A poem by Michael Ryan

In this poem, the poet interprets an ordinary scene in his own highly unique way. Few would see poetry in such an ordinary occurrence. But poetry is truly a personal and sometimes an ineffable experience.

Here I am

     by Michael Ryan

on a subway station bench
next to two teens, one pretty, one not:
the pretty one keeps saying how much
she’ll miss the unpretty one, kissing her cheeks,
while the unpretty one looks down at her lap
saying no you won’t no you won’t until the train comes
and on goes the pretty one still smiling,
twirling her red plastic clutch, singing goodbye
I’ll call you, and the unpretty one just sits here
like a stone, even after the train is gone,
even after I write this down.

A poem by Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova is a poet who lived in Russia at the turn of the last century and led a life that was full of hardship and tragedy. Here is a poem that uses tight language and great imagery and reflects the difficult life that was hers. This poem was originally written in Russian but nothing seems lost in translation.

The Sentence

     by Anna Akhmatova

And the stone word fell
On my still-living breast.
Never mind, I was ready.
I will manage somehow.

Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—

Unless . . . Summer's ardent rustling
Is like a festival outside my window.
For a long time I've foreseen this
Brilliant day, deserted house.

A poem by Peter Everwine

Poet Peter Everwine brings us this quiet poem of reflection. We all know these times when one thought brings another and soon we are lost in the moment and filled with thoughful reflection.

Rain

     by Peter Everwine

Toward evening, as the light failed

and the pear tree at my window darkened,

I put down my book and stood at the open door,

the first raindrops gusting in the eaves,

a smell of wet clay in the wind.

Sixty years ago, lying beside my father,

half asleep, on a bed of pine boughs as rain

drummed against our tent, I heard

for the first time a loon’s sudden wail

drifting across that remote lake—

a loneliness like no other,

though what I heard as inconsolable

may have been only the sound of something

untamed and nameless

singing itself to the wilderness around it

and to us until we slept. And thinking of my father

and of good companions gone

into oblivion, I heard the steady sound of rain

and the soft lapping of water, and did not know

whether it was grief or joy or something other

that surged against my heart

and held me listening there so long and late.

A poem by May Sarton

I always wonder what creatures wander around in the snow at night, too. The results in the morning always tell.

December Moon

     by May Sarton

Before going to bed
After a fall of snow
I look out on the field
Shining there in the moonlight
So calm, untouched and white
Snow silence fills my head
After I leave the window.
Hours later near dawn
When I look down again
The whole landscape has changed
The perfect surface gone
Criss-crossed and written on
Where the wild creatures ranged
While the moon rose and shone.
Why did my dog not bark?
Why did I hear no sound
There on the snow-locked ground
In the tumultuous dark?
How much can come, how much can go
When the December moon is bright,
What worlds of play we'll never know
Sleeping away the cold white night
After a fall of snow.

A poem by Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser is one of my favorite poets. He is a master at extracting the extraordinary from out of the ordinary. He is a verbal artist, crafting still lifes and capturing gesture with words. Here, as in many great poems, Kooser takes two things, a spiral notebook and growing old, and blends them together into one theme and comes up with a masterful and lasting work of art.

A Spiral Notebook

     by Ted Kooser

The bright wire rolls like a porpoise
in and out of the calm blue sea
of the cover, or perhaps like a sleeper
twisting in and out of his dreams,
for it could hold a record of dreams
if you wanted to buy it for that
though it seems to be meant for
more serious work, with its
college-ruled lines and its cover
that states in emphatic white letters,
5 SUBJECT NOTEBOOK. It seems
a part of growing old is no longer
to have five subjects, each
demanding an equal share of attention,
set apart by brown cardboard dividers,
but instead to stand in a drugstore
and hang on to one subject
a little too long, like this notebook
you weigh in your hands, passing
your fingers over its surfaces
as if it were some kind of wonder.

A poem by William Baer

 

Beautiful poetry happens when the poet takes two seemingly unrelated events and intertwines them together such that we come to realize indeed how similar each really is. This poem leaves us with that surprise, as the poet masterfully weaves two unique incidents together.

Snowflake

 

Timing’s everything. The vapor rises

high in the sky, tossing to and fro,

then freezes, suddenly, and crystalizes

into a perfect flake of miraculous snow.

For countless miles, drifting east above

the world, whirling about in a swirling free-

for-all, appearing aimless, just like love,

but sensing, seeking out, its destiny.

Falling to where the two young skaters stand,

hand in hand, then flips and dips and whips

itself about to ever-so-gently land,

a miracle, across her unkissed lips:

as he blocks the wind raging from the south,

leaning forward to kiss her lovely mouth.

A poem by Jane Kenyon

Ice Storm

For the hemlocks and broad-leafed evergreens
a beautiful and precarious state of being…
Here in the suburbs of New Haven
nature, unrestrained, lops the weaker limbs
of shrubs and trees with a sense of aesthetics
that is practical and sinister…

I am a guest in this house.
On the bedside table Good Housekeeping, and
A Nietzsche Reader… The others are still asleep.
The most painful longing comes over me.
A longing not of the body…

It could be for beauty—
I mean what Keats was panting after,
for which I love and honor him;
it could be for the promises of God;
or for oblivion, nada; or some condition even more
extreme, which I intuit, but can't quite name.