DPF / Milosz

For things happening all around us which we can sometimes see, and sometimes cannot, but still they happen, from The Collected Poems.

from The Parable of the Poppy / by Czeslaw Milosz

On a poppy seed is a tiny house,
Dogs bark at the poppy-seed moon,
And never, never do those poppy-seed dogs
Imagine that somewhere there is a world much larger.

DPF / Strand

For if we can save them, we may only be able to save them one at a time, from Reasons for Moving.

from The Babies / by Mark Strand

Let us hurry.
Let us save the babies.
Let us try to save the babies.

DPF / Kelly

For gardens and all their blooming, from Song.

from The Pear Tree / by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

        Leave off

Your weeping. The rain will keep falling. The crows
Will keep flying. Sit on the ground and wait. Sit
On the ground and wait. Perhaps the bird you planted
Beneath the pear tree…will become…another pear tree.

DPF / Strait

For there are many different ways to celebrate prom night, and one way is by taking athletes to run races dear to their hearts, and one way is by actually having a prom night; our school is doing both tonight, from Poetry.

from Another Moon / by Zack Strait

Mama said
it only existed in storybooks

with its soft surface
of  bluebells

but there it was
spinning so close to the earth

that it bent
every weather vane in Omaha

it was prom night

DPF / Jackson

For whales and mariners, from Poetry, May 2017.
from The Cliff-Top Monastery / by A.B. Jackson
The crew half-slept that night, in golden cells

their dreams hatchlings, their nerves eggshells.

DPF / Tennyson

For those who serve and protect, with sorrow for the need, from The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson.

from Charge of the Light Brigade / by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d

DPF / Eliot

For the end of a long, many-win, cloud-cover, track-&-field day, from The Waste Land.
from The Waste Land: A Game of Chess / by T.S. Eliot
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.

DPF / Collins

For no longer needing to follow one’s horoscope, if one does, when the days have passed for doing so, from horoscopes for the dead. 
from Horoscopes for the Dead / by Billy Collins
But you will be relieved to learn 

that you no longer need to reflect carefully before acting, 

nor do you have to think more of others, 

and never again will creative work take a back seat 

to the business responsibilities that you never really had.

DPF / Akhmatova

For marriage, from Poems of Akhmatova.
from ‘Three Things Enchanted Him’ / by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward
Three things enchanted him:

white peacocks, evensong,

and faded maps of America.

DPF / Heaney

For mothers, from North.

from Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication: for Mary Heaney / by Seamus Heaney

So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove

sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.