April Rain Song

April Rain Song
by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.



http://allpoetry.com/April-Rain-Song

The Power of the Dog

The Power of the Dog

by Rudyard Kipling

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie--
Perfect passsion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart to a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet's unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find--it's your own affair--
But ... you've given your heart to a dog to tear. 

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!)
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone--wherever it goes--for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear. 

We've sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-term loan is as bad as a long--
So why in--Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

Found here:  http://www.bartleby.com/364/335.html

The Ties That Bind

The Ties That Bind
by Bruce Springsteen

You been hurt and you're all cried out you say
You walk down the street pushin' people outta your way
You packed your bags and all alone you want to ride
You don't want nothin', don't need no one by your side
You're walkin' tough baby, but you're walkin' blind
To the ties that bind

The ties that bind
Now you can't break the ties that bind

Cheap romance, it's all just a crutch
You don't want nothin' that anybody can touch
You're so afraid of being somebody's fool
Not walkin' tough baby, not walkin' cool
You walk cool, but darlin', can you walk the line
And face the ties that bind
The ties that bind
Now you can't break the ties that bind

I would rather feel the hurt inside, yes I would darlin'
Than know the emptiness your heart must hide
Yes I would, darlin', yes I would, darlin'
Yes I would, baby

Oh, you sit and wonder just who's gonna stop the rain
Who'll ease the sadness, who's gonna quiet your pain
It's a long dark highway and a thin white line
Connecting baby, your heart to mine
We're runnin' now but darlin' we will stand in time
To face the ties that bind
The ties that bind
Now you can't break the ties that bind
You can't forsake the ties that bind

Found here:   https://youtu.be/Y45YyJYF30s

Small, Smaller

Small, Smaller
by Russell Hoban


I thought I knew all there was to know 
Of being small, until I saw once, black against the snow
A shrew, trapped in my footprint, jump and fall
And jump again and fall, the hole too deep, the walls too tall



Found here: http://stancarey.tumblr.com/post/108995343323/small-smaller

Possibilities

POSSIBILITIES by Wislawa Szymborska

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here
to many things I’ve also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.

 Hear Amanda Palmer recite it here. 

Introduction to Poetry

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slid

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie a poem to a chair
with rope and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.


Found here.

Touched by an Angel

Touched by an Angel
Maya Angelou


We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.


Found here. 

Malheur Before Dawn

Malheur Before Dawn
William Stafford

An owl sound wandered along the road with me.
I didn’t hear it—I breathed it into my ears.

Little ones at first, the stars retired, leaving
polished little circles on the sky for awhile.

Then the sun began to shout from below the horizon.
Throngs of birds campaigned, their music a tent of sound.

From across a pond, out of the mist,
one drake made a V and said its name.

Some vast animal of sound began to rouse
from the reeds and lean outward.

Frogs discovered their national anthem again.
I didn’t know a ditch could hold so much joy.

So magic a time it was that I was both brave and afraid.
Some day like this might save the world.


http://williamstafford.org/broad/pages/malheur.html

One Way Ticket

One Way Ticket
By Langston Hughes

I pick up my life,
And take it with me,
And I put it down in
Chicago, Detroit,
Buffalo, Scranton,
Any place that is
North and East,
And not Dixie.


http://smsgreatmigration.blogspot.com/2010/02/one-way-ticket-by-langston-hughes.html

An Ancient Horse

An Ancient Horse by Jeff Moss
 
Hyracotherium, a tiny horse
Lived millions of years ago.
He measured just twelve inches high,
So what I'd like to know -
Did paleontologist ever find,
Near where that horse was at,
Some eensy-weensy boots and spurs
And a teeny cowboy hat?




Found here  :)

My Three Friends

My Three Friends
by Louis L'Amour



I have three friends, three faithful friends,
More Faithful could not be–
And every night, by the dim firelight,
They come to sit with me.
~~~
The first of these is tall and thin
With hollow cheeks, and a toothless grin;
A ghastly stare, and scraggly hair,
And an ugly lump for a chin.
~~~
The second of these is short and fat
With beady eyes, like a starving rat–
He was soaked in sin to his oily skin,
And verminous, at that.
~~~
The crouching one is of ape-like plan,
Formed like a beast that resembled man:
A freakish thing, with arms a-swing,
And he was the third of that gruesome clan.
~~~
The first I stabbed with a Chinese knife,
And left on the white beach sand,
With his ghastly stare, and blood soaked hair,
And an out-flung, claw-like hand;
~~~
The fat one stole a crumbling crust,
That he wolfed in his swineish way–
So I left him there, with eyes a glare,
An his head cut off half-way.
~~~
We fought to kill, the brute and I,
That the one that lived might eat,
So I killed him too, and made a stew,
And dined on human meat.
~~~
And so these three come to visit me,
When without the night winds howl–
The one with the leer, the one with a sneer,
And the one with a brutish scowl;
~~~
Their lips are dumb, but the three dead come
And crouch by the hollow grate–
The man that I stabbed, the man that I cut,
And the gruesome thing that I ate.
~~~
Their lips are sealed, with blood congealed,
But they will not let me be,
And so they haunt, grim, ghastly, and gaunt,
Till death shall set me free.
~~~
I have three friends, three faithful friends,
More Faithful could not be–
And every night, by the dim firelight,
They come to sit with me.


https://rhymenreview.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/a-friendly-poem-for-friday-the-13th/

What the Bird Said Early In the Year

What the Bird Said Early In the Year
C.S. Lewis


I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear:
This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees
This year nor want of rain destroy the peas.

This year time’s nature will no more defeat you.
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

This time they will not lead you round and back
To Autumn, one year older, by the well worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,
Quick, quick, quick, quick! – the gates are drawn apart.


Found here. 

Golden Retrievals

Golden Retrievals 
 by Mark Doty

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention

seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so.

Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s—oh

joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue

of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?

Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk,

thinking of what you never can bring back,

or else you’re off in some fog concerning

—tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:

to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,

my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here,

entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

Found on Poetry Out Loud here.

The Naming of Cats

The Naming of Cats
T.S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.


Hear T.S. Eliot recite this lovely poem here. 

The Wild Swans at Coole

The Wild Swans at Coole

W.B. Yeats

The trees are in their autumn beauty,   

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water   

Mirrors a still sky;

Upon the brimming water among the stones   

Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me   

Since I first made my count;

I saw, before I had well finished,

All suddenly mount

And scatter wheeling in great broken rings   

Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,   

And now my heart is sore.

All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,   

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,   

Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;   

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,   

Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,   

Mysterious, beautiful;   

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day   

To find they have flown away?

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.


Found here. 

Aimless Love

"Aimless Love" by Billy Collins

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor's window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door—
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor—
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.




Found at the Writers Almanac here. 

Love

Love
              By Langston Hughes
   
Love is a wild wonder
And stars that sing
Rocks that burst asunder
And mountains that take wing.
John Henry with his hammer
Makes a little spark.
That little spark is love
Dying in the dark.


Found here. 

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

A Ritual To Read To Each Other
by William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.


Found here.  

Earth Day

By Jane Yolen

 

 

I am the Earth

And the Earth is me.

Each blade of grass,

Each honey tree,

Each bit of mud,

And stick and stone

Is blood and muscle,

Skin and bone.

And just as I

Need every bit

Of me to make

My body fit,

So Earth needs

Grass and stone and tree

And things that grow here

Naturally.

That’s why we

Celebrate this day.

That’s why across

The world we say:

As long as life,

As dear, as free,

I am the Earth

And the Earth is me. 

 

Found on Poetry Foundation here.