Tag: poem

National Poetry Month: April 15th

April 15, 2015

Swimming By Night by James Merrill

A light going out in the forehead
Of the house by the ocean,
Into warm black its feints of diamond fade.
Without clothes, without caution

Plunging past gravity–
Wait! Where before
Had been floating nothing, is a gradual body
Half remembered, astral with phosphor,

Yours, risen from its tomb
In your own mind,
Haunting nimbleness, glimmerings a random
Spell had kindled. So that, new-limned

By this weak lamp
The evening’s alcohol will feed
Until the genie chilling bids you limp
Heavily over the stones to bed,

You wear your master’s robe
One last time, the far break
Of waves, their length and sparkle, the spinning globe
You wear, and the star running down his cheek.

late night swim

This poem was selected by Russell J. (Adult Services Librarian)

Poetry Copyright Notice

National Poetry Month: April 14th

April 14, 2015

The Want of Peace by Wendell Berry

All goes back to the earth,
and so I do not desire
pride of excess or power,
but the contentments made
by men who have had little:
the fisherman’s silence
receiving the river’s grace,
the gardener’s musing on rows.

I lack the peace of simple things.
I am never wholly in place.
I find no peace or grace.
We sell the world to buy fire,
our way lighted by burning men,
and that has bent my mind
and made me think of darkness
and wish for the dumb life of roots.

lonely-nature-man-jungle-98771

This poem was selected by Kate K. (North Branch)

Poetry Copyright Notice

National Poetry Month: April 13th

April 13, 2015

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

wild geese

This poem was selected by Jude M. (Children’s Department)

Poetry Copyright Notice

National Poetry Month: April 11th

April 11, 2015

The One Girl at the Boy’s Party by Sharon Olds

When I take my girl to the swimming party
I set her down among the boys. They tower and
bristle, she stands there smooth and sleek,
her math scores unfolding in the air around her.
They will strip to their suits, her body hard and
indivisible as a prime number,
they’ll plunge in the deep end, she’ll subtract
her height from ten feet, divide it into
hundreds of gallons of water, the numbers
bouncing in her mind like molecules of chlorine
in the bright blue pool. When they climb out,
her ponytail will hang its pencil lead
down her back, her narrow silk suit
with hamburgers and french fries printed on it
will glisten in the brilliant air, and they will
see her sweet face, solemn and
sealed, a factor of one, and she will
see their eyes, two each,
their legs, two each, and the curves of their sexes,
one each, and in her head she’ll be doing her
sparkle and fall to the power of a thousand from her body.

pool party

This poem was selected by Heather R. (Adult Services Librarian)

Poetry Copyright Notice

National Poetry Month: April 9th

April 9, 2015

The Day Winds Up the Opposite by August Wilson

Hearing her disembodied voice wash over me,
A cascade of coin and blessing,
With the delicious sounds of her waking

I thought today might be a day of blazing sun
With her hair a forest of red birds announcing themselves with song & surety

That each whisper of wind moved to mute song
& singing make a world of silence.

And then I remembered the warning
Issued by my old, tired, bedazzled heart:

The space between a man’s hand
& a woman’s hair
are filled with many passages
of tremor and trust.

backlit woman

This poem was selected by Lesley W. (Head of Adult Services)

Poetry Copyright Notice

National Poetry Month: April 8th

April 8, 2015

To A Waterfowl by Donald Hall

Women with hats like the rear ends of pink ducks
applauded you, my poems.
These are the women whose husbands I meet on airplanes,
who close their briefcases and ask, “What are you in?”
I look in their eyes, I tell them I am in poetry,

and their eyes fill with anxiety, and with little tears.
“Oh, yeah?” they say, developing an interest in clouds.
“My wife, she likes that sort of thing? Hah-hah?
I guess maybe I’d better watch my grammar, huh?”
I leave them in airports, watching their grammar,

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National Poetry Month: April 6th

April 6, 2015

Tulips by Sylvia Plath

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.

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