For the excitement of awaiting the next race, from poetryfoundation.org.
from Joy / by Maurine Smith
Joy, Joy, run over me
Like water over a shining stone
20th-Century Poetry
DPF / Cummings
For Happy Mother’s Day, from Selected Poems.
from Portraits: 2 / by E. E. Cummings
if there are any heavens mother will (all by herself) have
one.
DPF / Wright
For Ohio, from Collected Poems.
from The Jewel / by James Wright
When I stand upright in the wind,
My bones turn to dark emeralds.
DPF / Hughes
For a scary book, almost worse than nightmares and some real days, from Crow.
from Lineage / by Ted Hughes
Who begat Nothing
Who begat Never
Never Never Never
Who begat Crow
DPF / Roethke
For trees and birds, two of my favorite things, from one of Plath’s kind angels of influence, and from The Far Field.
from The Tree, the Bird / by Theodore Roethke
Uprose, uprose, the stony field uprose,
And every snail dipped toward me its pure horn.
The sweet light met me as I walked toward
A small voice calling from a drifting cloud.
DPF / Collins
For a beloved book with a great title that always feels especially relevant in May, especially if one is a teacher, from The Art of Drowning.
from The Biography of a Cloud / by Billy Collins
We do know this much:
that it billowed white at the mountainous top
and its flat underside was the gray of headstones;
that it slid onto the land and felt its way
over the contours of several western states,
always moving eastward, from left to right,
the way the eye moves over print
as if it were reading the earth with its blind shadow.
DPF / Bishop
For a most-famous simile, from The Complete Poems, 1927-1979.
from The Bight / by Elizabeth Bishop
Some of the little white boats are still piled up
against each other, or lie on their sides, stove in,
and not yet salvaged, if they ever will be, from the last bad storm,
like torn-open, unanswered letters.
DPF / Walcott
For his own elegy, in memory of our loss, from Poetry, May 2017.
from The day / by Derek Walcott (1930-2017)
the rusted meadows, the wind-whitened grass,
the coos of the stone-colored ground doves on the road,
the echo of benediction on a house –
DPF / Berryman
For if it’s your birthday today, happy birthday to you, from The Dream Songs.
from Dream Song #112 / by John Berryman
I say again, It is my Lady’s birthday
which must be honoured, for her high black hair
but not for that alone:
for every word she utters everywhere
shows her good soul, as true as a healed bone,–
being part of what I meant to say.
DPF / Borges
For I’ve heard of the theory of directing one’s dreams, but I haven’t met anyone who does, from Dreamtigers.
from Dreamtigers / by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Mildred Boyer and Harold Morland
The tiger indeed appears, but stuffed or flimsy, or with impure variations of shape, or of an implausible size, or all too fleeting, or with a touch of the dog or the bird.
Daily Poetry Fragments {Semi-Daily} 