For the love of vowels, from Poetry, January 2017.
from An Owl (in Memory of Gil) / by David Shapiro
Owl small be enough
The child for all his feathers was a cold.
Oh wow the owl.
Month: January 2017
DPF / Sexton
For some rainy days like today are made for fairy tales, even these, from Transformations.
from Cinderella / by Anne Sexton
Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
DPF / Merwin
For fathers and sons and sharing time with our parents, from Opening the Hand.
from Yesterday / by W.S. Merwin
he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I don’t want to keep you
I look out the window
my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know
DPF / Tate
For lost dads, from Selected Poems.
from The Lost Pilot / by James Tate
and you, passing over again,
fast, perfect, and unwilling
to tell me that you are doing
well
DPF / Plath
For, when life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Take the time to experience the difficulty, to fully embrace it long enough to see its meaning for your world, from one of my poets to whom I always turn in times of confusion or sadness, from Ariel.
from Wintering / by Sylvia Plath
Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas
Succeed in banking their fires
To enter another year?
What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?
The bees are flying. They taste the spring.
DPF / Snow
For you, who teach every day, whether it’s a matter of pay or not, from Rattle 53, Fall 2016.
from Sestina for Adjuncts / by Rebecca Snow
Enough clothes and books should fit in our car-home; keep
putting the students first. Remember to teach them critical thinking. Fate
holds us by the string, urges us to be a kite, but doesn’t let us go anywhere.
DPF / Levertov
For our many teachers, from Oblique Prayers.
from Last Night’s Dream / by Denise Levertov
I sing tree, making green
school after school of leaf-fish
flicker between the shade and sunlight
in nets of branch,
urging the students to see, to see —
DPF / Berryman
For Henry and John, from 77 Dream Songs.
from 77 Dream Songs: 13 / by John Berryman
God bless Henry. He lived like a rat,
with a thatch of hair on his head
in the beginning.
Henry was not a coward. Much.
He never deserted anything; instead
he stuck, when things like pity were thinning.
DPF / McClellan
For the welcome cold and rainy day, from poetryfoundation.org.
from A January Dandelion / by George Marion McClellan
All Nashville is a chill. And everywhere
Like desert sand, when the winds blow,
There is each moment sifted through the air,
A powdered blast of January snow.
DPF / Cotter
For the future I’d like to meet in each moment and not know a second ahead of time, from Poetry, October 2016.
from Time Traveler / by Patrick Cotter
Now is before he was born. Days of air
shaken by bees, crow song probing eaves
and quays. Maker of the future a perfect
terra-cotta tense, a tense which sings.
Daily Poetry Fragments {Semi-Daily} 