Poems that I love

by Rebecca del Rio Gratitude means showing up on life’s doorstep, love’s threshold, dressed in a clown suit, rubber-nosed, gunboat shoes flapping. Gratitude shows up with arms full of wildflowers, reciting McKuen or the worst of Neruda. To talk of gratitude is to be the fool in a cynic’s world. Gratitude is pride’s nightmare, the admission of humility before something given without expectation or attachment. Gratitude tears open the shirt of self importance, scatters buttons across the polished floors of feigned indifference, ignores the obvious and laughs out loud. Even more, gratitude bears her breasts, rips open her ribs to show the naked heart, the holy heart. What if that sacred heart is not, after all, about sacrifice? Imagine it is about joy, barefoot and foolhardy, something unasked for, something unearned. What if the beat we hear, when we are finally quiet is simply this: Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you, Rebecca!

by Al Markowitz originally published on November 12, 2007 On Memorial Day, for all the Veterans who marched against the War in Iraq and were jeered. Keep the faith! A palpable silence of reverence where “soldier” is synonymous with hero revered. Where service in battle is holy and mysterious dark foreigners feared. We venerate our soldiers’ presence on the always far front and with heads bowed in adoration try to show off our symbols of public support – as long as they shut up and die. contact: Partisan Press P.O. 11417 Norfolk, VA 23517

by Robert Frost Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it And spills the upper boulder in the sun, And make gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there, I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: "Stay where you are until our backs are turned!" We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side. It co...

by Rebecca del Rio You are hanging from a branch by your teeth. No way to save yourself or others who hang, too. Arms that cannot reach any branch, legs stretch but cannot find the smooth safe trunk. All around, your loved ones, friends, strangers hang-- teeth clamp bony twigs that suspend necessary hopes and plans. It is hopeless. No rescue will arrive. So you relax, taste the clean, unfamiliar tang of sap, feel the forgiving wind against your waving arms, arms that swim through emptiness. Without hope, life is focused, fluid, a ledge of fragile earth suspended over the ocean of unknowing, the end of the branch. Life is the glorious moment before the fall when all plans are abandoned, the love you give as you hang, loving those who hang with you.

by Mary Oliver Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Listen to Ms. Oliver read her own poem. If you want to read more of Mary Oliver’s poems, here are some that I like. Copyri...

by Robert Frost Although this was one of the first poems I learned by heart, when I was a teenager Frost's poems seemed too sentimental for my austere soul. Now I find myself turning to his elegant New England verses more and more. Is that a sign of growing older or some inner thawing? When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust-- Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to brea...

by Robert Frost Frost tried to read a poem he wrote for Kennedy's Inauguration . When the sun and wind stopped him, he recited "The Gift Outright" from memory. Three cheers f or the wind and the sun! The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia, But we were England's, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become. To read this poem in Frost's own hand... Please click here to g...