I love a wild daffodil,
the one that grows
where she’s planted—
along a wooded highway
left to her own abandon,
but not abandoned.
Her big yellow head
leaning toward or away
from the sun. Not excluded
but exclusive, her trumpet
heralds no one, not even
the Canada geese—
their long-necked honks
announcing their journey.
She’ll be here less
than a season, grace us
with green slender stems,
strong enough to withstand
rain and spring’s early chill.
And when she goes,
what remains she’ll bury
deep inside the bulb of her,
take a part of me with her
until she returns.
~~ 'For Ella' by January Gill O'Neil from 'The Wonder of Small Things'

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

Spring thaw peels loose
the leaves snow caught
last fall before they
had really settled down:

now, windy Sunday, they
stir over dry lawn
and remnant windrows of
ice, as if looking

for the place they’d meant
to go: but it’s not now
as it was then
settling-down time, and

everywhere the leaves go
greens are
breaking out
amid the funeral arrangements

and the eyes of jonquils
hold on to their morning
tears and demure snowdrops
try not to look so bright.
~~ 'Ghosts' by A.R. Ammons from 'Century of Poetry in The New Yorker', ed. Kevin Young

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

the earth is a living thing
is a black shambling bear
ruffling its wild back and tossing
mountains into the sea

is a black hawk circling
the burying ground circling the bones
picked clean and discarded

is a fish black blind in the belly of water
is a diamond blind in the black belly of coal

is a black and living thing
is a favorite child
of the universe
feel her rolling her hand
in its kinky hair
feel her brushing it clean
~~ 'the earth is a living thing' by Lucille Clifton from 'The Gift of Animals'

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

There are days when,
although I try to open myself
to wonder, wonder just
won’t be found. Or perhaps,
it is more accurate to say
on those days I am simply
blind to what the world
has to offer

until I look down, and there,
beside the sidewalk,
are blades of grass completely
enrobed in ice, shimmering
in the glow of the setting sun,
and as they sway and move
into each other, if I listen,
really listen,
even they are singing
faint little bell-notes of joy.
~~ 'Can You Hear It?' by Paula Gordon Lepp from 'The Wonder of Small Things'

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @bookstodon

In Mary Cassatt’s Little Blue Armchair,
it’s not the child I look at but the Norwich terrier,
twin to mine, curled up on another armchair.
And in Picasso’s Boy with Dog, I want
to enter the famous Blue Period to pat it.

There are dogs in the cave paintings in France,
and the hounds in the Bayeaux Tapestry
are stitched into the scene by hand, chasing
their embroidered prey right into art history.

It’s said that dogs in paintings
domesticate the scene or symbolize love,
that even a still life of flowers and fruit
may have a poodle or dachshund
hidden under the table.
~~ 'The Art of the Dog' by Linda Pastan from 'The Gift of Animals'

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

The hand of breaking glaciers
passes silver over the earth,
a river of ice, the trees all ashine,
their first blooms frozen in the blue forest
and even our words slide from the cold.
You’d think the world stopped
or battened down
its window for the night,
latched up the silver rivers,
iced over the creaking trees.
Outside only two herons
hold a heart of warmth
inside the invisible
embrace of danger,
the river freezing.
As I return home
I pull up a blanket, pull close the dog,
the cat, and watch the two silver herons
fly across crystallized glass.
~~ 'Ice Storm' by Linda Hogan from 'Dark, Sweet'

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

Life, you’re beautiful (I say),
you just couldn’t get more fecund,
more befrogged or nightingaley,
more anthillful or sproutspouting.

I’m trying to court life’s favor,
to get into its good graces,
to anticipate its whims,
I’m always the first to bow,

always there where it can see me
with my humble, reverent face,
soaring on the wings of rapture,
falling under waves of wonder.

Oh how grassy is this hopper,
how this berry ripely rasps.
I would never have conceived it
if I weren’t conceived myself!

Life (I say), I’ve no idea
what I could compare you to.
No one else can make a pine cone
and then make the pine cone’s clone.

I praise your inventiveness,
bounty, sweep, exactitude,
sense of order—gifts that border
on witchcraft and wizardry.

I just don’t want to upset you,
tease or anger, vex or rile.
For millennia, I’ve been trying
to appease you with my smile.

I tug at life by its leaf hem:
will it stop for me, just once,
momentarily forgetting
to what end it runs and runs?
~~ 'Allegro ma Non Troppo' by Wisława Szymborska, tr. Clare Cavanagh, Stanisław Barańczak from 'Map'

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

I starred that night, I shone:
I was footwork and firework in one,

a rocket that wriggled up and shot
darkness with a parasol of brilliants
and a peewee descant on a flung bit;
I was blisters of glitter-bombs expanding
to mantle and aurora from a crown,
I was fouéttes, falls of blazing paint,
para-flares spot-welding cloudy heaven,
loose gold off fierce toeholds of white,
a finale red-tongued as a haka leap:
that too was a butt of all right!

As usual after any triumph, I was
of course, inconsolable.
~~ 'Performance' by Les Murray

#FridayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

(Art credit: Anastasia Trusova)

@queyras

Please keep posting.

You got me transcribing and searching in order to identify the pictured poem as being from Dionne Brand, Thirsty.

and this, we meet in careless intervals, / in coffee bars, gas stations, in prosthetic / conversations, lotteries, untranslatable / mouths, in versions what we may be,

#canlit #poetry #game #jeu #fridaypoem