Life poems
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Just Thinking
© William Stafford
Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere.
A Ritual To Read To Each Other
© William Stafford
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
Europe, MDCCCCI To Napoleon
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Soars still thy spirit, Child of Fire?
Dost hear the camps of Europe hum?
On eagle wings dost hover nigher
At the far rolling of the drum?
To see the harvest thou hast sown
Smilest thou now, Napoleon?
Ask Me
© William Stafford
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
March 1
© David Lehman
I could stare for hours
at her, the woman stepping
out of her bath, breasts
bare, towel around her waist,
Reconciliation
© Madison Julius Cawein
LISTEN, dearest! you must love me more,
More than you did before!
Hark, what a beating here of wings!
Never at rest,
Shake The Superflux!
© David Lehman
I like walking on streets as black and wet as this one
now, at two in the solemnly musical morning, when everyone else
in this town emptied of Lestrygonians and Lotus-eaters
is asleep or trying or worrying why
The Little Knight In Green
© Katharine Lee Bates
WHAT fragrant-footed comer
Is stepping oer my head?
The Body of Divinity Versifyed
© Cotton Mather
A God there is, a God of boundless Might,
In Wisdom, Justice, Goodness, Infinite.
Ninth Inning
© David Lehman
He woke up in New York City on Valentine's Day,
Speeding. The body in the booth next to his was still warm,
Was gone. He had bought her a sweater, a box of chocolate
Said her life wasn't working he looked stricken she said
Ode To Modern Art
© David Lehman
Come on in and stay a while
I'll photograph you emerging from the revolving door
like Frank O'Hara dating the muse of modern art
Talking about the big Pollock show is better
Book Sixth [Cambridge and the Alps]
© William Wordsworth
A passing word erewhile did lightly touch
On wanderings of my own, that now embraced
With livelier hope a region wider far.
The Final Reckoning
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Twas a wild and stormy sunset, changing tints of lurid red
Flooded mountain top and valley and the low clouds overhead;
And the rays streamed through the windows of a building stately, high,
Whose wealthy, high-born master had lain him down to die.
Paradise Lost : Book XII.
© John Milton
As one who in his journey bates at noon,
Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused
Warned
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
They stood at the garden gate.
By the lifting of a lid
She might have read her fate
In a little thing he did.
A Quick One Before I Go
© David Lehman
There comes a time in every man's life
when he thinks: I have never had a single
original thought in my life
including this one & therefore I shall
Conditions of Living
© Benjamin Jonson
Living a whole life has three conditions:
absorbing work which demands and brings fulfilment,
a group of friends with whom to exchange minds,
and a full love to be lost in all the time.
The Accompanist by Dick Allen: American Life in Poetry #188 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-200
© Ted Kooser
I really like this poem by Dick Allen, partially for the way he so easily draws us in, with his easygoing, conversational style, but also for noticing what he has noticed, the overlooked accompanist there on the stage, in the shadow of the singer.
The Accompanist
A Little History
© David Lehman
Some people find out they are Jews.
They can't believe it.
Thy had always hated Jews.
As children they had roamed in gangs on winter nights in the old
