The Poetry Playground

Years From Now
Although I cannot see your face
As you flip through these poems awhile,
Somewhere from some far-off place
I hear you laughing – and I smile.

~ Shel Silverstein

Blue Hills Over the North Wall
Blue hills over the north wall;
White water swirling to the east of the city:
This is where you must leave me —
A longe puff of thistledown
on a thousand mile journey.
Ah the drifting clouds
and the thoughts of a wanderer!
The setting sun
and emotions of old friends.
A wave of the hand now
and you are gone.
Our horses whinnied to each other at parting.

~ Li Po (AD 701-762),
Trans. Innes Herdan

There is a Stream

There is a stream which rises
halfway down the mountain
My father showed it to me
place he found in a dream,
the withered spirit of an old Indian
leading him like a wisp of fog
to its banks
I shall go to the last water
when I am old
and my blood runs
like the sad Hudson River
heavy with the waste
of civilization
I shall go there
and wade into those clear ripples
where the sandy bottom
is spread with stones
which look like the bones
of beautiful ancient animals
I shall spread my arms
in that sweet water
and go like a last wash of snow
down to the loon meadow
in the last days of April.

~ Joseph Bruchac

Imaginary Conversation
You tell me to live each day
as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen
where before coffee I complain
of the day ahead – that obstacle race
of minutes and hours,
grocery stores and doctors.

But why the last? I ask. Why not
live each day as if it were the first –
all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing
her eyes awake that first morning,
the sun coming up
like an ingenue in the east?

You grind the coffee
with the small roar of a mind
trying to clear itself. I set
the table, glance out the window
where dew has baptized every
living surface.

~ Linda Pastan

Regenerate

Don’t be afraid of the process
The nights you kept yourself awake
Tossing and turning and shedding
Fifteen gallons of saltwater
Was only a way of exfoliating
Executing old skin cells
In preparation for a birth

After a few years you will be new
To walk the earth untouched
By the ghosts you thought
Would never let go

~ John Qeuor

April

The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.

Yet the back-yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree–
I could not be sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.

~ Sara Teasdale

A Broken View
Newcomers on the hill have cut the trees
That broke their view. Now they have all the west
From north in an unbroken sweep to south.
Outdoors or out of windows looking westward
Anywhere there is the west, the view,
An afternoon ago we stood with them
And saw their view. Hills beyond hills shading
From green to blue and clouds from white to blue.
Open places of pasture on the hills
And sky among the clouds. It was enough
For anyone to love for all a lifetime.

Yet we were thinking (though we didn’t say so
And wouldn’t of course have said so ever to them
Or even wished to) how we loved a broken
View better, a view broken by trees,
Under and over and through the branches of trees.
A view that didn’t give you everything
At once or anything too easily.
One that changed as you went from window to window
And changed again as you went from month to month,
Closing in in spring and opening
In fall.

~ Robert Francis