For newborns, from What Work Is.

from Among Children / by Philip Levine

There was such wonder
in their sleep, such purpose in their eyes
closed against autumn, in their damp heads
blurred with the hair of ponds, and not one
turned against me or the light, not one
said, I am sick, I am tired, I will go home,
not one complained or drifted alone,
unloved, on the hardest day of their lives.

For the love of chicken wire and parts of boxes, from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: Volume I, 1909-1939. 

from Pastoral / by William Carlos Williams

No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.

For librarians and libraries, from What Work Is.

from Agnus Dei / by Philip Levine

There was weeping and gnashing. The lamb escaped
through an expensive, leaded windowpane
and entered the late afternoon flying low
over the houses

For the beauty of Chinese poetry, from Negative Blue.

from After Reading Wang Wei, I go Outside to the Full Moon  / by Charles Wright

Back here, old snow like lace cakes,
Candescent and brittle now and then through the tall grass.

For childhood and its many varieties, some endless ones and some too brief, from What Work Is.

from Growth / by Philip Levine

Then out to the open weedy yard
among the waiting and emptied drums
where I hammered and sawed, singing
my new life of working and earning,
outside in the fresh air of Detroit
in 1942, a year of growth.

For a little snow in the summer, from Poetry, October/November 1963.

from II Snow Line / by John Berryman

It was wet & white & swift & where I am
I don’t know. It was dark and then
it isn’t.

For the love of fathers and daughters, from poetryfoundation.org.

from On the Beach at Night / by Walt Whitman