DPF / Eliot

For all the cats our family has known, from The Complete Poems and Plays.

from The Naming of Cats / by T.S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficulty matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

DPF / Koch

For patience and waiting and pausing, as one season currently (barely) hides the next, from One Train.

from One Train / by Kenneth Koch

One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be
important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

DPF / Tufariello

PIA: from an April 30.

For the last day of National Poetry Month, 2016, from a sweet friend and her book, Keeping My Name.

from Chemist’s Daughter / by Catherine Tufariello

a Milky Way
was whirling on the tip of my fingernail,
ten thousand planets dancing on its pale
half moon

DPF / Cooley

PIA: from September 28, 2014.

For beauty sleep, which I could really use about now, from Poetry 180, edited by Billy Collins.

from The History of Poetry / by Peter Cooley

Centuries yawned and fell back, stuporous,
eons stretched out

DPF / Hughes

For, “why do I have three hard-cover copies of this book?” I’m not sure, but I think it has something to do with my shared attachment to Plath. This one’s from Birthday Letters.

from Fairy Tale / by Ted Hughes

Forty-nine was your magic number.
Forty-nine this.
Forty-nine that. Forty-eight
Doors in your high palace

DPF / Williams

For time to start saying goodbye to the flowers, from Selected Poems.

from Flowers by the Sea / by William Carlos Williams

When over the flowery, sharp pasture’s
edge, unseen, the salt ocean

lifts its form — chicory and daisies
tied, released, seem hardly flowers alone

DPF / Strand

​PIA: from June 2016.

For wishes, and for a beloved poet much missed, from poetryfoundation.org.

from The Minister of Culture Gets His Wish / by Mark Strand

The Minister of Culture goes home after a grueling day at the office. He lies on his bed and tries to think of nothing, but nothing happens or, more precisely, does not happen.

DPF / Ali

For fun, from a great athlete.

from [Google] / by Muhammad Ali

Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare.

DPF / Szymborska

For the moments before, when the world was one kind of world, some different from what it became during and after those moments, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Photograph from September 11 / by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Clare Cavanagh

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them
above the earth toward the earth.

DPF / Ammons

For going home, from Worldly Hopes. Okay, apologies that I had ALMONDS on my mind.

from I Went Back / by A.R. Ammons

I went back
to my old home
and the furrow
of each year
plowed like
surf