If you are a dreamer, come in
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by the fire

I Want, I Want

© Sylvia Plath

Open-mouthed, the baby god
Immense, bald, though baby-headed,
Cried out for the mother's dug.
The dry volcanoes cracked and split,

Inscription For A Tomb In England

© Henry Van Dyke

Read here, O friend unknown,

Our grief, of her bereft;

I Am Standing Upon The Seashore.

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

In Wintry Weather

© Dora Sigerson Shorter

When each sweet rose uncurled
To its unknown world,
How could you e'er remember
That in a bleak December,
Through all the bitter weather,
We crept so close together?

I Shall Not Go With Pain

© Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall

I shall not go with pain
Whether you hold me, whether you forget
My little loss and my immortal gain.
O flower unseen, O fountain sealed apart!
Give me one look, one look remembering yet,
Sweet heart.

Interval

© Edward Thomas

Gone the wild day:
A wilder night
Coming makes way
For brief twilight.

"It Was Not In The Winter"

© Thomas Hood

It was not in the Winter
Our loving lot was cast;
It was the Time of Roses,
We plucked them as we passed!

"I Don't Like Flowers..."

I don't like flowers - they do remind me often
Of funerals, of weddings and of balls;
Their presence on tables for a dinner calls.

In The Garden VIII: Later Autumn

THIS is the year's despair: some wind last night

Utter'd too soon the irrevocable word,

In November by Lisel Mueller: American Life in Poetry #85 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006

© Ted Kooser

The Illinois poet, Lisel Mueller, is one of our country's finest writers, and the following lines, with their grace and humility, are representative of her poems of quiet celebration.