If you’re reading this, you may be one of those people with this particular joy in life, from Poetry Magazine, June 2016.
from As I walk patiently through life / by Daniel Berrigan, 1921-2016
As I walk patiently through life
poems follow close —
DPF / Tate
When under stress, try Tate. For the care and feeding of the imagination, from The Eternal Ones of the Dream.
from Behind the Milk Bottle / by James Tate
Once as a river of molten lava
poured through my living room
I was cut off from my emergency kit
DPF / Aspenström
For undecipherable lilacs, from The Star by My Head.
from You Have to Practice Reality / by Werner Aspenström, translated by Malena Mörling and Jonas Ellerström
When your sister comes to visit
you often talk of lilacs
as if lilacs were an extinct species
and did not bloom new each June
in halls of mild honey and the songs of thrushes.
DPF / Collins
For our daughter’s 15th birthday today, from The Art of Drowning.
from On Turning Ten / by Billy Collins
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
DPF / Seuss
For Mr. Knox and Dad, from Fox in Socks.
from Fox in Socks / by Dr. Seuss
Through three cheese trees
three free fleas flew.
While these fleas flew,
freezy breeze blew.
Freezy breeze made
these three trees freeze.
DPF / Collins
For moon rocks and Cork, from horoscopes for the dead.
from Memento Mori / by Billy Collins
It doesn’t take much to remind me
what a mayfly I am,
what a soap bubble floating over the children’s party.
DPF / Picasso
For Seville and Córdova, from The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & other poems.
from Tauromachian Emblems / by Pablo Picasso, translated by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris
Ibarra (Don Eduardo) Seville
blue turquoise and straw yellow emblems
DPF / Transtromer
For seashells and telephones, from The Half-Finished Heaven.
from Under Pressure / by Tomas Transtromer, translated by Robert Bly
The restless shadows in my head want to go out there.
They want to crawl in the grain and turn into something gold.
DPF / Heaney
For basalt eggs and swans’ feet, from North.
from The Grauballe Man / by Seamus Heaney
As if he had been poured
in tar, he lies
on a pillow of turf
and seems to weep
DPF / Kelly
For unexplainable happenings, from Song.
from Song / by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
The goat had belonged to a small girl. She named
The goat Broken Thorn Sweet Blackberry, named it after
The night’s bush of stars, because the goat’s silky hair
Was dark as well water, because it had eyes like wild fruit.
Daily Poetry Fragments {Semi-Daily} 