DPF / Ciardi

Am bird obsessed. So, this one is from Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds, ed. by Billy Collins, with paintings by David Allen Sibley. More information on Collins and Ciardi at www.poets.org.

from Bird Watching / by John Ciardi

A bird is a bird as long as it is
there. Then it is a miracle our crumbs and
sunflower seeds caught and let go.

DPF / Gerstler

This is from her book, Crown of Weeds, bought, possibly, on Dubuque Street, at Prairie Lights. Or, that’s the bookmark that was in it when I bought it.

from Crown of Weeds / by Amy Gerstler

Much of me is dead, but more of me
is stronger. I still consume the world
with my eyes

DPF / Howe

from Anna Akhmatova / by Fanny Howe

you’d know me as your own.
If only I could call you

mother!

DPF / Hecht

from The Hill / by Anthony Hecht

And that was all, except for the cold and silence
That promised to last forever, like the hill.

DPF / Kleinzahler

So many things, daily, remind me of Bartleby.

from Poem Beginning with a Fragment from Bartleby the Scrivener / by August Kleinzahler

Something about that it was the princess, not
the Pavane, that was supposed to be dead.

DPF / Andresen

from The Mirrors / by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

All day the mirrors kindle their brilliance
Never are they empty

DPF / Bradstreet

1612?-1672 — sailed in with the founding party of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

from In Honor of that High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth, of Most Happy Memory: Her Epitaph / by Anne Bradstreet

Here sleeps the Queen, this is the royal bed,
O’th’ damask Rose, sprung from the white and red,
Whose sweet perfume fills the all-filling air

DPF / Roethke

No Roethke yet? Oh no.

from The Lost Son / by Theodore Roethke

A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.