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

For the school year which nears an end, from The Apple that Astonished Paris.

from Schoolsville / by Billy Collins

Glancing over my shoulder at the past,
I realize the number of students I have taught
is enough to populate a small town.

I can see it nestled in a paper landscape
chalk dust flurrying down in winter,
nights dark as a blackboard.

For the ocean and its persistence, from Selected Poems, edited by Richard S. Kennedy.

from 5 (maggie and milly and molly and may) / by E.E. Cummings 

and maggie discovered a shell that sang 

so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and