Car poems
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The Yellow Bowl by Rachel Contreni Flynn : American Life in Poetry #266 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laurea
© Ted Kooser
The great American poet William Carlos Williams taught us that if a poem can capture a moment in life, and bathe it in the light of the poet’s close attention, and make it feel fresh and new, that’s enough, that’s adequate, that’s good. Here is a poem like that by Rachel Contreni Flynn, who lives in Illinois.
Palinode-December
© James Russell Lowell
Like some lorn abbey now, the wood
Stands roofless in the bitter air;
In ruins on its floor is strewed
The carven foliage quaint and rare,
And homeless winds complain along
The columned choir once thrilled with song.
The Sisters' Tragedy
© Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Both were young, in life's rich summer yet;
And one was dark, with tints of violet
In hair and eyes, and one was blond as she
Who rose-a second daybreak-from the sea,
Gold-tressed and azure-eyed. In that lone place,
Like dusk and dawn, they sat there face to face.
Jade
© Edith Wharton
THE patient craftsman of the East who made
His undulant dragons of the veined jade,
The Life of Lincoln West
© Gwendolyn Brooks
Ugliest little boy
that everyone ever saw.
That is what everyone said.
To James H.
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
Without Life's toil to win Life's earthly prize
What was thy mystery, oh, early Dead?
Crusoe in England
© Elizabeth Bishop
A new volcano has erupted,
the papers say, and last week I was reading
Shooting Star
© Wole Soyinka
1 In a concussion,
the mind severs the pain:
you don’t remember flying off a motorcycle,
and landing face first
in a cholla.
Sonnet: A. M. D.
© George MacDonald
Methinks I see thee, lying straight and low,
Silent and darkling, in thy earthy bed,
A Voice From The Bush
© Anonymous
High noon, and not a cloud in the sky
To break this blinding sun.
Well, I've half the day before me still,
And most of my journey done.
Hard Work
© Roddy Lumsden
Tricky work sometimes not to smell yourself,
ferment being constant—constant as carnival sweat
(a non-stock phrase I palmed from a girl from Canada,
a land where I once saw this graffiti: life is great).
The Modern Mother
© Alice Meynell
Oh what a kiss
With filial passion overcharged is this!
To this misgiving breast
The child runs, as a child ne'er ran to rest
Upon the light heart and the unoppressed.
To Whistler, American
© Ezra Pound
On the loan exhibit of his paintings at the Tate Gallery.
You also, our first great,
Had tried all ways;
Tested and pried and worked in many fashions,
And this much gives me heart to play the game.
Something Left Undone. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The Second)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Labor with what zeal we will,
Something still remains undone,
Something uncompleted still
Waits the rising of the sun.
"Let Somebody Else Rest..."
© Anna Akhmatova
Let somebody else rest by southern sea,
Enjoying the paradise land,
It's northerly here, and fall of this year,
I chose to be my girl-friend.
Erinna
© Sara Teasdale
They sent you in to say farewell to me,
No, do not shake your head; I see your eyes
Patroling Barnegat
© Walt Whitman
Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,
Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,
Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,
A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,
That savage trinity warily watching.
