May 

      The wind is tossing the lilacs, 
          The new leaves laugh in the sun,  
      And the petals fall on the orchard wall, 
          But for me the spring is done.
 

      Beneath the apple blossoms 
          I go a wintry way,  
      For love that smiled in April 
          Is false to me in May.
 

          Sara Teasdale

 
A Thing of Beauty 
A thing of beauty is a joy forever: 
Its loveliness increases; it will never 
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep 
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 
--John Keats (Lines 1-5)

 
may my heart always be open to little... (19) 
e.e. cummings 

may my heart always be open to little 
birds who are the secrets of living 
whatever they sing is better than to know 
and if men should not hear them men are old 

may my mind stroll about hungry 
and fearless and thirsty and supple 
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong 
for whenever men are right they are not young 

and may myself do nothing usefully 
and love yourself so more than truly 
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail 
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

 
 Beauteous May 
by John Milton 

Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger, 
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her 
The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws 
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. 
Hail, beauteous May, that dost inspire 
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire; 
Woods and groves are of thy dressing, 
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. 
Thus we salute thee with our early song, 
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

 
THE GREEN LINNET 

          BENEATH these fruit-tree boughs that shed 
          Their snow-white blossoms on my head, 
          With brightest sunshine round me spread 
              Of spring's unclouded weather, 
          In this sequestered nook how sweet 
          To sit upon my orchard-seat! 
          And birds and flowers once more to greet, 
              My last year's friends together. 

          One have I marked, the happiest guest 
          In all this covert of the blest:                             
          Hail to Thee, far above the rest 
              In joy of voice and pinion! 
          Thou, Linnet! in thy green array, 
          Presiding Spirit here to-day, 
          Dost lead the revels of the May; 
              And this is thy dominion. 

          While birds, and butterflies, and flowers, 
          Make all one band of paramours, 
          Thou, ranging up and down the bowers, 
          A Life, a Presence like the Air, 
          Scattering thy gladness without care, 
          Too blest with any one to pair; 
              Thyself thy own enjoyment. 

          Amid yon tuft of hazel trees, 
          That twinkle to the gusty breeze, 
          Behold him perched in ecstasies, 
              Yet seeming still to hover; 
          There! where the flutter of his wings 
          Upon his back and body flings                                
          Shadows and sunny glimmerings, 
              That cover him all over. 

          My dazzled sight he oft deceives, 
          A Brother of the dancing leaves; 
          Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves 
              Pours forth his song in gushes; 
          As if by that exulting strain 
          He mocked and treated with disdain 
          The voiceless Form he chose to feign, 
            While fluttering in the bushes.                            
                                                              1803. 

 Wordsworth

 
M - O - T - H - E - R 
"M" is for the million things she gave me, 
"O" means only that she's growing old, 
"T" is for the tears she shed to save me, 
"H" is for her heart of purest gold; 
"E" is for her eyes, with love-light shining, 
"R" means right, and right she'll always be, 
Put them all together, they spell 
"MOTHER," 
A word that means the world to me. 

Howard Johnson (c. 1915)

 
 Nature - The Gentlest Mother 





By Emily Dickinson 





Nature, the gentlest mother, 
Impatient of no child, 
The feeblest or the waywardest, 
Her admonition mild 

In forest and the hill 
By traveller is heard, 
Restraining rampant squirrel 
Or too impetuous bird. 

How fair her conversation, 
A summer afternoon, 
Her household, her assembly; 
And when the sun goes down 

Her voice among the aisles 
Incites the timid prayer 
Of the minutest cricket, 
The most unworthy flower. 

When all the children sleep 
She turns as long away 
As will suffice to light her lamps; 
Then, bending from the sky 

With infinite affection 
And infiniter care, 
Her golden finger on her lip, 
Wills silence everywhere.

 
SUMMER MORNING 

The cocks have now the morn foretold, 
     The sun again begins to peep, 
The shepherd, whistling to his fold, 
     Unpens and frees the captive sheep. 
O’er pathless plains at early hours 
     The sleepy rustic sloomy goes; 
The dews, brushed off from grass and flowers, 
     Bemoistening sop his hardened shoes 

While every leaf that forms a shade, 
     And every floweret’s silken top, 
And every shivering bent and blade, 
     Stoops, bowing with a diamond drop. 
But soon shall fly those diamond drops, 
     The red round sun advances higher, 
And, stretching o’er the mountain tops, 
     Is gilding sweet the village-spire. 

’Tis sweet to meet the morning breeze, 
     Or list the gurgling of the brook; 
Or, stretched beneath the shade of trees, 
     Peruse and pause on Nature’s book, 
When Nature every sweet prepares 
     To entertain our wished delay,— 
The images which morning wears, 
     The wakening charms of early day! 

Now let me tread the meadow paths 
     While glittering dew the ground illumes, 
As, sprinkled o’er the withering swaths, 
     Their moisture shrinks in sweet perfumes; 
And hear the beetle sound his horn; 
     And hear the skylark whistling nigh, 
Sprung from his bed of tufted corn, 
     A haling minstrel from the sky.  

John Clare

 
     Wait for me, and I'll return 
    Only wait very hard 
    Wait when you are filled with sorrow... 
    Wait in the sweltering heat 
    Wait when the others have stopped waiting, 
    Forgetting their yesterdays. 

    Wait even when from afar no letters come to you 
    Wait even when others are tired of waiting... 
    And when friends sit around the fire, 
    Drinking to my memory, 
    Wait, and do not hurry to drink to my memory too. 

    Wait. For I'll return,defying every death. 
    And let those who do not wait say that I was lucky. 
    They will never understand that in the midst of death, 
    You with your waiting saved me. 
    Only you and I know how I survived. 
    It's because you waited, as no one else did. 

Konstantin Simonov

 
Chicory  

Show me a piece of land that God forgot- 
a strip between an unused sidewalk, say , 
and a bulldozed lot, rich in broken glass- 
and there, July on , will be chicory, 

its leggy hollow stems staggering skyward, 
its leaves rough-hairy and lanceolate, 
like pointed shoes too cheap for elves to wear, 
its button- blooms the tenderest mauve-blue. 

How good of it to risk the roadside fumes, 
the oil-soaked heat reflected from asphalt, 
and wretched earth dun-colored like cement, 
too packed for any other seed to probe. 

It sends a deep tap-root (delicious, boiled), 
is relished by all livestock, lends its leaves  
to salads and cooked greens, but will not thrive 
in cultivated soil: it must be free. 

John Updike

  

Beach at Normandy  

You were tall , lanky and my ideal  
Helen's brother who was always kind  
Who never treated us like the pests we were 
Six years of Latin gave you a poise  
We could imagine you at the Forum  
Leading Romans in discourse  
For you Dec 7, 1941 meant a call to arms  
Answered you left and we were  resigned 
To missing you, to praying for your safety  
Marrying your sweetheart but I didn't mind  
I was too young and you were my hero 
What you desired I wanted, always the best for you   
Helen kept me abreast of your letters home  
As I shared my brothers too
 

One day the news of a  invasion  
D-Day it was proclaimed and for you  
And for us,  a terrible meaning  
You left your life on that sandy beach  
My mind could see you there  
Sprawled, your long form stretched  
From where you lay, your arms  
Your hands already clay  
And the ocean washed you where you lay
 

Grief still wells up and tears fall down  
For no longer was it just part of the war 
To be recalled in history books  
But it was a living, breathing mind  
We are  poorer for you are gone 

and there is no imprint on the sand ....
 

anna alexander  
5/25/04 ©

 
Montes Veneris 

Thanks to Magellan's radar, we  
Have maps of Venus and can see, 
The National Geographic claims, 
Whole mountainscapes, complete with names.
 

Beneath sulfuric- acid clouds 
That never lift their poison shrouds, 
Heat like an oven's turned to CLEAN 
Bakes Theia Mons, sere and serene.
 

Sif Mons, and Gula Mons and Maat 
(Or Ma ‘at) Mons is where it's at 
For altitude, equatorwise. 
Up north, on Ishtar Terra, lies.
 

The Lakshmi Planum; right next door 
The Maxwell Montes upward soar 
And boast a lava peak whose crest  
Out-towers Earth's Mt. Everest.
 

Heights innocent of snow and ice 
And hikers seeking edelweiss, 
They rise through hellish murk and are  
Subsumed within the evening star.
  

John Updike

 
When Death Comes 

Mary Oliver  

When death comes 
like the hungry bear in autumn 
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse 

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut; 
when death comes 
like the measle pox; 

when death comes 
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, 

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering; 
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? 

And therefore I look upon everything 
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, 
and I look upon time as no more than an idea, 
and I consider eternity as another possibility, 

and I think of each life as a flower, as common 
as a field daisy, and as singular, 

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth 
tending as all music does, toward silence, 

and each body a lion of courage, and something 
precious to the earth. 

When it's over, I want to say: all my life 
I was a bride married to amazement. 
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

When it's over, I don't want to wonder 
if I have made of my life something particular, and real. 
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened 
or full of argument. 

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

 
Watching the Dedication of the WWII Memorial  

How different it must be for all those gathered there  
A sunny day , no stormy clouds in sight  
A pristine monument , the band, the cheers  
The music ,, the speeches , the praise  
Deserved and still ...for the most they moved  
When at last were home  
Onward, away from sounds of war  
The bullets, the big guns roar, the smell  
Of blood and guts and flesh quickly bent on decay 
The awful fear, the hopes, the prayers  
To God or perhaps just to the sky   
The dreams of home and loved ones there  
That often quickly dissolved to nightmares  
Of never seeing them again ...never see  
The friend beside you or even worse, it  
Might be me ...who would lay down my life  
On this wrecked plain, or fall from heaven, 
Or sink beneath the sea and should it be so  
What would I want the rest of America to know ? 
Sometimes you have no choice Not if your own  
Freedom came at price. It is a toll that is owed  
To the future , to insure someday all the world  
Will know ..freedom of heart and soul. 
I feel among those  present there  is small gladness  
It wasn't "me" who was left behind   
Whose spirit lies in  white crossed fields  
Still when I watch the faces and see the tears  
There is an emptiness inside for each person there  
A hurt and pain for those not there to sit beside and receive  
A country's praise, deserved thanks and accolades. 

anna alexander 
© 5/31/04

 
What is So Rare As a Day in June 

AND what is so rare as a day in June? 
      Then, if ever, come perfect days; 
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, 
     And over it softly her warm ear lays; 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 
     An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And, groping blindly above it for light, 
     Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 
The flush of life may well be seen 
     Thrilling back over hills and valleys; 
The cowslip startles in meadows green, 
     The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, 
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean 
     To be some happy creature's palace; 
The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 
     Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 
And lets his illumined being o'errun 
     With the deluge of summer it receives; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? 

Now is the high-tide of the year, 
     And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, 
     Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; 
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, 
We are happy now because God wills it; 
No matter how barren the past may have been, 
'Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green; 
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; 
We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing 
That skies are clear and grass is growing; 
     The breeze comes whispering in our ear, 
     That dandelions are blossoming near, 
That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing, 
That the river is bluer than the sky, 
That the robin is plastering his house hard by; 
And if the breeze kept the good news back, 
For our couriers we should not lack; 
We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, 
     And hark! How clear bold chanticleer, 
     Warmed with the new wine of the year, 
Tells all in his lusty crowing! 

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 
Everything is happy now, 
     Everything is upward striving; 
'Tis as easy now for the heart to be true 
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, 
     'Tis for the natural way of living: 
Who knows whither the clouds have fled? 
     In the unscarred heaven they leave not wake, 
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, 
     The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; 
The soul partakes the season's youth, 
     And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe 
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 
     Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. 
James Russell Lowell

 
To a Group of Starlings 





All day you’ve chased the nuthatch, the titmouse, 

the purple finches in the trees, and now 

you strut down the street like overgrown boys, 

raccoon coats hiding your matchstick legs, 

the sidewalk your grand runway, and you’re 

boys on newspaper boxes, little drummers 

playing buckets and pails, shoe-shine men calling, 

hustlers, shiny watches, the old shell game. 

Birds of midnight sheen, of oil and ink, 

of trashcans in the alley, you’re 

my hard-times bird, my hand’s shadow. 

You swarm over the roofs like thought 

before it falls, you shoot from the furnace 

with the coming rain, dirty stars, faraway flames. 
 Joelle Biele

 
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) 
Requiem 

             Under the wide and starry sky, 
             Dig the grave and let me lie. 
             Glad did I live and gladly die, 
             And I laid me down with a will. 

             This be the verse you grave for me: 
             Here he lies where he longed to be; 
             Home is the sailor, home from sea, 
             And the hunter home from the hill.

 
Christina Rossetti 

1830 - 94 





Song 

		When I am dead, my dearest, 
				  Sing no sad songs for me; 
				Plant thou no roses at my head, 
				  Nor shady cypress tree: 
				Be the green grass above me 
				  With showers and dewdrops wet; 
				And if thou wilt, remember, 
				  And if thou wilt, forget.
 

				I shall not see the shadows, 
				  I shall not feel the rain; 
				I shall not hear the nightingale 
				  Sing on, as if in pain: 
				And dreaming through the twilight 
				  That doth not rise nor set, 
				Haply, I may remember, 
				  And haply may forget.

 
Sea-Fever 

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, 
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; 
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, 
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking. 

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide 
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; 
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, 
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying. 

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, 
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like 
a whetted knife; 
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, 
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over. 









	John Masefield

 
Dorothy Parker - Surprise 

My heart went fluttering with fear 
Lest you should go, and leave me here 
To beat my breast and rock my head 
And stretch me sleepless on my bed. 
Ah, clear they see and true they say 
That one shall weep, and one shall stray 
For such is Love's unvarying law.... 
I never thought, I never saw 
That I should be the first to go; 
How pleasant that it happened so!

 
Alfred Lord Tennyson - Crossing The Bar 

Sunset and evening star, 
    And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
    When I put out to sea, 

  But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
    Too full for sound and foam, 
When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
    Turns again home. 

  Twilight and evening bell, 
   And after that the dark! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell, 
    When I embark; 

  For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 
    The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
    When I have crost the bar.

 
Mary Oliver - The Summer Day 

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 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?

 
 Death Be Not Proud 

by John Donne 
(1572-1631) 
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee 
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so, 
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow, 
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me. 
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, 
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow, 
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe, 
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie. 
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men, 
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, 
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well, 
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then; 
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, 
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

 
The American Flag 

Joseph Rodman Drake 

When freedom, from her mountain height 
Unfurled her standard to the air, 
She tore the azure robe of night 
And set the stars of glory there. 
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes 
The milky baldric of the skies, 
Then from his mansion in the sun 
She called her eagle-bearer down 
And gave into his mighty hand 
The symbol of her chosen land.

 
 Summer 
 Amy Lowell  

Some men there are who find in nature all 
Their inspiration, hers the sympathy 
Which spurs them on to any great endeavor, 
To them the fields and woods are closest friends, 
And they hold dear communion with the hills; 
The voice of waters soothes them with its fall, 
And the great winds bring healing in their sound. 
To them a city is a prison house 
Where pent up human forces labour and strive, 
Where beauty dwells not, driven forth by man; 
But where in winter they must live until 
Summer gives back the spaces of the hills. 
To me it is not so.  I love the earth 
And all the gifts of her so lavish hand: 
Sunshine and flowers, rivers and rushing winds, 
Thick branches swaying in a winter storm, 
And moonlight playing in a boat's wide wake; 
But more than these, and much, ah, how much more, 
I love the very human heart of man. 
Above me spreads the hot, blue mid-day sky, 
Far down the hillside lies the sleeping lake 
Lazily reflecting back the sun, 
And scarcely ruffled by the little breeze 
Which wanders idly through the nodding ferns. 
The blue crest of the distant mountain, tops 
The green crest of the hill on which I sit; 
And it is summer, glorious, deep-toned summer, 
The very crown of nature's changing year 
When all her surging life is at its full. 
To me alone it is a time of pause, 
A void and silent space between two worlds, 
When inspiration lags, and feeling sleeps, 
Gathering strength for efforts yet to come. 
For life alone is creator of life, 
And closest contact with the human world 
Is like a lantern shining in the night 
To light me to a knowledge of myself. 
I love the vivid life of winter months 
In constant intercourse with human minds, 
When every new experience is gain 
And on all sides we feel the great world's heart; 
The pulse and throb of life which makes us men!

 
Unsaid 

So much of what we live goes on inside– 
The diaries of grief, the tongue-tied aches 
Of unacknowledged love are no less real 
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal 
Is always more than what we dare confide. 
Think of the letters that we write our dead. 

 Dana Gioia

 
 Across the Fields to Anne  

By Richard Burton  



HOW often in the summer-tide,   
His graver business set aside   
Has stripling Will, the thoughtful-eyed,   
As to the pipe of Pan,   
Stepped blithesomely with lover’s pride           
Across the fields to Anne.
   

It must have been a merry mile,   
This summer stroll by hedge and stile,   
With sweet foreknowledge all the while   
How sure the pathway ran          
To dear delights of kiss and smile,   
Across the fields to Anne.
   

The silly sheep that graze to-day,   
I wot, they let him go his way,   
Nor once looked up, as who should say:           
“It is a seemly man.”   
For many lads went wooing aye   
Across the fields to Anne.
   

The oaks, they have a wiser look;   
Mayhap they whispered to the brook:           
“The world by him shall yet be shook,   
It is in nature’s plan;   
Though now he fleets like any rook   
Across the fields to Anne.” 
  

And I am sure, that on some hour          
Coquetting soft ’twixt sun and shower,   
He stooped and broke a daisy-flower   
With heart of tiny span,   
And bore it as a lover’s dower   
Across the fields to Anne. 
         

While from her cottage garden-bed   
She plucked a jasmine’s goodlihede,   
To scent his jerkin’s brown instead;   
Now since that love began,   
What luckier swain than he who sped         
Across the fields to Anne?
   

The winding path whereon I pace,   
The hedgerow’s green, the summer’s grace,   
Are still before me face to face;   
Methinks I almost can          
Turn poet and join the singing race   
Across the fields to Anne!

 
Needing a new song 

Oh help me, I need a new song.  
The old one served me well and long, 
Still it is time I move along  
To other places, other faces., 
A new home pale in color  
Pink the artist would say.  
And it will be a new life for me. 
I regretfully leave behind  
The old one, It was fair  
And I will always miss it there.  
But now I need a new song, 
A verse to sing while I grow new wings, 
A melody to lift my heart,  
To challenge me to new start. 
The old one will still be there, 
Cherished, kept intact , I will  
Place it  in a camphor box, 
All lined with silk and seeded pearls. 
And when my new song is complete, 
Each word and phrase etched on my heart,  
Some cold and chilly winter day  
Before a roaring flame to keep me warm,  
I will curl up on a sofa there.  
Bring out my camphor box,  
Open the lid and invite the old song  
To come out, to join me where  
I can sing each sweet remembered note.  
The past glories of my old song will float  
In my new home and I will smile,  
And a sweet memory will reveal  
How blessed I am to have had you both,  
My old song and now my new.  
Blended now in one sweet refrain . 
Thank you life for giving me  
All these warm and blessed memories....... 

anna alexander 
June 17, 2004© 
Just for anneo

 
It's So Nice To Have A Dad Around The House 
  by: Helen Steiner Rice, 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 





DADS are special people 
No home should be without, 
For every family will agree 
They're 'SO NICE TO HAVE ABOUT' - 
They are a happy mixture 
Of a 'SMALL BOY' and a 'MAN' 
And they're very necessary 
In every 'FAMILY PLAN' - 
Sometimes they're most demanding 
And stern, and firm and tough 
But underneath they're 'soft as silk' 
For this is just a 'BLUFF' - 
But in any kind of trouble 
Dad reaches out his hand. 
And you can always count on him 
To help and understand - 
And while we do not praise Dad 
as often as we should, 
We love him and admire him, 
And while that's understood, 
It's only fair to emphasise 
His importance and his worth - 
For if there were no loving Dads 
This would be a 'LOVELESS EARTH'.

 
Fathers Day 

My father died when I was twenty-one  
More years ago than I care to remember  
Still the woman I am today is  who  
She is because of what he stood for.
 

Tolerance I learned from him  
Never to judge someone by skin  
Color, or ethnic background  
Or any  of a hundred things  
We use as criteria to determine  
Who we choose for friends 
 

We had a comfortable living  
Earned by his efforts and desire  
To give us the best he could. 
Yet it was what he gave us  
On quiet summer evenings  
Sitting on the green vined porch  
The soft answers to our questions  
The condemnation for anything  
Mean or hurtful  
The gruff, loving care he showed us  
In all he did. The fair way he treated  
Us. The love he held for our mother, 
His mother, and family members. 
He taught me to be myself  
To be a leader, and not a follower 
To take responsibility for my behavior 
He reminded us to be lenient in our  
Dealings with others and to be strict  
With our dealings with ourselves 
He trusted us to be the best in whatever we did  
Encouraged our dreams  
Woke us on a hot summer’s eve to  
Eat  ice cream he carried home  
On the bus. 
Greeted us at the breakfast table on  
A winters day with fresh doughnuts  
From the bakery near his bus stop 
This may not be a poem but it is truth  
About a man who taught me what to  
Look for in the man I married  
So he too would be a Father  
Not just the man Mother married. 
anna alexander  
5/19/1997 
all right reserved

 
Rose Pogonias 

A Saturated meadow, 
Sun-shaped and jewel-small, 
A circle scarcely wider 
Than the trees around were tall; 
Where winds were quite excluded, 
And the air was stifling sweet 
With the breath of many flowers,-- 
A temple of the heat. 

There we bowed us in the burning, 
As the sun's right worship is, 
To pick where none could miss them 
A thousand orchises; 
For though the grass was scattered, 
Yet every second spear 
Seemed tipped with wings of color, 
That tinged the atmosphere. 

We raised a simple prayer 
Before we left the spot, 
That in the general mowing 
That place might be forgot; 
Or if not all so favored, 
Obtain such grace of hours, 
That none should mow the grass there 
While so confused with flowers. 

Robert Frost

 

Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children 
 

They will not be the same next time. The sayings  
So cute, just slightly off,will be corrected. 
Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in 
the more securely to the worldly buzz 
of television, alphabet, and street talk, 
culture polluting their gazes'dawn blue. 
It makes you see at last the value of  
those boring aunts and neighbors (their smells 
of summer sweat and cigarettes, their faces 
like shapes of sky between shade-giving leaves) 
who knew you from the start, when you were zero, 
cooing their nothings before you could be bored 
or knew a name, not even your own, or how  
this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye.
 

John Updike

 

RADIATORS 
 

Not theirs the stoves inflammatory drama, 
or the refrigerator's frosty glamour, 
or the trim glazed hauteur of window frames, 
but the warmth of the fire, we feel on our knuckles a kiss 
of heat like a dog's nudge, and remember that  
the room lulls our blood not my accident but  
by basement-base thermodynamic plan.
 

With their thick fins and many spines these cast 
iron soldiers stant at attention in the least  
obstrusive corners, like museum guards, 
sleepy and dull, in rooms of glowing treasure- 
ourselves. Their weeping, whistling valves declare  
a love of us that makes them throb and simmer: 
they call out for our praise for their fidelity, 
but are, cobwebbed untouchables, ignored. 

John Updike

 

Religeous Consolation
 

One size fits all. The shape or coloration  
of the god or high heaven matters less 
than that there is one, somehow, somewhere. hearing 
the hasty prayer and chalking up the mite  
the widow brings to the temple. A child 
alone with awful verities cries out  
for there to be a limit, a warm wall  
whose stones give back an answer, however faint.
 

Strange, the extravagance of it-who needs 
those eighteen-armed black Kalis, those musty saints 
whose bones and bleeding wounds appall good taste; 
those joss sticks, houris, gilded Buddhas, books 
Moroni etched in tedious detail? 
We do, we need more worlds. This one will fail.
 

John Updike

 
Concord Hymn 
Ralph Waldo Emerson
 

Sung at the completion of the battle monument on April 19, 1836
 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
    Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
Here once the embattled farmers stood,  
    And fired the shot heard round the world.
 

The foe long since in silence slept; 
    Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 
And Time the ruined bridge has swept  
    Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
 

On this green bank, by this soft stream,  
    We set today a votive stone; 
That memory may their deed redeem,  
    When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
 

Spirit that made those heroes dare  
    To die, and leave their children free, 
Bid Time and Nature gently spare  
    The shaft we raise to them and thee.

 
At Night
  

Amy Lowell 
 

The wind is singing through the trees to-night, 
A deep-voiced song of rushing cadences 
And crashing intervals.  No summer breeze 
Is this, though hot July is at its height, 
Gone is her gentler music; with delight 
She listens to this booming like the seas, 
These elemental, loud necessities 
Which call to her to answer their swift might. 
Above the tossing trees shines down a star, 
Quietly bright; this wild, tumultuous joy 
Quickens nor dims its splendour.  And my mind, 
O Star! is filled with your white light, from far, 
So suffer me this one night to enjoy 
The freedom of the onward sweeping wind.

 
Carl Sandburg - Good-night 
   

MANY ways to spell good night.
 

Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
 

They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit. 
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue and then go out.
 

Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar.
 

Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields to a razorback hill. 
It is easy to spell good night.
 

        Many ways to spell good night.

 
Inward Morning  
Henry David Thoreau 
 

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes  
Which outward nature wears,  
And in its fashion's hourly change  
It all things else repairs.  
In vain I look for change abroad,  
And can no difference find,  
Till some new ray of peace uncalled  
Illumes my inmost mind. 
 

What is it gilds the trees and clouds,  
And paints the heavens so gay,  
But yonder fast-abiding light  
With its unchanging ray? 
 

Lo, when the sun streams through the wood,  
Upon a winter's morn,  
Where'er his silent beams intrude,  
The murky night is gone. 
 

How could the patient pine have known  
The morning breeze would come,  
Or humble flowers anticipate  
The insect's noonday hum-- 
 

Till the new light with morning cheer  
From far streamed through the aisles,  
And nimbly told the forest trees  
For many stretching miles? 
 

I've heard within my inmost soul  
Such cheerful morning news,  
In the horizon of my mind  
Have seen such orient hues, 
 

As in the twilight of the dawn,  
When the first birds awake,  
Are heard within some silent wood,  
Where they the small twigs break,
  

Or in the eastern skies are seen,  
Before the sun appears,  
The harbingers of summer heats  
Which from afar he bears.

 
It's a grand ole flag  
It's a high flying flag  
Forever in peace may it wave  
The emblem of the land I love  
The home of the free and the brave 
Every heart beats true  
Under the red,white and blue  
Where there  is never a boast or a brag // 

Should auld acquaintence be forgot ? 
Keep your eye on the grand ole flag! 

George M Cohan

 
Sonnet: At Ostend, July 22nd 1787  
by William Lisle Bowles
  

How sweet the tuneful bells' responsive peal! 
As when, at opening morn, the fragrant breeze 
Breathes on the trembling sense of wan disease, 
So piercing to my heart their force I feel! 
And hark! with lessening cadence now they fall, 
And now, along the white and level tide, 
They fling their melancholy music wide, 
Bidding me many a tender thought recall 
Of summer-days, and those delightful years 
When by my native streams, in life's fair prime, 
The mournful magic of their mingling chime 
First waked my wond'ring childhood into tears; -  
But seeming now, when all those days are o'er, 
The sounds of joy, once heard, and heard no more.

 
The Echoing Green 
William Blake 1757-1827 
From Songs of Innocence
 

The sun does arise, 
And make happy the skies; 
The merry bells ring 
To welcome the Spring; 
The skylark and thrush, 
The birds of the bush, 
Sing louder around 
To the bells' cheerful sound; 
While our sports shall be seen 
On the echoing green.
 

Old John, with white hair, 
Does laugh away care, 
Sitting under the oak, 
Among the old folk. 
They laugh at our play, 
And soon they all say, 
'Such, such were the joys 
When we all -- girls and boys -- 
In our youth-time were seen 
On the echoing green.'
 

Till the little ones, weary, 
No more can be merry: 
The sun does descend, 
And our sports have an end. 
Round the laps of their mothers 
Many sisters and brothers, 
Like birds in their nest, 
Are ready for rest, 
And sport no more seen 
On the darkening green.

 
One Art  
Elizabeth Bishop 
 





The art of losing isn't hard to master; 
so many things seem filled with the intent 
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
 

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster 
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. 
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
 

Then practice losing farther, losing faster: 
places, and names, and where it was you meant  
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
 

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or 
next-to-last, of three loved houses went. 
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
 

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, 
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. 
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
 

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture 
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident 
the art of losing's not too hard to master 
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

 
I Loved You 
  by: Alexander Pushkin (1799 - 1837) 
 

I loved you; 
even now I may confess, 
Some embers of my love their fire retain; 
But do not let it cause you more distress, 
I do not want to sadden you again. 
Hopeless and tongue-tied, yet I loved you dearly, 
With pangs the jealous and the timid know; 
So tenderly I loved you, so sincerely, 
I pray God grant another love you so. 

 
 A Blessing
 



Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, 
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. 
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies 
Darken with kindness. 
They have come gladly out of the willows 
To welcome my friend and me. 
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture 
Where they have been grazing all day, alone. 
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness 
That we have come. 
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. 
There is no loneliness like theirs. 
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. 
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, 
For she has walked over to me 
And nuzzled my left hand. 
She is black and white, 
Her mane falls wild on her forehead, 
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear 
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. 
Suddenly I realize 
That if I stepped out of my body I would break 
Into blossom.
  

James Wright

 
Sonnet 29 "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes"
 

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,  
   I all alone beweep my outcast state,  
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,  
   And look upon myself, and curse my fate,  
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,  
   Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,  
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,  
   With what I most enjoy contented least:  
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,  
   Haply I think on thee,--and then my state  
(Like to the lark at break of day arising  
   From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;  
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings  
   That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.
 





			 William Shakespeare    

				(1564 - 1616)

 
SLUM LORDS 
 

The superrich make lousy neighbors- 
they buy a house and tear it down  
and build another, twice as big, and leave. 
They're never there: they own so many 
other houses, each demands a visit. 
Entire neighborhoods called fashionable, 
bustling with servants and masters, such as  
Louisburg Square in Boston or Bel Air in L.A. 
are districts now like Wall Street after dark 
or Tombstone once the silver boom went bust. 
The essence of the surperrich is absence. 
They like to demonstrate they can afford  
to be elsewhere. Don't let them in. 
Their riches form a kind of poverty. 

John Updike

 

CORINTH ,MS 

Two railroads crossed here,making the depot hot 
property for an army that could take it. 
Grant won out, and rode the rails to Vicksburg. 
The little city now uncoveted 
by any side,reposes in the hope 
of Shiloh's bloody glamour rubbing off 
as peaceful golddust-tourist traffic. This  
veranda knew the boots of Beaurgard
 

and of Ulysses,too. What epic times  
when bayonet and cannonball dispersed 
the souls of country boys in gray and blue! 
An iron lozenge forged to fit the wheels 
that roll east-west and north-south marks the spot 
a throng died for. I stood there all alone.
 

John Updike

 
THE GENESIS OF BUTTERFLIES
 

by: Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
 

The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers  
The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers  
That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings  
In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings,  
That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide,  
With muffled music, murmured far and wide.  
Ah, the Spring time, when we think of all the lays  
That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays,  
Of the fond hearts within a billet bound,  
Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound,  
The messages of love that mortals write  
Filled with intoxication of delight,  
Written in April and before the May time  
Shredded and flown, playthings for the wind's playtime,  
We dream that all white butterflies above,  
Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love,  
And leave their lady mistress in despair,  
To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair,  
Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies  
Flutter, and float, and change to butterflies.

 
A Cap of Lead Across the Sky 
 
Emily Dickinson
 

A Cap of Lead across the sky 
Was tight and surly drawn 
We could not find the mighty Face 
The Figure was withdrawn --
 

A Chill came up as from a shaft 
Our noon became a well 
A Thunder storm combines the charms 
Of Winter and of Hell.

 

Anna Akhmatova - You Will Hear Thunder 
  

You will hear thunder and remember me, 
And think: she wanted storms. The rim 
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, 
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
 

That day in Moscow, it will all come true, 
when, for the last time, I take my leave, 
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for, 
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.

 
Philip Larkin - Mother, Summer, I  
 

My mother, who hates thunder storms,  
Holds up each summer day and shakes  
It out suspiciously, lest swarms  
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;  
But when the August weather breaks  
And rains begin, and brittle frost  
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,  
Her worried summer look is lost, 
 

And I her son, though summer-born  
And summer-loving, none the less  
Am easier when the leaves are gone  
Too often summer days appear  
Emblems of perfect happiness  
I can't confront: I must await  
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:  
An autumn more appropriate.

 
SUMMER'S ENDING.
 
Andrew Lang 
 

THE flags below the shadowy fern  
Shine like spears between sun and sea,  
The tide and the summer begin to turn,  
And ah, for hearts, for hearts that yearn,  
For fires of autumn that catch and burn,  
For love gone out between thee and me.
  

The wind is up, and the weather broken,  
Blue seas, blue eyes, are grieved and grey,  
Listen, the word that the wind has spoken,  
Listen, the sound of the sea, - a token  
That summer's over, and troths are broken, -  
That loves depart as the hours decay. 
 

A love has passed to the loves passed over,  
A month has fled to the months gone by;  
And none may follow, and none recover  
July and June, and never a lover  
May stay the wings of the Loves that hover,  
As fleet as the light in a sunset sky. 

 
Emily Dickinson - These are the Nights that Beetles love --  
 

These are the Nights that Beetles love -- 
From Eminence remote 
Drives ponderous perpendicular 
His figure intimate 
The terror of the Children 
The merriment of men 
Depositing his Thunder 
He hoists abroad again -- 
A Bomb upon the Ceiling 
Is an improving thing -- 
It keeps the nerves progressive 
Conjecture flourishing -- 
Too dear the Summer evening 
Without discreet alarm -- 
Supplied by Entomology 
With its remaining charm --

 
Carl Sandburg - Sandpipers 
 

TEN miles of flat land along the sea. 
Sandland where the salt water kills the sweet potatoes. 
Homes for sandpipers—the script of their feet is on  
the sea shingles—they write in the morning, it is gone at 
 noon—they write at noon, it is gone at night. 
Pity the land, the sea, the ten mile flats, 
 pity anything but the sandpiper’s wire legs and feet.

 
Mary Oliver - Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond  
 

So heavy 
is the long-necked, long-bodied heron, 
always it is a surprise 
when her smoke-colored wings
 

open 
and she turns 
from the thick water, 
from the black sticks
 

of the summer pond, 
and slowly 
rises into the air 
and is gone.
 

Then, not for the first or the last time, 
I take the deep breath 
of happiness, and I think 
how unlikely it is
 

that death is a hole in the ground, 
how improbable 
that ascension is not possible, 
though everything seems so inert, so nailed
 

back into itself-- 
the muskrat and his lumpy lodge, 
the turtle, 
the fallen gate.
 

And especially it is wonderful 
that the summers are long 
and the ponds so dark and so many, 
and therefore it isn't a miracle
 

but the common thing, 
this decision, 
this trailing of the long legs in the water, 
this opening up of the heavy body
 

into a new life: see how the sudden 
gray-blue sheets of her wings 
strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing 
takes her in.
 

































 .

 
Edna St. Vincent Millay - I Know I Am But Summer To Your Heart 
  

I know I am but summer to your heart, 
And not the full four seasons of the year; 
And you must welcome from another part 
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear. 
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell 
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing; 
And I have loved you all too long and well 
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring. 
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes, 
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, 
That you may hail anew the bird and rose 
When I come back to you, as summer comes. 
Else will you seek, at some not distant time, 
Even your summer in another clime.

 
Fireflies 
	 

I have missed you in my yard   
You golden blinking stars  
From the remembered days of youth 
When we gathered you in mason jars 
And could not sleep lest your glow  
Disappear too soon 
 

Tonight as dark crept across the sky  
And softly pressed the green of earth  
Before the first star announced  
Day had passed and night was near 
I stepped out and found you there  
A hundred or more sending a message  
In your Morse code
  

Science says it is your way  
Of finding for yourself a mate  
Announcing with your glowing wink  
Your availability for all to see  
I hope before the dawn arrives 
You find someone to share your days  
As your blink stills it glowing beat  
Switches off, fades and dies  
You enter glory with a satisfied sigh. 
And hopefully so will I......... 
 
anna alexander  
17 June 2002   ©

 
Robert Frost - A Line-Storm Song 
  

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift. 
The road is forlorn all day, 
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, 
And the hoof-prints vanish away. 
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee, 
Expend their bloom in vain. 
Come over the hills and far with me, 
And be my love in the rain.
 

The birds have less to say for themselves 
In the wood-world's torn despair 
Than now these numberless years the elves, 
Although they are no less there: 
All song of the woods is crushed like some 
Wild, earily shattered rose. 
Come, be my love in the wet woods, come, 
Where the boughs rain when it blows.
 

There is the gale to urge behind 
And bruit our singing down, 
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind 
From which to gather your gown. 
What matter if we go clear to the west, 
And come not through dry-shod? 
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast 
The rain-fresh goldenrod.
 

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells 
But it seems like the sea's return 
To the ancient lands where it left the shells 
Before the age of the fern; 
And it seems like the time when after doubt 
Our love came back amain. 
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout 
And be my love in the rain.

 

Yesterday while I was out I saw a hawk swoop across the sky 
It circled and swung against the faded light, 
The remmnants of a storm 
Did it spy some victim skulking on the ground ?  
Or did it just feel the joy of soaring effortlessly through the air 
I dont know but I am glad that I was there  
To see him revel in his flight, to see him swoop and turn  
His brown wings gliding with joy through the windless day 
Oh if I could be like him to know the freedom of his flight 
Instead I am tethered to the earth, to the coming night.
 

anna alexander  
7/28/2004

 
No place to go  

The promised thunderstorms arrived  
Clouds a hundred shades of gray  
Boiled upward and suddenly  
Lightening like a surgeons knife  
Sliced across the sky   
Slitting the belly of clouds   
Releasing a hundred millions drops of rain  
It poured across my roof  
Flowed down, a weighted curtain  
Across the window glass.  
Funny how something so gray  
Was still translucent and I could see  
Gusty winds tossing fresh green leaves  
Branches newly formed swayed  
And shook in an anxious dance.  
Torrents of water pounded the skylights  
Demanding entry and angrily beat  
The plastic dome. It seemed to desire  
To be an unwanted , unwelcome intruder in my home  
A momentary pause fooled me  
Into believing the storm was gone  
A quick ray of sunlight , a brief respite  
A fleeting calm   
Again the thunder breached the peace  
A celestial river coursed downward from the sky  
Drowned me in its flow  
And I am caught in its undertow  

anna alexander  
May 20, 2004©

 
Dorothy Parker - August   

When my eyes are weeds, 
And my lips are petals, spinning 
Down the wind that has beginning 
Where the crumpled beeches start 
In a fringe of salty reeds; 
When my arms are elder-bushes, 
And the rangy lilac pushes 
Upward, upward through my heart;
 

Summer, do your worst! 
Light your tinsel moon, and call on 
Your performing stars to fall on 
Headlong through your paper sky; 
Nevermore shall I be cursed 
By a flushed and amorous slattern, 
With her dusty laces' pattern 
Trailing, as she straggles by.

 
“I Heard a Thousand Blended Notes” 

I heard a thousand blended notes 
While in a grove I sat reclined, 
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts 
Bring sad thoughts to the mind. 

To her fair works did Nature link 
The human soul that through me ran; 
And much it grieved my heart to think 
What Man has made of Man. 

Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, 
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; 
And 'tis my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes. 

The birds around me hopped and played, 
Their thoughts I cannot measure -  
But the least motion which they made 
It seemed a thrill of pleasure. 

The budding twigs spread out their fan 
To catch the breezy air; 
And I must think, do all I can, 
That there was pleasure there. 

If this belief from heaven be sent, 
If such be Nature's holy plan, 
Have I not reason to lament 
What Man has made of Man? 

- William Wordsworth

 
The Deep-Sea Cables  

(W Heath Robinson - 1909)  

The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar - 
Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are. 
There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep, 
Or the great grey level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.
 

Here in the womb of the world - here on the tie-ribs of earth 
Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat - 
Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth - 
For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice nor feet.
 

They have wakened the timeless Things; they have killed their father Time  
Joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of the sun. 
Hush! Men talk to-day o'er the waste of the ultimate slime, 
And a new Word runs between: whispering, 'Let us be one!'
 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 
Mary Oliver - August   

When the blackberries hang 
swollen in the woods, in the brambles 
nobody owns, I spend
 

all day among the high 
branches, reaching 
my ripped arms, thinking
 

of nothing, cramming 
the black honey of summer 
into my mouth; all day my body
 

accepts what it is. In the dark 
creeks that run by there is 
this thick paw of my life darting among
 

the black bells, the leaves; there is 
this happy tongue.

 

Night Journey  

Now as the train bears west  
Its  rhythm rocks the earth, 
And from my Pullman berth  
I stare into the night 
While others take their rest. 
Bridges of iron lace, 
A suddenness of trees, 
A lap of mountain mist  
All across  my line of sight, 
Then a bleak wasted place, 
And a lake below my knees. 
Full on my neck I feel  
The straining of a curve, 
My muscles move with steel , 
I wake in every nerve. 
I watch the beacon swing  
From dark to blazing bright: 
We thunder through ravines  
And gullies washed with light. 
Beyond the mountain  pass 
Mist deepens on the pane: 
We rush into a rain  
That rattles double glass, 
Wheels shake the roadbed stone, 
The pistons jerk and shove,  
I stay  up half the night  
To see the land I love. 
 

Theodore Roethke 
1908-1963

 
Name of Horses
 



  All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding  
and steerhide over the ash hames, to haul  
sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer,  
for the Glenwood stove next winter, and for the simmering range.
 

In April you pulled cartloads of manure to spread on the fields,  
dark manure of Holsteins, and knobs of your own clustered with oats. 
All summer you mowed the grass in meadow and hayfield, the mowing machine  
clacketing beside you, while the sun walked high in the morning;
 

and after noon's heat, you pulled a clawed rake through the same acres,  
gathering stacks, and dragged the wagon from stack to stack,  
and the built hayrack back, uphill to the chaffy barn,  
three loads of hay a day from standing grass in the morning.
 

Sundays you trotted the two miles to church with the light load  
a leather quartertop buggy, and grazed in the sound of hymns.  
Generation on generation, your neck rubbed the windowsill  
of the stall, smoothing the wood as the sea smooths glass.
 

When you were old and lame, when your shoulders hurt bending to graze, 
one October the man, who fed you and kept you, and harnessed you every morning, 
led you through corn stubble to sandy ground above Eagle Pond, 
and dug a hole beside you where you stood shuddering in your skin,
 

and lay the shotgun's muzzle in the boneless hollow behind your ear, 
and fired the slug into your brain, and felled you into your grave,  
shoveling sand to cover you, setting goldenrod upright above you, 
where by next summer a dent in the ground made your monument.
 

For a hundred and fifty years, in the Pasture of dead horses, 
roots of pine trees pushed through the pale curves of your ribs, 
yellow blossoms flourished above you in autumn, and in winter 
frost heaved your bones in the ground - old toilers, soil makers:
 

O Roger, Mackerel, Riley, Ned, Nellie, Chester, Lady Ghost.

 
In August 
 

  FROM the great trees the locusts cry  
  In quavering ecstatic duo--a boy  
  Shouts a wild call--a mourning dove  
  In the blue distance sobs--the wind  
  Wanders by, heavy with odors  
  Of corn and wheat and melon vines;  
  The trees tremble with delirious joy as the breeze  
  Greets them, one by one--now the oak  
  Now the great sycamore, now the elm. 
 

And the locusts in brazen chorus, cry  
Like stricken things, and the ring-dove's note  
Sobs on in the dim distance. 
 

Hamlin Garland

 

 Summer Dawn 
By William Morris 
1834-1896 
 

PRAY but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips,  
         Think but one thought of me up in the stars.  
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips  
         Faint and gray 'twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the  
cloud-bars,  
That are patiently waiting there for the dawn:  
         Patient and colourless, though Heaven's gold  
Waits to float through them along with the sun.  
Far out in the meadows, above the young corn,  
         The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold  
The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun;  
Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn  
Round the lone house in the midst of the corn.  
         Speak but one word to me over the corn,  
         Over the tender, bow'd locks of the corn. 

 
The Barefoot Boy  
John Greenleaf Whittier 
 

Blessings on thee, little man, 
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! 
With thy turned-up pantaloons, 
And thy merry whistled tunes; 
With thy red lip, redder still 
Kissed by strawberries on the hill; 
With the sunshine on thy face, 
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; 
From my heart I give thee joy, - 
I was once a barefoot boy! 
Prince thou art, - the grown-up man 
Only is republican. 
Let the million-dollared ride! 
Barefoot, trudging at his side, 
Thou hast more than he can buy 
In the reach of ear and eye, - 
Outward sunshine, inward joy: 
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!

 
The Makers 
 
by Howard Nemerov 
 

Who can remember back to the first poets,  
The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus?  
No one has remembered that far back  
Or now considers, among the artifacts,  
And bones and cantilevered inference  
The past is made of, those first and greatest poets,  
So lofty and disdainful of renown  
They left us not a name to know them by. 
 

They were the ones that in whatever tongue  
Worded the world, that were the first to say  
Star, water, stone, that said the visible  
And made it bring invisibles to view  
In wind and time and change, and in the mind  
Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world  
And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers  
Of the city into the astonished sky. 
 

They were the first great listeners, attuned  
To interval, relationship, and scale,  
The first to say above, beneath, beyond,  
Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine,  
Who having uttered vanished from the world  
Leaving no memory but the marvelous  
Magical elements, the breathing shapes  
And stops of breath we build our Babels of.

 
Be a Friend
 

Be a friend.  You don't need money; 
Just a disposition sunny; 
Just the wish to help another 
Get along some way or other; 
Just a kindly hand extended 
Out to one who's unbefriended; 
Just the will to give or lend, 
This will make you someone's friend.
 

Be a friend.  You don't need glory. 
Friendship is a simple story. 
Pass by trifling errors blindly, 
Gaze on honest effort kindly, 
Cheer the youth who's bravely trying, 
Pity him who's sadly sighing; 
Just a little labor spend 
On the duties of a friend.
 

Be a friend.  The pay is bigger 
(Though not written by a figure) 
Than is earned by people clever 
In what's merely self-endeavor. 
You'll have friends instead of neighbors 
For the profits of your labors; 
You'll be richer in the end 
Than a prince, if you're a friend.
 

        -- Edgar A. Guest

 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Day is Done 
  

The day is done, and the darkness 
Falls from the wings of Night, 
As a feather is wafted downward 
From an eagle in his flight
. 

I see the lights of the village 
Gleam through the rain and the mist, 
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me 
That my soul cannot resist:
 

A feeling of sadness and longing, 
That is not akin to pain, 
And resembles sorrow only 
As the mist resembles the rain.
 

Come, read to me some poem, 
Some simple and heartfelt lay, 
That shall soothe this restless feeling, 
And banish the thoughts of day.
 

Not from the grand old masters, 
Not from the bards sublime, 
Whose distant footsteps echo 
Through the corridors of Time.
 

For, like strains of martial music, 
Their mighty thoughts suggest 
Life's endless toil and endeavor; 
And to-night I long for rest.
 

Read from some humbler poet, 
Whose songs gushed from his heart, 
As showers from the clouds of summer, 
Or tears from the eyelids start;
 

Who, through long days of labor, 
And nights devoid of ease, 
Still heard in his soul the music 
Of wonderful melodies.
 

Such songs have power to quiet 
The restless pulse of care, 
And come like the benediction 
That follows after prayer.
 

Then read from the treasured volume 
The poem of thy choice, 
And lend to the rhyme of the poet 
The beauty of thy voice.
 

And the night shall be filled with music 
And the cares, that infest the day, 
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, 
And as silently steal away.

 
End of Summer
  

An agitation of the air, 
A perturbation of the light 
Admonished me the unloved year 
Would turn on its hinge that night.
 

I stood in the disenchanted field 
Amid the stubble and the stones, 
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me 
The song of my marrow-bones.
 

Blue poured into summer blue, 
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower, 
the roof of the silo blazed, and I knew 
that part of my life was over.
 

Already the iron door of the north 
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows 
Order their population forth, 
And a cruel wind blows.
 

Stanley Kunitz

 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Spirit of Poetry 
  

There is a quiet spirit in these woods, 
That dwells where'er the gentle south-wind blows; 
Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade, 
The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air, 
The leaves above their sunny palms outspread. 
With what a tender and impassioned voice 
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought, 
When the fast ushering star of morning comes 
O'er-riding the gray hills with golden scarf; 
Or when the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve, 
In mourning weeds, from out the western gate, 
Departs with silent pace!  That spirit moves 
In the green valley, where the silver brook, 
From its full laver, pours the white cascade; 
And, babbling low amid the tangled woods, 
Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter. 
And frequent, on the everlasting hills, 
Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself 
In all the dark embroidery of the storm, 
And shouts the stern, strong wind.  And here, amid 
The silent majesty of these deep woods, 
lts presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth, 
As to the sunshine and the pure, bright air 
Their tops the green trees lift.  Hence gifted bards 
Have ever loved the calm and quiet shades. 
For them there was an eloquent voice in all 
The sylvan pomp of woods, the golden sun, 
The flowers, the leaves, the river on its way, 
Blue skies, and silver clouds, and gentle winds, 
The swelling upland, where the sidelong sun 
Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes, 
Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in, 
Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunny vale, 
The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees, 
In many a lazy syllable, repeating 
Their old poetic legends to the wind.
 

And this is the sweet spirit, that doth fill 
The world; and, in these wayward days of youth, 
My busy fancy oft embodies it, 
As a bright image of the light and beauty 
That dwell in nature; of the heavenly forms 
We worship in our dreams, and the soft hues 
That stain the wild bird's wing, and flush the clouds 
When the sun sets.  Within her tender eye 
The heaven of April, with its changing light, 
And when it wears the blue of May, is hung, 
And on her lip the rich, red rose.  Her hair 
Is like the summer tresses of the trees, 
When twilight makes them brown, and on her cheek 
Blushes the richness of an autumn sky, 
With ever-shifting beauty.  Then her breath, 
It is so like the gentle air of Spring, 
As, front the morning's dewy flowers, it comes 
Full of their fragrance, that it is a joy 
To have it round us, and her silver voice 
Is the rich music of a summer bird, 
Heard in the still night, with its passionate cadence.

 
After Apple-Picking 
By Robert Frost 
 

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree 
Toward heaven still, 
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill 
Beside it, and there may be two or three 
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough. 
But I am done with apple-picking now. 
Essence of winter sleep is on the night, 
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. 
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight 
I got from looking through a pane of glass 
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough 
And held against the world of hoary grass. 
It melted, and I let it fall and break. 
But I was well
 

Upon my way to sleep before it fell, 
And I could tell 
What form my dreaming was about to take. 
Magnified apples appear and disappear, 
Stem end and blossom end, 
And every fleck of russet showing dear. 
My instep arch not only keeps the ache, 
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round. 
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend. 
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin 
The rumbling sound 
Of load on load of apples coming in. 
For I have had too much
 

Of apple-picking: I am overtired 
Of the great harvest I myself desired. 
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, 
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. 
For all 
That struck the earth, 
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, 
Went surely to the cider-apple heap 
As of no worth. 
One can see what will trouble 
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. 
Were he not gone, 
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his 
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, 
Or just some human sleep. 

 
"The time has come," the Walrus said,  
"To talk of many things:  
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--  
Of cabbages--and kings--  
And why the sea is boiling hot--  
And whether pigs have wings."

 
Sarumaru Tayu  

In the mountain depths,  
Treading through the crimson leaves,  
Cries the wandering stag.  
When I hear the lonely cry,  
Sad,--how sad--the autumn is!
 

6  
Under stars,  
heavy with brightness  
they seem to have  

with day near,  
I cross the log bridge  
where we once fed birds  

by the lake called Clear,  
with forest standing  
under blue water  

in the ancient bed.  
I skate boots  
like a young girl,  

brushing frost flowers  
from decking,  
hoping to find you,  

this time, cabined,  
waiting a fire  
on the open hearth.
 
 6  
Chunagon Yakamochi  

If the "Magpie Bridge"--  
Bridge by flight of magpies spanned,--  
White with frost I see:--  
With a deep-laid frost made white:--  
Late, I know, has grown the night.
 

7  
I have gone West  
twenty-three years.  
Not strange that,  

as I make new friends,  
they express surprise  
that I have a son  

in the East. I tell  
them how I go  
watch the moon rise  

with the evening star  
and think of it shining  
high in the ecliptic  

above the home  
he has made with his  
young wife there.
 
 7  
Abe no Nakamaro  

When I look abroad  
O'er the wide-stretched "Plain of Heaven,"  
Is the moon the same  
That on Mount Mikasa rose,  
In the land of Kasuga?
 

Ono no Komachi  

Color of the flower  
Has already passed away  
While on trivial things  
Vainly I have set my gaze,  
In my journey through the world.

Walter De La Mare

Thistle and darnel and dock grew there,
And a bush, in the corner of may,
On the orchard wall I used to sprawl
In the blazing heat of the day;
Half asleep and half awake,
While the birds went twittering by,
And nobody there my lone to share
But Nicholas Nye.

Nicholas Nye was lean and grey,
Lame of leg and old,
More than a score of donkey's years
He had seen since he was foaled;
He munched the thistles, purple and spiked,
Would sometimes stoop and sigh,
And turn his head, as if he said,
'Poor Nicholas Nye!'

Alone with his shadow he'd drowse in the meadow,
Lazily swinging his tail,
At break of day he used to bray,-
Not much too hearty and hale;
But a wonderful gumption was under his skin,
And a clear calm light in his eye,
And once in a while he'd smile...
Would Nicholas Nye.

Seem to be smiling at me, he would,
From his bush in the corner, of may,-
Bony and ownerless, widowed and worn,
Knobble-kneed, lonely and grey;
And over the grass would seem to pass
'Neath the deep dark blue of the sky,
Something much better than words between me
And Nicholas Nye.

But dusk would come in the apple boughs,
The green of the glow-worm shine,
The birds in the nest would crouch to rest,
And home I'd trudge to mine;
And there in the moonlight, dark with dew,
Asking not wherefore and why,
Would brood like a ghost, and still as a post.
Old Nicholas Nye.

 
Amy Lowell - Late September 
  

Tang of fruitage in the air; 
Red boughs bursting everywhere; 
Shimmering of seeded grass; 
Hooded gentians all a'mass. 
Warmth of earth, and cloudless wind 
Tearing off the husky rind, 
Blowing feathered seeds to fall 
By the sun-baked, sheltering wall. 
Beech trees in a golden haze; 
Hardy sumachs all ablaze, 
Glowing through the silver birches. 
How that pine tree shouts and lurches! 
From the sunny door-jamb high, 
Swings the shell of a butterfly. 
Scrape of insect violins 
Through the stubble shrilly dins. 
Every blade's a minaret 
Where a small muezzin's set, 
Loudly calling us to pray 
At the miracle of day. 
Then the purple-lidded night 
Westering comes, her footsteps light 
Guided by the radiant boon 
Of a sickle-shaped new moon.

 
A noiseless patient spider  
Walt Whitman 
 



A noiseless patient spider, 
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated, 
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, 
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, 
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
 

And you O my soul where you stand, 
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, 
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, 
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold, 
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

 
I Hear America Singing
 
Walt Whitman 
 

I HEAR America singing, the varied carols I hear;    
Those of mechanics—each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;    
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,    
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;    
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat— 
the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;           
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench— 
the hatter singing as he stands;    
The wood-cutter’s song—the ploughboy’s,  
on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, 
 or at sundown;    
The delicious singing of the mother—or of the young wife at work—or of the girl sewing or washing—  
Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;    
The day what belongs to the day—At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,    
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.

 
Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) 

September
 

              The golden-rod is yellow;  
                The corn is turning brown;  
              The trees in apple orchards  
               With fruit are bending down. 
 

              The gentian's bluest fringes  
                Are curling in the sun;  
              In dusty pods the milkweed  
               Its hidden silk has spun. 
 

              The sedges flaunt their harvest,  
                In every meadow nook;  
              And asters by the brook-side  
                Make asters in the brook, 
 

               From dewy lanes at morning  
                 The grapes' sweet odors rise;  
               At noon the roads all flutter  
                 With yellow butterflies. 
 

               By all these lovely tokens  
                 September days are here,  
               With summer's best of weather,  
                 And autumn's best of cheer. 
 

               But none of all this beauty  
                 Which floods the earth and air  
               Is unto me the secret  
                 Which makes September fair. 
 

                'T is a thing which I remember;  
                  To name it thrills me yet:  
                One day of one September  
                  I never can forget. 

 





Grief
 

When grief hangs in the trees like flocking birds, 
and limbs droop low beneath the weight of it, 
when somber doves cry out in mournful thirds, 
then, with their only word, to silence quit. 
Heads bowed as if in fervent, soulful prayer 
must rise and scan the world; new life redeems 
the loves, the leaves uncover deeper layers 
that ease the sting of melancholy dreams. 
Then shall the birds of grief take wing and fly. 
Though they return to peck your scattered crumbs, 
they search for peace, and on His words rely with faith,  
like schoolchildren doing their sums. 
They recall a life that soared like a song, 
and a throbbing pain that lingered all too long.

 
September 1, 1939  
W. H. Auden 
 

I sit in one of the dives 
On Fifty-second Street 
Uncertain and afraid 
As the clever hopes expire 
Of a low dishonest decade: 
Waves of anger and fear 
Circulate over the bright  
And darkened lands of the earth, 
Obsessing our private lives; 
The unmentionable odour of death 
Offends the September night.
 

Accurate scholarship can  
Unearth the whole offence 
From Luther until now 
That has driven a culture mad, 
Find what occurred at Linz, 
What huge imago made 
A psychopathic god: 
I and the public know 
What all schoolchildren learn, 
Those to whom evil is done 
Do evil in return. 
 

Exiled Thucydides knew 
All that a speech can say 
About Democracy, 
And what dictators do, 
The elderly rubbish they talk 
To an apathetic grave; 
Analysed all in his book, 
The enlightenment driven away, 
The habit-forming pain, 
Mismanagement and grief: 
We must suffer them all again.
 

Into this neutral air 
Where blind skyscrapers use 
Their full height to proclaim 
The strength of Collective Man, 
Each language pours its vain 
Competitive excuse: 
But who can live for long 
In an euphoric dream; 
Out of the mirror they stare, 
Imperialism's face 
And the international wrong.
 

Faces along the bar 
Cling to their average day: 
The lights must never go out, 
The music must always play, 
All the conventions conspire  
To make this fort assume 
The furniture of home; 
Lest we should see where we are, 
Lost in a haunted wood, 
Children afraid of the night 
Who have never been happy or good.
 

The windiest militant trash 
Important Persons shout 
Is not so crude as our wish: 
What mad Nijinsky wrote 
About Diaghilev 
Is true of the normal heart; 
For the error bred in the bone 
Of each woman and each man 
Craves what it cannot have, 
Not universal love 
But to be loved alone.
 

From the conservative dark 
Into the ethical life 
The dense commuters come, 
Repeating their morning vow; 
"I will be true to the wife, 
I'll concentrate more on my work," 
And helpless governors wake 
To resume their compulsory game: 
Who can release them now, 
Who can reach the deaf, 
Who can speak for the dumb?
 

All I have is a voice 
To undo the folded lie, 
The romantic lie in the brain 
Of the sensual man-in-the-street 
And the lie of Authority 
Whose buildings grope the sky: 
There is no such thing as the State 
And no one exists alone; 
Hunger allows no choice 
To the citizen or the police; 
We must love one another or die.
 

Defenceless under the night 
Our world in stupor lies; 
Yet, dotted everywhere, 
Ironic points of light 
Flash out wherever the Just 
Exchange their messages: 
May I, composed like them 
Of Eros and of dust, 
Beleaguered by the same 
Negation and despair, 
Show an affirming flame.

 
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 
 

Earth hasd not anything to show me more fair: 
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
A sight so touching in its majesty: 
This City now doth like a garment wear 
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare, 
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 
Open unto the fields and to the sky; 
ALl bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 
Never did a sun more beautifully steep 
In his first splendour valley, rock or hill; 
Ne`er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! 
The river glideth at his own sweet will: 
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; 
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
 

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

 
REST IN PEACE  
September 11, 2001 
 
REST IN PEACE  
by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat <pre. 

I am a World Trade Center tower, standing tall in the clear blue sky, feeling a violent blow in my side, and  
I am a towering inferno of pain and suffering imploding upon myself and collapsing to the ground.  
May I rest in peace. 
 

I am a terrified passenger on a hijacked airplane not knowing where we are going or that I am riding on fuel tanks that will be instruments of death, and  
I am a worker arriving at my office not knowing that in just a moment my future will be obliterated.  
May I rest in peace.
  

I am a pigeon in the plaza between the two towers eating crumbs from someone's breakfast when fire rains down on me from the skies, and  
I am a bed of flowers admired daily by thousands of tourists now buried under five stories of rubble.  
May I rest in peace.
  

I am a firefighter sent into dark corridors of smoke and debris on a mission of mercy only to have it collapse around me, and  
I am a rescue worker risking my life to save lives who is very aware that I may not make it out alive.  
May I rest in peace. 
 

I am a survivor who has fled down the stairs and out of the building to safety who knows that nothing will ever be the same in my soul again, and  
I am a doctor in a hospital treating patients burned from head to toe who knows that these horrible images will remain in my mind forever.  
May I know peace. 
 

I am a tourist in Times Square looking up at the giant TV screens thinking I'm seeing a disaster movie as I watch the Twin Towers crash to the ground, and  
I am a New York woman sending e-mails to friends and family letting them know that I am safe.  
May I know peace.
  

I am a piece of paper that was on someone's desk this morning and now I'm debris scattered by the wind across lower Manhattan, and  
I am a stone in the graveyard at Trinity Church covered with soot from the buildings that once stood proudly above me, death meeting death.  
May I rest in peace.
  

I am a dog sniffing in the rubble for signs of life, doing my best to be of service, and  
I am a blood donor waiting in line to make a simple but very needed contribution for the victims.  
May I know peace.
  

I am a resident in an apartment in downtown New York who has been forced to evacuate my home, and  
I am a resident in an apartment uptown who has walked 100 blocks home in a stream of other refugees.  
May I know peace.
  

I am a family member who has just learned that someone I love has died, and  
I am a pastor who must comfort someone who has suffered a heart-breaking loss.  
May I know peace.
  

I am a loyal American who feels violated and vows to stand behind any military action it takes to wipe terrorists off the face of the earth, and  
I am a loyal American who feels violated and worries that people who look and sound like me are all going to be blamed for this tragedy.  
May I know peace. 
 

I am a frightened city dweller who wonders whether I'll ever feel safe in a skyscraper again, and  
I am a pilot who wonders whether there will ever be a way to make the skies truly safe.  
May I know peace.
  

I am the owner of a small store with five employees that has been put out of business by this tragedy, and  
I am an executive in a multinational corporation who is concerned about the cost of doing business in a terrorized world.  
May I know peace. 
 

I am a visitor to New York City who purchases postcards of the World Trade Center Twin Towers that are no more, and  
I am a television reporter trying to put into words the terrible things I have seen.  
May I know peace.
  

I am a boy in New Jersey waiting for a father who will never come home, and  
I am a boy in a faraway country rejoicing in the streets of my village because someone has hurt the hated Americans.  
May I know peace. 
 

I am a general talking into the microphones about how we must stop the terrorist cowards who have perpetrated this heinous crime, and  
I am an intelligence officer trying to discern how such a thing could have happened on American soil, and  
I am a city official trying to find ways to alleviate the suffering of my people.  
May I know peace. 
 

I am a terrorist whose hatred for America knows no limit and I am willing to die to prove it, and  
I am a terrorist sympathizer standing with all the enemies of American capitalism and imperialism, and  
I am a master strategist for a terrorist group who planned this abomination.  
My heart is not yet capable of openness, tolerance, and loving.  
May I know peace.
  

I am a citizen of the world glued to my television set, fighting back my rage and despair at these horrible events, and  
I am a person of faith struggling to forgive the unforgivable, praying for the consolation of those who have 
lost loved ones, calling upon the merciful beneficence of God/Lord/Allah/Spirit/Higher Power.  
May I know peace.
  

I am a child of God who believes that we are all children of 
God and we are all part of one another.  
May we all know peace.

 
Elizabeth Bishop - Sandpiper   

The roaring alongside he takes for granted, 
and that every so often the world is bound to shake. 
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward, 
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.
 

The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet 
of interrupting water comes and goes 
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet. 
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.
 

--Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them 
where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains 
rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs, 
he stares at the dragging grains.
 

The world is a mist. And then the world is 
minute and vast and clear. The tide 
is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which. 
His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,
 

looking for something, something, something. 
Poor bird, he is obsessed! 
The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray 
mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.

 
Doves beak to beak  
Carry straw to the fragrant fir 
Homesteading 

 
James Whitcomb Riley - When the Frost is on the Punkin 
  

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock, 
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock, 
And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens, 
And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence; 
O, it's then's the times a feller is a-feelin' at his best, 
With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest, 
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock, 
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.
 

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere 
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here-- 
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossums on the trees, 
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees; 
But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze 
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days 
Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock-- 
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.
 

The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn, 
And the raspin' of the tangled leaves, as golden as the morn; 
The stubble in the furries--kindo' lonesome-like, but still 
A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill; 
The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed; 
The hosses in theyr stalls below--the clover over-head!-- 
O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock, 
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock!
 

Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps 
Is poured around the celler-floor in red and yeller heaps; 
And your cider-makin' 's over, and your wimmern-folks is through 
With their mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and saussage, too! ... 
I don't know how to tell it--but ef sich a thing could be 
As the Angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me-- 
I'd want to 'commodate 'em--all the whole-indurin' flock-- 
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock!

 
Winter Moon  
Polished pewter plate 
Frozen light 

 
James Whitcomb Riley - Little Orphant Annie 
  

INSCRIBED WITH ALL FAITH AND AFFECTION 

To all the little children: -- The happy ones; and sad ones; 
The sober and the silent ones; the boisterous and glad ones; 
The good ones -- Yes, the good ones, too; and all the lovely bad ones.
 

Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay, 
An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away, 
An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep, 
An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep; 
An' all us other childern, when the supper-things is done, 
We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun 
A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about, 
An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you 
Ef you 
Don't 
Watch 
Out!
 

Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn't say his prayers,-- 
An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs, 
His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd him bawl, 
An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wuzn't there at all! 
An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press, 
An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess; 
But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an' roundabout:-- 
An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you 
Ef you 
Don't 
Watch 
Out!
 

An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin, 
An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin; 
An' wunst, when they was "company," an' ole folks wuz there, 
She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care! 
An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide, 
They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin' by her side, 
An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she knowed what she's about! 
An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you 
Ef you 
Don't 
Watch 
Out!
 

An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue, 
An' the lamp-wick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo! 
An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray, 
An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,-- 
You better mind yer parunts, an' yer teachurs fond an' dear, 
An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear, 
An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about, 
Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you 
Ef you 
Don't 
Watch 
Out!

 
The Last Day of Harvest
 

You climb up and check the oil 
the same as all the other days, 
grease the machine in all the hidden 
places until you know 
it'll run slick. 
Then you start the engine, 
feel every nut and bolt 
brace against the first surge 
of fuel. And maybe 
you feel like the old man 
who knows tonight is the last night 
he will have to climb into bed. Field 
past field, you think 
back trying to remember 
how good the first harvest day 
felt--how the heat, 
and wheat dust welcomed you 
like a mother's challenge 
to walk. Acre after acre, grain 
has bouquet'd into your throat, 
your steel cylinder gut 
digesting load after load--hours 
monogrammed inside this cab 
when you felt like a combine king, 
your country a kingdom stretched 
to the horizon's black-thread 
crease. More hours you were nothing 
--a wrench tightened instinct 
lifting and lowering 
the header, suggesting the machine 
faster and slower, internal sounds 
felt before heard, metal and rubber. 
Then you live it, 
the last round, a narrow swath 
where you've never been, tied down 
by a row of uncut corners, 
tokens from every round, 
leading to the road. 
And then it's over. 
Nothing left but stubble. 
The last uncut corner 
cut. A good friend gone.

 
Autumn Poem 

Mary Oliver
  

In the last jovial, clear-sky days of autumn 
the mockingbird 
in his monk-gray coat 
and his arrowy wings
 

flies 
from the hedge to the top of the pine 
and begins to sing — but it's neither loose, nor lilting, nor lovely —
 

it's more like whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges. 
All birds are birds of heaven 
but this one, especially, adores the earth so well 
he would imitate, for half the day and on into the evening,
 

its ticks and wheezings, 
and so I have to wait a long time 
for the soft, true voice 
of his own glossy life
 

to come through, 
and of course I do. 
I don't know what it is that makes him, finally, look 
inward
 

to the sweet spring of himself, that mirror of heaven, 
but when it happens — 
when he lifts his head 
and the feathers of his throat tremble,
 

and he begins, like Saint Francis, 
little flutterings and leapings from the pine's forelock, 
resettling his strong feet each time among the branches, 
I am recalled,
 

from so many wrong paths I can't count them, 
simply to stand, and listen. 
All my life I have lived in a kind of haste and darkness 
of desire, ambition, accomplishment.
 

Now the bird is singing, but not anymore of this world. 
And something inside myself is fluttering and leaping, is trying 
to type it down, in lumped-up language, 
in outcry, in patience, in music, in a snow-white book.

 
Wild Swans at Coole
 

The trees are in their autumn beauty, 
The woodland paths are dry, 
Under the October twilight the water 
Mirrors a still sky; 
Upon the brimming water among the stones 
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
 

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me 
Since I first made my count; 
I saw, before I had well finished, 
All suddenly mount 
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings 
Upon their clamorous wings.
 

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, 
And now my heart is sore. 
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight, 
The first time on this shore, 
The bell-beat of their wings above my head, 
Trod with a lighter tread.
 

Unwearied still, lover by lover, 
They paddle in the cold 
Companionable streams or climb the air; 
Their hearts have not grown old; 
Passion or conquest, wander where they will, 
Attend upon them still.
 

But now they drift on the still water, 
Mysterious, beautiful; 
Among what rushes will they build, 
By what lake’s edge or pool 
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day 
To find they have flown away?
 

William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939

 
THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE
 

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: 
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, 
And live alone in the bee-loud glade. 
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings; 
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 
And evening full of the linnet's wings. 
I will arise and go now, for always night and day 
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, 
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
 

William Butler Yeats

 

Elizabeth Bishop - Giant Snail
   

The rain has stopped. The waterfall will roar like that all  
night. I have come out to take a walk and feed. My body--foot, 
that is--is wet and cold and covered with sharp gravel. It is 
white, the size of a dinner plate. I have set myself a goal, a  
certain rock, but it may well be dawn before I get there.  
Although I move ghostlike and my floating edges barely graze  
the ground, I am heavy, heavy, heavy. My white muscles are  
already tired. I give the impression of mysterious ease, but it is  
only with the greatest effort of my will that I can rise above the  
smallest stones and sticks. And I must not let myself be dis- 
tracted by those rough spears of grass. Don't touch them. Draw  
back. Withdrawal is always best.  
    The rain has stopped. The waterfall makes such a noise! (And 
what if I fall over it?) The mountains of black rock give off such  
clouds of steam! Shiny streamers are hanging down their sides.  
When this occurs, we have a saying that the Snail Gods have  
come down in haste. I could never descend such steep escarp- 
ments, much less dream of climbing them.  
    That toad was too big, too, like me. His eyes beseeched my  
love. Our proportions horrify our neighbors.  
    Rest a minute; relax. Flattened to the ground, my body is like  
a pallid, decomposing leaf. What's that tapping on my shell?  
Nothing. Let's go on.  
    My sides move in rhythmic waves, just off the ground, from  
front to back, the wake of a ship, wax-white water, or a slowly  
melting floe. I am cold, cold, cold as ice. My blind, white bull's  
head was a Cretan scare-head; degenerate, my four horns that  
can't attack. The sides of my mouth are now my hands. They  
press the earth and suck it hard. Ah, but I know my shell is  
beautiful, and high, and glazed, and shining. I know it well,  
although I have not seen it. Its curled white lip is of the finest  
enamel. Inside, it is as smooth as silk, and I, I fill it to perfection.  
    My wide wake shines, now it is growing dark. I leave a lovely  
opalescent ribbon: I know this.  
    But O! I am too big. I feel it. Pity me.  
    If and when I reach the rock, I shall go into a certain crack  
there for the night. The waterfall below will vibrate through  
my shell and body all night long. In that steady pulsing I can  
rest. All night I shall be like a sleeping ear.

 
Dylan Thomas - Especially When The October Wind 
  

Especially when the October wind 
With frosty fingers punishes my hair, 
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire 
And cast a shadow crab upon the land, 
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds, 
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks, 
My busy heart who shudders as she talks 
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.
 

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark 
On the horizon walking like the trees 
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows 
Of the star-gestured children in the park. 
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches, 
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots 
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes, 
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.
 

Behind a post of ferns the wagging clock 
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning 
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning 
And tells the windy weather in the cock. 
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs; 
The signal grass that tells me all I know 
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye. 
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.
 

Especially when the October wind 
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells, 
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales) 
With fists of turnips punishes the land, 
Some let me make of you the heartless words. 
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry 
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury. 
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

 
Young Sea 

Carl Sandburg
 

The sea is never still. 
It pounds on the shore 
Restless as a young heart, 
Hunting.
 

The sea speaks 
And only the stormy hearts 
Know what it says: 
It is the face 
of a rough mother speaking.
 

The sea is young. 
One storm cleans all the hoar 
And loosens the age of it. 
I hear it laughing, reckless.
 

They love the sea, 
Men who ride on it 
And know they will die 
Under the salt of it 

Let only the young come, 
     Says the sea.
 

Let them kiss my face 
     And hear me. 
I am the last word 
     And I tell 
Where storms and stars come from.

 
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) 

The Chambered Nautilus
 

              This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,  
                Sails the unshadowed main, --  
                The venturous bark that flings  
              On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings  
              In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,  
                And coral reefs lie bare,  
              Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 
 

              Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;  
               Wrecked is the ship of pearl!  
              And every chambered cell,  
            Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,  
            As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,  
              Before thee lies revealed, --  
            Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! 
 

            Year after year beheld the silent toil  
             That spread his lustrous coil;  
             Still, as the spiral grew,  
            He left the past year's dwelling for the new,  
            Stole with soft step its shining archway through,  
             Built up its idle door,  
            Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
  

            Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,  
            Child of the wandering sea,  
              Cast from her lap, forlorn!  
            From thy dead lips a clearer note is born  
            Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!  
              While on mine ear it rings,  
            Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: --
 

            Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,  
              As the swift seasons roll!  
             Leave thy low-vaulted past!  
            Let each new temple, nobler than the last,  
            Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,  
              Till thou at length art free,  
            Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

 
Robert Frost
 
 - October   

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 grapes' sake along the wall.

 

When October Goes
 
Music by Barry Manilow
 Lyrics by Johnny Mercer
  

And when October goes 
The snow begins to fly 
Above the smokey roofs 
I watch the planes go by 
The children running home 
Beneath a twilight sky 
Oh, for the fun of them 
When I was one of them 
And when October goes 
The same old dream appears 
And you are in my arms 
To share the happy years 
I turn my head away 
To hide the helpless tears 
Oh how I hate to see October go 
I should be over it now I know 
It doesn't matter much 
How old I grow 
I hate to see October go  

 
Autumn
 

The morns are meeker than they were, 
The nuts are getting brown; 
The berry's cheek is plumper, 
The rose is out of town.
 

The maple wears a gayer scarf, 
The field a scarlet gown. 
Lest I should be old-fashioned, 
I'll put a trinket on.
 

Emily Dickinson 
1830-1886

 
October  

Willaim Cullen Bryant
 

Ay, thou art welcome, heaven`s delicious breath!  
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,  
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief  
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.  
Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay  
In the gay woods and in the golden air,  
Like to a good old age released from care,  
Journeying, in long serenity, away.  
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I  
Might wear out life like thee, `mid bowers and brooks  
And dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,  
And music of kind voices ever nigh;  
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,  
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

 
SLEEPIN’  AT THE FOOT O’ THE BED
 

Did ye ever sleep at the foot ’o the bed 
 When the weather wuz a whizzin’ cold 
When the wind wuz a whistling’ around’ the house 
An’ the moon  wuz yeller ez gold, 
An  give yore good warm feathers up 
To Aunt Lizzie and Uncle Fred- 
Too many  kinfolks on a bad, raw night 
And you  went to the foot of the bed- 
Fer  some darn reason  the coldest night ‘o the season 
An’ you wuz sent to the foot of the bed.
 

I could allus wait till the old folks et  
An’ then eat the leavin’s with grace, 
The teacher could keep me after school, 
An’ I’d still hold a smile on my face, 
I could wear the big boys’ wore-out clothes 
Er let sister have my sled, 
But it allus did git my nanny goat  
To have to sleep at the foot o’ the bed; 
They’s not  a location topside o’ creation  
That I hate like the foot o’ the bed.
 

“Twuz fine enough when the kinfolks come- 
The kids brought brand-new games, 
You could see how fat all the old folks wuz, 
An’ learn all the babies names, 
Had biscuits  an’ custard and chicken pie, 
An’ allus got Sunday fed, 
But you knowed  dern well when night come on 
You wuz headed fer the foot o’ the bed: 
You couldn’t git by it, they wuz no use to try it, 
You wuz headed fer the foot ‘ the bed.
 

They tell me that some folks don’t know whut  it is  
To have company all over the place, 
O rassel fer cover thru a long winter night  
With a big foot settin’ in your face, 
Er with toenails a-scratchin’ yore back  
An’ a footboard a-scrubbin’ yore head: 
I’ll tell the wide world you ain’t lost a thing 
Never sleepin’ at the foot o’ the bed.
 

I’ve done it , and I’ve done it many uv a time 
In this land o’ the brave an’ the free, 
An’ in this all-fired battle uv life 
It’s done left its mark upon me, 
Fer I’m allus  a-struggling’ around the foot 
Instead of forgin’ ahead, 
An’ I don’t think it’s caused by a doggone thing 
But sleepin’ at the foot o’ the bed: 
I’ve lost all my claim on fortune an’ fame, 
A-sleepin’ at the foot o’ the bed.
 

Luther Patrick

 
Home
 

IT takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home,  
A heap o' sun an' shadder, an' ye sometimes have t' roam  
Afore ye really 'preciate the things ye lef' behind,  
An' hunger fer 'em somehow, with 'em allus on yer mind.  
It don't make any differunce how rich ye get t' be,  
How much yer chairs an' tables cost, how great yer luxury;  
It ain't home t' ye, though it be the palace of a king,  
Until somehow yer soul is sort o' wrapped round everything.
 

Home ain't a place that gold can buy or get up in a minute;  
Afore it's home there's got t' be a heap o' livin' in it;  
Within the walls there's got t' be some babies born, and then  
Right there ye've got t' bring 'em up t' women good, an' men;  
And gradjerly as time goes on, ye find ye wouldn't part  
With anything they ever used -- they've grown into yer heart:  
The old high chairs, the playthings, too, the little shoes they wore  
Ye hoard; an' if ye could ye'd keep the thumb-marks on the door.
 

Ye've got t' weep t' make it home, ye've got t' sit an' sigh  
An' watch beside a loved one's bed, an' know that Death is nigh;  
An' in the stillness o' the night t' see Death's angel come,  
An' close the eyes o' her that smiled, an' leave her sweet voice dumb.  
Fer these are scenes that grip the heart, an'when yer tears are dried,  
Ye find the home is dearer than it was, an' sanctified;  
An' tuggin' at ye always are the pleasant memories  
O' her that was an' is no more -- ye can't escape from these.
 

Ye've got t' sing an' dance fer years, ye've got t' romp an' play,  
An' learn t' love the things ye have by usin' 'em each day;  
Even the roses 'round the porch must blossom year by year  
Afore they 'come a part o' ye, suggestin' someone dear  
Who used t' love 'em long ago, an' trained 'em jes t' run  
The way they do, so's they would get the early mornin' sun;  
Ye've got t' love each brick an' stone from cellar up t' dome:  
It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home.
 

Edgar Guest

 
Taking Title
 

TO make this little house my very own  
Could not be done by law alone.  
Though covenant and deed convey  
Absolute fee, as lawyers say,  
There are domestic rites beside  
By which this house is sanctified.
 

By kindled fire upon the hearth,  
By planted pansies in the garth,  
By food, and by the quiet rest  
Of those brown eyes that I love best,  
And by a friends bright gift of wine,  
I dedicate this house of mine.
 

When all but I are soft abed  
I trail about my quiet stead  
A wreath of blue tobacco smoke  
(A charm that evil never broke)  
And bring my ritual to an end  
By giving shelter to a friend.
 

This done, O dwelling, you become  
Not just a house, but truly Home! 
 

Christopher Morley

 
Good-Bye, Little Cabin 
 
O dear little cabin, I've loved you so long,  
And now I must bid you good-bye!  
I've filled you with laughter, I've thrilled you with song,  
And sometimes I've wished I could cry.  
Your walls they have witnessed a weariful fight,  
And rung to a won Waterloo:  
But oh, in my triumph I'm dreary to-night --  
Good-bye, little cabin, to you! 
 

Your roof is bewhiskered, your floor is a-slant,  
Your walls seem to sag and to swing;  
I'm trying to find just your faults, but I can't --  
You poor, tired, heart-broken old thing!  
I've seen when you've been the best friend that I had,  
Your light like a gem on the snow;  
You're sort of a part of me -- Gee! but I'm sad;  
I hate, little cabin, to go.
  

Below your cracked window red raspberries climb;  
A hornet's nest hangs from a beam;  
Your rafters are scribbled with adage and rhyme,  
And dimmed with tobacco and dream.  
"Each day has its laugh", and "Don't worry, just work".  
Such mottoes reproachfully shine.  
Old calendars dangle -- what memories lurk  
About you, dear cabin of mine!
  

I hear the world-call and the clang of the fight;  
I hear the hoarse cry of my kind;  
Yet well do I know, as I quit you to-night,  
It's Youth that I'm leaving behind.  
And often I'll think of you, empty and black,  
Moose antlers nailed over your door:  
Oh, if I should perish my ghost will come back  
To dwell in you, cabin, once more!
  

How cold, still and lonely, how weary you seem!  
A last wistful look and I'll go.  
Oh, will you remember the lad with his dream!  
The lad that you comforted so.  
The shadows enfold you, it's drawing to-night;  
The evening star needles the sky:  
And huh! but it's stinging and stabbing my sight --  
God bless you, old cabin, good-bye! 

 
God's World  
by Edna St. Vincent Millay 
 

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
 

Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
 

Thy mists, that roll and rise! 
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag 
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag 
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff! 
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
 

Long have I known a glory in it all,
 

But never knew I this:
 

Here such a passion is 
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear 
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year; 
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall 
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

 
October
 

OCTOBER is the treasurer of the year,  
And all the months pay bounty to her store:  
The fields and orchards still their tribute bear,  
And fill her brimming coffers more and more.  
But she, with youthful lavishness,  
Spends all her wealth in gaudy dress,  
And decks herself in garments bold  
Of scarlet, purple, red, and gold.
 

She heedeth not how swift the hours fly,  
But smiles and sings her happy life along;  
She only sees above a shining sky;  
She only hears the breezes' voice in song.  
Her garments trail the woodland through,  
And gather pearls of early dew  
That sparkle till the roguish Sun  
Creeps up and steals them every one.
 

But what cares she that jewels should be lost,  
When all of Nature's bounteous wealth is hers?  
Though princely fortunes may have been their cost,  
Not one regret her calm demeanor stirs.  
Whole-hearted, happy, careless, free,  
She lives her life out joyously,  
Nor cares when Frost stalks o'er her way  
And turns her auburn locks to gray. 
 

Paul Laurence Dunbar

 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - AUTUMN 
  

Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain, 
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned, 
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand, 
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain! 
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne, 
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand 
Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land, 
Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain! 
Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended 
So long beneath the heaven's o'er-hanging eaves; 
Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended; 
Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves; 
And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid, 
Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves!

 
Autumn 
 

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by. 
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows, 
and on the meadows let the wind go free.
 

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine; 
grant them a few more warm transparent days, 
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press 
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.
 

Whoever has no house now, will never have one. 
Whoever is alone will stay alone, 
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, 
and wander along the boulevards, up and down, 
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.
 

 	-- Rainer Maria Rilke

 
September
  

The breezes taste 
Of apple peel. 
The air is full 
Of smells to feel. 
 

Ripe fruit, old footballs, 
Burning brush, 
New books, erasers, 
Chalk, and such. 
 

The bee, his hive 
Well-honeyed hums, 
And Mother cuts 
Chrysanthemums. 
 

Like plates washed clean 
With suds, the days 
Are polished with 
A morning haze. 
 

~John Updike

 
October Day at Dam Neck Beach
 

With skipping feet we climbed the stile 
Of weathered wood, our faces smiling. 
Atop the dune we paused to see 
The flow of sea and tide. 
Oh Naughty Waves, you Southern Belles 
In ruffled dresses and rippling tresses 
Inviting shore to dance. 
You bow and tease, pretend you care. 
Then laugh and run to come again 
To play with gulls and saucy pipers. 
Whose only  thought to find a morsel 
Left behind as you retreat. 
Sand and sky, you wondrous things! 
Wind, you gently lift our hair  
Blow softly cross our upturned faces. 
October sky! What blue is lovelier? 
Adorned with leis of clouds, you smile  
As warming rays from solar disk 
Reflect from sea and chase  
The chill from Arctic clime 
Waiting off stage to spoil our fun  
In its own time. 
Today, we laugh and gather bits of shell 
Remnants from a storm at sea. 
Lovely still, their shimmering iridescence 
Glowing memories in our pockets. 
Footprints deep upon the sand 
I stretch to match the stride  
Of my playmates here. 
The camera clicks. 
I already know it cannot capture  
What is deep inside, our youth! 
We hug it close, take it with us. 
When Winter comes in colder dress 
We'll warm out hearts before the fire 
Of this October day.
 

Anna Alexander October 23, 1995