For lost words, lines, dreams, from The Best American Poetry: 1997, edited by James Tate, series editor David Lehman.

from Lines Lost Among Trees / by Billy Collins

home to lost epics,
unremembered names,
and fugitive dreams
such as the one I had last night,

which, like a fantastic city in pencil,
erased itself
in the bright morning air
just as I was waking up.

For the days we face, from The House on Marshland.

from The Undertaking / by Louise Glück

The darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime.

For Persephone, from The House on Marshland.

from Pomegranate / by Louise Glück

First he gave me
his heart. It was
red fruit containing
many seeds, the skin
leathery, unlikely.

For one of my favorite poems of all time, from Return to the City of White Donkeys.

from Of Whom Am I Afraid? / by James Tate

          At some point there was an
old, grizzled farmer standing next to me holding
a rake, and I said to him, ‘Have you ever read
much Emily Dickinson?’ ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I
reckon I’ve read all of her poems at least a
dozen times. She’s a real pistol….’

For the highway that edges our small town, from Highway 99: a literary journey through California’s Great Central Valley.

from The Field / by DeWayne Rail

The field is the last refuge of squirrels,
Jackrabbits, and mice. Deserted, left
To its devices, it has taken years
To grow a thick cover of weeds that tangle

And arch over long tunnels.

For if you want poetry that makes you smile, one poet is e. e. cummings, or E.E. Cummings, from Selected Poems, edited by Richard S. Kennedy.

from you shall above all things be glad and young / by E. E. Cummings

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

For our Sylvia, from The Collected Poems.

from Domina: for Sylvia Plath / by Beatrice Hawley

and in our generation
we have lost the trick
of knowing how to feed
those who never die

For our town’s seniors, graduating tonight, and suddenly someone may look around and realize maps exist which hold more than we can see from the classroom windows so, go have adventures, but remember to come home, from The Complete Poems: 1927-1979.

from The Map / by Elizabeth Bishop

Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors?
–What suits the character or the native waters best.
Topography displays no favorites; North’s as near as West.
More delicate than the historians’ are the map-makers’ colors.

For hoping for wings at today’s track meet, from Selected Poems, edited by Richard S. Kennedy.

from (Poetry of the Eye) 12 / by E. E. Cummings

birds (
here,inven
ting air
U
)sing

tw
iligH(
t’s
v
va
vas
vast

ness.

For luck, which, in addition to practice, hard work, and skill, we most certainly would love to have at the next track meet, from poetryfoundation.org.

from To Luck / by W.S. Merwin