April is Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – EARTH DAY 2013

Posted April 24, 2013

Julia Butterfly Hill

OFFERINGS TO LUNA

A tree

a life so many years gone by

history bound with each new ring and every scar

i lie nestled in Her arms

i listen to all She has to say

She speaks to me through my bare feet…my hands

She speaks to me on the wind…and in the rain

telling me stories born long before my time

Wisdom

as only Ancient Elders know

Truths

passed to me through Nature’s perfect lips

She cries

Her overwhelming grief

sap that clings to me…to my soul

i wrap my arms around Her

offering the only solace that I know

giving myself as the only gift I have to give

a pitiful offering

to a Goddess such as this but of myself

it is all that I have to give

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.

Lady Day by J. Patrick Lewis

Lady Day
by
J. Patrick Lewis

Billie Holiday
1915-1959  

On “Blue Moon” nights I love to hypnotize
Strangers in smoky nightclubs just like this,
“Too Marvelous for Words” in “Them There Eyes,"
They swoon like I was “Prelude to a Kiss.”
“Nice Work If You Can Get It.” What I’ve got,
Oh, no, “You Can’t Take That Away From Me.”
It’s “All Or Nothing At All”—or maybe not—
“I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues” off-key.
“What Is This Thing Called Love?” I cannot find
It in a blessed note a Lady sings.
A life mistreated treats you so unkind,
Left me with “Just One of Those (Crazy) Things”—
A voice that Harlem toned and living tuned,
A voice I carry with me like a wound.

April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 6, 2013

MARY OLIVER

THE MORNING PAPER

Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition

is the best

for by evening you know that you at least

have lived through another day)

and let the disasters, the unbelievable

yet approved decisions,

soak in.

I don’t need to name the countries,

ours among them.

What keeps us from falling down, our faces

to the ground; ashamed, ashamed?

April is National Poetry Month

Ukiah Library Poem of the Day
April 4, 2013

Neil Gaiman

“House”

Sometimes I think it’s like I live in a big giant head on a hilltop

made of papier mache, a big giant head of my own head.

I polish the eyes which would be windows, or
mow the lawn, I mean this is my house we’re talking about here

even if it is a big giant papier mache head that looks just like mine.

And people who go past
in cars or buses or see the house the head on the hill from trains 

they think the house is me.
I’ll be sleeping there, or polishing the eyes, or weeding the lawn,

but no-one will see me, no-one would look.
And no-one would ever come. And if I waved no-one even knows it was me waving.

They’d all be looking in the wrong place, at the head on the hill.
I can see your house from here.

April is National Poetry Month

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 3, 2013

MARGE PIERCY

The ark of consequence

The classic rainbow shows as an arc,

a bridge strung in thinning clouds,

but I have seen it flash a perfect circle,

rising and falling and rising again

through the octave of colors,

a sun shape rolling like a wheel of light.

Commonly it is a fraction of a circle,

a promise only partial, not a banal

sign of safety like a smile pin,

that rainbow cartoon affixed to vans

and baby carriages.  No, it promises

only, this world will not self-destruct.

Account the rainbow a boomerang of liquid

light, foretelling rather that what we

toss out returns in the water table;

flows from the faucet into our bones.

What we shoot up into orbit falls

to earth one night through the roof.

Think of it as a promise that what

we do continues in an arc

of consequence, flickers in our

children’s genes, collects in each

spine and liver, gleams in the apple,

coats the down of the drowning auk.

When you see the rainbow iridescence

shiver in the oil slick, smeared

on the waves of the poisoned river,

shudder for the covenant broken, for we

are given only this floating round ark

with the dead moon for company and warning.