For the day before the cruelest month and National-Poetry-Month Eve, from poetryfoundation.org.
from Spring Day / by Amy Lowell
The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.
Month: March 2016
DPF / Tate
For lifting spirits, from The Eternal Ones of the Dream.
from Behind the Milk Bottle / by James Tate
As for pillagers, think twice:
behind the milk bottle another milk bottle
and a nest of unruly ribbons
and a ghost who barks at airplanes.
DPF / Collins
For something to make anyone smile, from The Trouble with Poetry.
from The Introduction / by Billy Collins
Wagga Wagga is in New South Wales.
Rhyolite is that soft volcanic rock.
What else?
Yes, meranti is a type of timber, in tropical Asia I think,
and Rahway is just Rahway, New Jersey.
The rest of the poem should be clear.
I’ll just read it and let it speak for itself.
DPF / Berryman
Because he always brightens my day no matter how dark, this one’s for and from Berryman, from The Dream Songs.
from Dream Song #112 / by John Berryman
for every word she utters everywhere
shows her good soul, as true as a healed bone,–
being part of what I meant to say.
DPF / Yeats
For the day and the centennial of the poem’s title event, from poetryfoundation.org.
from Easter, 1916 / by William Butler Yeats
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
DPF / Yeats
For a hundred years ago tomorrow, from poetryfoundation.org.
from Easter 1916 / by William Butler Yeats
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
DPF / Tennyson
For a funeral day, from poetryfoundation.org.
from The Lady of Shalott / by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Willows whiten, aspens shiver.
The sunbeam showers break and quiver
In the stream that runneth ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
DPF / Salter
For home, from poetryfoundation.org.
from Home Movies: A Sort of Ode / by Mary Jo Salter
Here
she’s happy, teaching us to dye
the Easter eggs in it, a Grecian
urn of sorts near which—a foster
child of silence and slow time
myself—I smile because she does
and patiently await my turn.
DPF / Bishop
For one of the wonderful poetry aunts, from The Complete Poems.
from At the Fishhouses / by Elizabeth Bishop
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
DPF / Steidlmayer
For getting a toe x-ray today, from poetryfoundation.org.
from The X-Ray / by Heidy Steidlmayer
I could imagine a lanthorn
as it swallows its strange light and gleams
from within as if reborn
