For an almost happy poem, a wishful, wistful poem, from the 1972 Harper & Row first edition of Winter Trees.

from Child / by Sylvia Plath

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with colors and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose names you meditate —
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk

For another favorite poem with a bit of Roethke in it, and a poem which reminds me of the few days of my life I spent in Ireland, one of them in a cottage overlooking the edge of the sea and a stretch of grass ghosted in barely-moving sheets of sheep, from the Faber “paper covered” edition of Ariel.

from Sheep in Fog / by Sylvia Plath

Hooves, dolorous bells —
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,

A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.

For casts and of course Plath’s cast grew a mind of its own, from The London Magazine, February 1962, an issue in which she shares pg. 15 with her husband, Ted Hughes.

from In Plaster / by Sylvia Plath

Without me, she wouldn’t exist, so of course she was grateful.
I gave her a soul, I bloomed out of her as a rose
Blooms out of a vase of not very valuable porcelain

For a favorite poem and a week of Plath and sudden sightings of light that often count for signs, from The Collected Poems.

from Black Rook in Rainy Weather / by Sylvia Plath

Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.

For let’s make a week of Heaney, from Opened Ground.

from Bogland / by Seamus Heaney

They’ve taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up,
An astounding crate full of air.

For a family day of 10K’s and Half Marathons on the beach; wishful only that I’ll make it to the end of my 10K without walking (and, I hope not to merge with the sea during the run)! from poetryfoundation.org.

from For a Poet-Athlete / by Larry Rubin

The swimmer merges with the sea, his muscles
Measure undulating waters, his motion
Masters time.

For the father of first-thought-best-thought, an idea which may only work for a mind like Ginsberg’s, from The Best American Poetry 1997, edited by James Tate, series editor David Lehman.

from Is About / by Allen Ginsberg

Who cares what it’s all about?
I do! Edgar Allan Poe cares! Shelley cares! Beethoven and Dylan care.
Do you care? What are you about
or are you a human being with 10 fingers and two eyes?

For a place in which animals live and die and live again, from The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry (1990).

from The Heaven of Animals / by James Dickey

Here they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.

For Stein’s meditation on female poets, from No More Masks! An Anthology of 20th-Century American Women Poets (1993).

from Patriarchal Poetry / by Gertrude Stein

as Patriarchal poetry is the same as Patriotic poetry is the same
as patriarchal poetry in the same.
Patriarchal poetry is the same….

Let her be to be to be to be let her be to be to be let her to

For Sappho, Mrs. Browning, and Lowell’s meditation on female poets, from No More Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Women Poets (1993).

from The Sisters / by Amy Lowell

We are one family. And still my answer
Will not be any one of yours, I see.
Well, never mind that now. Good night! Good night!