DPF / Cummings

For the tiniest things, like this one last tiny extra day of February, from Poetry, February 1961.

from 2 little whos / by E. E. Cummings

(2 little ams
and over them this
aflame with dreams
incredible is)

DPF / Rossetti

For birthdays and for my birthday today, from poetryfoundation.org.

from A Birthday / by Christina Rossetti

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
                  And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
                  In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys

 

DPF / Heaney

For making metaphor-making look as simple as breathing, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Casualty / by Seamus Heaney

To get out early, haul
Steadily off the bottom,
Dispraise the catch, and smile
As you find a rhythm
Working you, slow mile by mile,
Into your proper haunt
Somewhere, well out, beyond…

DPF / Marquette

For dreams of the other kind, from Poetry, March 2016.

from Want / by Gretchen Marquette

When I was twelve, I wanted a macaw
      but they cost hundreds of dollars.

If we win the lottery? I asked.

DPF / Lowell

For the approaching season and the hope that I don’t miss the few lilac weeks this year, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Lilacs / by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)

Lilacs,
False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac.
Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England,
Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England,
Lilac in me because I am New England,
Because my roots are in it,
Because my leaves are of it,
Because my flowers are for it,
Because it is my country
And I speak to it of itself
And sing of it with my own voice
Since certainly it is mine.

DPF / Ortolani

For dreams, from Rattle, Spring 2016.

from Paper Birds Don’t Fly / by Al Ortolani

Last night I had a dream
that my father, six years
dead now, left me a message
folded into some kind of origami bird.

DPF / Herrera

For ways of travel, real and surreal, from Senegal Taxi, by Juan Felipe Herrera, our Poet Laureate.

from Mud Drawing #32. Ibrahim, the Village Boy / by Juan Felipe Herrera

…I slowed my taxi I opened the soft door stepped out Sahel too and Abdullah the waters of the ocean flushed us out of the taxi on a round street under the dark winged stone of the sun.

DPF / Padgett

For oranges and sleep, from How to Be Perfect, by Ron Padgett.

from How to Be Perfect / by Ron Padgett

Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room
before you save the world. Then save the world.

DPF / Padgett

For colors and tapestry, from How to Be Perfect, by Ron Padgett.

from History / by Ron Padgett

I think that Geoffrey Chaucer did not move
the way a modern person moves.
He moved only an inch at a time, in what
we call stop action.

 

DPF / Collins

For peace again, the rarest of all things, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Silence / by Billy Collins

There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a player not moving on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.