April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 20, 2013

MARY OLIVER (again)

About Angels and About Trees

Where do angels

fly in the firmament,

and how many can dance

on the head of a pin?

Well, I don’t care

about that pin dance,

what I know is that

they rest, sometimes,

in the tops of the trees

and you can see them,

or almost see them,

or, anyway, think:  what a

wonderful idea.

I have lost as you and

others have possibly lost a

beloved one,

and wonder, where are they now?

The trees, anyway, are

miraculous, full of

angels (ideas); even

empty they are a

good place to look to put

the heart at rest – all those

leaves breathing the air, so

peaceful and diligent, and certainly

ready to be

the resting place of

strange, winged creatures

that we, in this world, have loved.

April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 18, 2013

DAVID YOUNG

Walking Home on an Early Spring Evening

Every microcosm needs its crow,

something to hang around and comment,

scavenge,

alight on highest branches.

Who hasn’t seen the gnats,

the pollen grains that coat the windshield –

who hasn’t heard the tree frogs?

In the long march that takes us all our life,

in and out of sleep, sun up, sun gone,

our aging back and forth, smiling and puzzled,

there come these times:  you stop and look,

and fix on something unremarkable,

a parking lot or just a patch of sumac,

but it will flare and resonate

and you’ll feel part of it for once,

you’ll be a goldfinch hanging on a feeder,

you’ll be a river system all in silver

etched on a frosty driveway, you’ll

say “Folks, I think I made it this time,

I think this is my song.”  The crow lifts up,

Its feathers shine and whisper,

Its round black eye surveys indifferently

the world we’ve made

and then the one we haven’t.

April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 17, 2013

P. K. Page

Planet Earth

It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet,

has to be ironed, the sea in its whiteness;

and the hands keep on moving,

smoothing the holy surfaces.

                ‘In Praise of Ironing’, PABLO NERUDA

It has to be loved the way a laundress loves her linens,

the way she moves her hands caressing the fine muslins

knowing their warp and woof,

like a lover coaxing, or a mother praising.

It has to be loved as if it were embroidered

with flowers and birds and two joined hearts upon it.

It has to be stretched and stroked.

It has to be celebrated.

O this great beloved world and all the creatures in it.

It has to be spread out, the skin of this planet.

The trees must be washed, and the grasses and mosses.

They have to be polished as if made of green brass.

The rivers and little streams with their hidden cresses

and pale-coloured pebbles

and their fool’s gold

must be washed and starched or shined into brightness,

the sheets of lake water

smoothed with the hand

and the foam of the oceans pressed into neatness.

It has to be ironed, the sea in its whiteness

and pleated and goffered, the flower-blue sea

the protean, wine-dark, grey, green, sea

with its metres of satin and bolts of brocade.

And sky – such an O! overhead – night and day

must be burnished and rubbed

by hands that are loving

so the blue blazons forth

and the stars keep on shining

within and above

and the hands keep on moving.

It has to be made bright, the skin of this planet

till it shines in the sun like gold leaf.

Archangels then will attend to its metals

and polish the rods of its rain.

Seraphim will stop singing hosannas

to shower it with blessings and blisses and praises

and, newly in love,

we must draw it and paint it

our pencils and brushes and loving caresses

smoothing the holy surfaces.

April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 11, 2013

W.S. MERWIN

THE OVERPASS

You know how you

will be looking for somewhere

and come by surprise on a long cement bridge

sailing out over a wide

cement ditch carved deep into the hill

between whose banks the traffic is rushing

in both directions

in what is now the air above it

there was a pasture

beside dark woods

I saw it

and a swamp near the first trees

with a pump house hidden

in low green blackberry bushes

and mist coming off the upland marsh

first thing in the morning

and on the cold hill

a man and a boy

planting potatoes

with a mule keeping ahead of them

climbing the furrows

through the morning smelling of

wet grass

none of them seeing

the white bird flying over

April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library
National Poetry Month Poem of the Day –
April 10, 2013

Stuart Gravatt

Spring Is Weeping Tonight

Not summer’s narcissist, calling

attention to herself with booms

and flashes, nor winter’s frozen

fury, piling white on white.  A shimmering

sheen of rain, instead, an incessant

shower that lulls

and saddens, like a woman somewhere

in the world, her face in her hands.

Always so much to weep for – the friend

who is dying; the lover who left;

a river that made the news,

poisoned forever by something

leaking; the unnamed

species extinct this hour.

April is National Poetry Month

 Ukiah Library Poem of the Day
April 9, 2013

Prayer

Galway Kinnell

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.