has had to drink. Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow. Maybe if is snowing on a town with a beautiful name. “Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune on a Cloudy Afternoon” is one of Bun Tung Po’s. “Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea” is another one, or just “On a Boat, Awake at Night.” And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with “In a Boat on a Summer Evening I Hear the Cry of a Waterbird. It Was Very Sad and Seemed to be Saying My Woman is Cruel—Moved, I Wrote This Poem.” There is no iron turnstile to push against here as with the headings like ‘Vortex on a

by Christine Walker for Larry Robinson The poem flew at me Little darts, pricking my skin piercing my belly, my arms, my eyes Flew at me on swift, black wings trailing a smoky blur past my ears Flew all around me furious, then curiously quiet No words sounded like words read from a page They had been lifted the night before, years before Flipped up, one by one letter by letter let fall on the tongue and dissolved like melting snowflakes trickling down through the heart, into the belly to the toes, the fingertips Pulled back through the blood through the brain down into the back of the throat into the cheeks and spit out Little darts of words big wings of words charging the air all around me There were no words, only language Tongue moved by muscle and blood The poem entered me and exited leaving little points of pain and light soft feathery strokes on my skin and hair Leaving me empty of words

by Ken Ireland She might have even been as Spartan as Father Ignatius if her taste had not run to plastered walls, a few modest chintz prints and poignant photos of helpless children. You could have fed a child in Haiti for that price, Sister. Alok asked me about priest-craft— appeasing hungry ghosts with big bellies, tight mouths, and one might presume assholes, not to mention pussies. Forgive me, Sister. The antidote contains no eyes, no ears, no tongue, no body, no mind, no assholes no thought, no perception, no old age, no ending of old age and death —and no sex. You know that practice, Sister. I knew, or at least said, more than I ought. Phil told me that the rite was no more than sleight of hand: chocolate, cardamom tea, ripe kiwis, none of it really satisfying or nourishing. Hungry ghosts think it’s dinner. Anything looks like dinner when you’re starving. Big bellies and big ears arise simultaneously – evidence, your pictures of starving children in the Sudan. Trick them. S

By Ramon Gutherie Perhaps for fear of saying to oneself, — it is not good to plan such things too long. No question others had more craft than I. I had waited for the Old One to give the sign to one of us, half hoping still his choice might fall on me. But lately he had turned to graving stags and reindeer on bits of antler, art that for all his pains my clumsy fingers could never seem to master. In any case, his choice for cavern walls ran to pregnant cows, bison and ponies. That, and more and more he favored places not too hard to get at. "What's the harm in having good work seen?" Meanwhile the first full moon of spring was near. I can't say why I chose the cave I did. Passing that way one day, I'd seen it and taken it for a badger's hole until I saw an owl rise from it and listening close, caught the voices of water. I set out before dawn and took along well-scorched moss and tallow, stone lamp, firestick in a dee

by Robert Frost for my Dad In October of 1962 at Dartmouth College , I heard Frost read this poem from his first book, published in 1916. It was his last public appearance. O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow. Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts not averse to being beguiled, Beguile us in the way you know. Release one leaf at break of day. At noon release another leaf; One from our trees, one far away. Retard the sun with gentle mist; Enchant the land with amethyst. Slow, slow! For the grapes' sake, if they were all, Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, Whose clustered fruit must else be lost - For the grape' sake along the wall. from "Complete Poems of Robert Frost," 1916 Please cli