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I saw a sloth play soccer
with a tortoise and a snail.
They were all enthusiastic
and determined to prevail.

They were positively passionate
and truly in the groove,
and by watching very closely
I could almost see them move.

— Kenn Nesbitt

I like playing soccer. This was funny. My mom loves Sloths.

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"Hope" is the thing with feathers -Emily Dickinson

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"Hope" is the thing with feathers -Emily Dickinson

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“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

I picked this poem because I think it is a cool way to look at hope.

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Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I picked this poem because it sounds very interesting, just by the title i was intrigued.

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darling donut so small
and round
don't let it fall on the
ground
chocolate or sprinkles i
don't care
breakfast or dinner but
shhh.....i may not share!

link to what it was linked to:
https://m.facebook.com/weberslittledonutshopsgi/photos/a.1783182491993637/2267582080220340/?type=3&source=57

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This is a sweet poem about two men that are truly in love.

And Now Upon My Head the Crown
Phillip B. Williams
In the first place—I wanted him and said so
when I had only meant to say. His eyes
opened beyond open as if such force would unlock me
to the other side where daylight gave reason
for him to redress.                                          When he put on his shirt,
after I asked him to keep it off, to keep putting off
the night’s usual end, his face changed beneath
the shirt: surprise to grin, to how even the body
of another’s desire can be a cloak behind which
to change one’s power, to find it
In the first place
he slept, he opened the tight heat of me that had been
the only haven he thought to give a name:

Is-it-mine? Why-you-running? Don’t-run-from-it—as though
through questions doubt would find its way away from me,
as though telling me what to do told me who I was.

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By Vievee Francis

I picked this poem because it was interesting and a nice length. It also shows that nobody is perfect.

I have no charms. Admittedly.

No gold comb can move through

This mane. My skin is not translucent.

Mine is a tail to fear. I know.

And though a mother may destroy,

She too sees fit to create beauty

That would eventually grow into forms

I would swallow if I gave in

To my hungers. But, up from my wounds—

From this goat's body—

Up from my wood-smoke lungs, from

The milk of me, comes a song, a melody

To open yours, then lick them clean.

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By Anonymous

A interesting poem that has most words and I found this interesting.

If you ever, ever, ever,
If you ever, ever, ever,
If you ever, ever, ever, meet a whale,
You must never, never, never,
You must never, never, never,
You must never, never, never touch its tail.

For if you ever, ever, ever,
If you ever, ever, ever
If you ever, ever, ever touch its tail,
You will never, never, never,
You will never, never, never,
You will never, never
Meet another whale.

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Last night, while I lay thinking here,
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old Whatif song:
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?...

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A spider lives inside my head
Who weaves a strange and wondrous web
Of silken threads and silver strings
To catch all sorts of flying things,
Like crumbs of thought and bits of smiles
And specks of dried-up tears,
And dust of dreams that catch and cling
For years and years and years….

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oh im tubbing in my  scrub im tubbing in my scrub jetting my geans clice and nean tubing in my scrub

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I picked this poem because when you have a dream you think of what it would be like until you reach the dream.

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

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Kim Stafford
I should put it on my resume —

I’ve made it my profession.

Let me tell you how many

ways things can go wrong.

Every dream I cherish I

break down in short order.

Give me a night, I’ll wrestle

any vision to surrender. I’m

where ideas come to die.

I’m worried that’s why

my friends don’t call.

I like this poem because I can relate to a bit of the worry that this poet is feeling. I also like the word choice. They cut the dense fat, but still have a unique way of writing that makes you think.

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Shades of Blue for a Blue Bridge BY QUINCY TROUPE

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Shades of Blue for a Blue Bridge BY QUINCY TROUPE

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I enjoy reading this poem because the amount of description the author uses to describe the scene makes me feel like I'm there and I value that in a poem. Here is the poem if you so wish to read and enjoy it :) Have a nice day/night :D
1.

three shades of blue

evoke minnie's can do,

soo chow's, yori wada

2.

jimbo's bop city,

john lee's boom boom room,

history riffing vlue matzoh balls,

fried chicken, soba

3.

the jigoku club inside

j town, bold rebels jamming

cross from black town, udon,

grits, barbecue

4.

cherry blossoms vlooming

in lady day's hair, greens & fat back,

sashimi staining kimonos

5.

you walking filmore,

crossing geary with duke,

street cars running over ghost-tracks,

pigfeet in vinegar

6.

indigo-blue & white,

red satin, sticky fingers handling

chops sticks, hot cornbread,

sweet potato pie

7.

memories brought back

in a blue mirror, gefilte fish,

kimochi, lox & bagels

8.

filmore auditorium

jamming beneath miles of blue,

bird, mink, nihomachi.

a fake dividing line

9.

mixing it all up

this cultural jambalaya stew,

kabuki, white linen,

silk, coltrane

10.

music the glue singing

new images of multi-you

rapping in the sweet blue air

Goodbye! :) :D

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I liked this poem becuase it is a good length and also my mom tells me this. (not this poem tough)
The poems name is
Good news

Would you rather have the good news

at a bad time, or bad news at a good?

Give me the good news, please.

Okay: Bad times don’t last forever.

Man, I needed that. And the bad news?

Good times don’t last forever, either.

So news is, basically, Things change?

When it’s bad, we need the good.

That’s new, old, and always.

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Long before the pandemic, the trees

knew how to guard one place with

roots and shade. Moss found

how to hug a stone for life.

Every stream works out how

to move in place, staying home

even as it flows generously

outward, sending bounty far.

Now is our time to practice —

singing from balconies, sending

words of comfort by any courier,

kindling our lonesome generosity

to shine in all directions like stars.

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By AI

My sister rubs the doll’s face in mud,

then climbs through the truck window.

She ignores me as I walk around it,

hitting the flat tires with an iron rod.

The old man yells for me to help hitch the team,

but I keep walking around the truck, hitting harder,

until my mother calls.

I pick up a rock and throw it at the kitchen window,

but it falls short.

The old man’s voice bounces off the air like a ball

I can’t lift my leg over.

I stand beside him, waiting, but he doesn’t look up

and I squeeze the rod, raise it, his skull splits open.

Mother runs toward us. I stand still,

get her across the spine as she bends over him.

I drop the rod and take the rifle from the house.

Roses are red, violets are blue,

one bullet for the black horse, two for the brown.

They’re down quick. I spit, my tongue’s bloody;

I’ve bitten it. I laugh, remember the one out back.

I catch her climbing from the truck, shoot.

The doll lands on the ground with her.

I pick it up, rock it in my arms.

Yeah. I’m Jack, Hogarth’s son.

I’m nimble, I’m quick.

In the house, I put on the old man’s best suit

and his patent leather shoes.

I pack my mother’s satin nightgown

and my sister’s doll in the suitcase.

Then I go outside and cross the fields to the highway.

I’m fourteen. I’m a wind from nowhere.

I can break your heart.

I like and chose this poem because it tells the story of her or another (not specified) person that could relate to memories from her childhood. It's a little gory but it makes a good poem when you can see the imagery while reading.

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By Carolyn Wells

I chose this poem because it's a very humorous poem. This poem is interesting to me because it has good word choice and has good entertainment value.

This is the Queen of Nonsense Land,
She wears her bonnet on her hand;
She carpets her ceilings and frescos her floors,
She eats on her windows and sleeps on her doors.
Oh, ho! Oh, ho! to think there could be
A lady so silly-down-dilly as she!

She goes for a walk on an ocean wave,
She fishes for cats in a coral cave;
She drinks from an empty glass of milk,
And lines her potato trees with silk.
I’m sure that fornever and never was seen
So foolish a thing as the Nonsense Queen!

She ordered a wig for a blue bottle fly,
And she wrote a note to a pumpkin pie;
She makes all the oysters wear emerald rings,
And does dozens of other nonsensible things.
Oh! the scatterbrained, shatterbrained lady so grand,
Her Royal Skyhighness of Nonsense Land!

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I liked this poem because it teld a good story It used words thatrimed and it said interesting words instead of bland words. All in all it is a great poem.

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BY ALBERTO RÍOS
I like this poem because it talks about being together and sharing one sky. If we thought about that I feel the world would be a different place.

We plant seeds in the ground

And dreams in the sky,

Hoping that, someday, the roots of one

Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.

It has not happened yet.

We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:

Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,

Even as we stand on uncertain ground.

The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,

Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.

The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,

Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.

The sky is our common home, the place we all live.

There we are in the world together.

The dream of sky requires no passport.

Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.

Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.

Know that you always have a home here.

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The Fish

Elizabeth Bishop - 1911-1979

I chose this poem becues I like  how much discripshun was in it.

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
—the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly—
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
—It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
—if you could call it a lip—
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

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I Like this because I used to have my parents read tis to me before i fell asleep, so its nastolgic to me

I will not play at tug o' war

I'd rather play at hug o' war,

Where everyone hugs

Instead of tugs

Where everyone giggles

And rolls on the rug,

Where everyone kisses

And everyone grins

And everyone cuddles

And everyone wins.

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switch switch by Kenn Nesbitt I like this poem because it is funy and it has carma.

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switch switch by Kenn Nesbitt I like this poem because it is funy and it has carma.

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My little brother took my Switch
to stream a game or two on Twitch.
But, when he tried to turn it on,
my Switch would not play Pokémon.

My Switch would not play Mario,
or Donkey Kong, or Yu-Gi-Oh!,
or Minecraft, or Monopoly,
or Captain Toad, or Pikmin 3,
Jurassic Park, or Kingdom Hearts,
or any game with racing karts,
or Shovel Knight, or Dragon Ball,
or, really, any game at all.

He gave it back and said, “It’s broke.”
I had to giggle at my joke.
I switched my Switch and played a trick.
I’d given him my painted brick.

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poems. Nikki Grimes. idk i just chose the first one i sow 

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poems. Nikki Grimes. idk i just chose the first one i sow 

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I am hardly ever able

to sort through my memories

and come away whole

or untroubled.

It is difficult

to sift through the stones,

the weighty moments and know

which is rare gem,

which raw coal,

which worthless shale or slate.

So, one by one,

I drag them across the page

and...

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By Oliver Helford
I like the story of this poem because there are words that seemed to carefully be chosen for the poem to make sure it has less words in it and the attention to detail.

An Owl once lived in a hollow tree,
And he was as wise as wise could be.
The branch of Learning he didn’t know
Could scarce on the tree of knowledge grow.
He knew the tree from branch to root,
And an Owl like that can afford to hoot.

And he hooted—until, alas! one day
He chanced to hear, in a casual way,
An insignificant little bird
Make use of a term he had never heard.
He was flying to bed in the dawning light
When he heard her singing with all her might,
“Hurray! hurray for the early worm!”

“Dear me!” said the Owl, “what a singular term!
I would look it up if it weren’t so late;
I must rise at dusk to investigate.
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes an Owl healthy and stealthy and wise!”

So he slept like an honest Owl all day,
And rose in the early twilight gray,
And went to work in the dusky light
To look for the early worm all night.

He searched the country for miles around,
But the early worm was not to be found.
So he went to bed in the dawning light,
And looked for the “worm” again next night.

And again and again, and again and again
He sought and he sought, but all in vain,
Till he must have looked for a year and a day
For the early worm, in the twilight gray.

At last in despair he gave up the search,
And was heard to remark, as he sat on his perch
By the side of his nest in the hollow tree,
“The thing is as plain as night to me—
Nothing can shake my conviction firm,
There’s no such thing as the early worm.”

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I am hardly ever able

to sort through my memories

and come away whole

or untroubled.

It is difficult

to sift through the stones,

the weighty moments and know

which is rare gem,

which raw coal,

which worthless shale or slate.

So, one by one,

I drag them across the page

and when one cuts into the white,

leaves a trail of blood,

no matter how narrow the stream,

then I know

I’ve found the real thing,

the diamond,

one of the priceless gems

my pain produced.

“There! There,” I say,

“is a memory worth keeping.”

I chose this poem because of the detail and the good word choiseing.

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I like this poem because of all the detail. I like how the author put so much thought into just one tree to write a whole poem.

Think

how many long years

this tree waited as a seed

for an animal or bird or wind or rain

to maybe carry it to maybe the right spot

where again it waited months for seasons to change

until time and temperature were fine enough to coax it

to swell and burst its hard shell so it could send slender roots

to clutch at grains of soil and let tender shoots reach toward the sun

Think how many decades or centuries it thickened and climbed and grew

taller and deeper never knowing if it would find enough water or light

or when conditions would be right so it could keep on spreading leaves

adding blossoms and dancing

Next time

you see

a tree

think

how

much

hope

it holds

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I like this poem because it shows how these people are responding to covid and we can relate to it.

Oregon’s poet laureate wakes before dawn. He takes a long walk around his neighborhood. When he returns to his home in Southwest Portland, he carries a cup of black coffee in his favorite chipped mug to his tiny writing shed in the front yard. It’s “about the size of Thoreau’s hut,” he says, “made of scrounged materials.” One of the walls is made of boards from the original Elephants Delicatessen, another with boards from a fence. The multi-paned door is from a barn sale in Camp Sherman.

His days since the novel coronavirus became a pandemic haven’t been much different — but the poems reflect the times.

Every morning Stafford goes out into the dark “to see what comes to the page.” From there, in silence and darkness, he says he can find the deepest source of inspiration.

Before the news.

Before the flurry of daily life.

Stafford, 70, was born in Portland and is the son of William Stafford, who served as Oregon’s poet laureate from 1975 to 1990. It’s been almost two years since Kim Stafford was bestowed the title in May 2018 and he’s settled into the role. Unlike his father, whom he saw as deeply private, the younger Stafford sees his duty as a poet to be a “witness to the world." For him, poetry comes from two places: One is a deeply personal place of “intuition.” And the other is a sense of trying to be a “servant of the world.”

On these recent morning walks, he’s been thinking more and more about the news.

At first, there were warnings to wash your hands more often. So he wrote a poem about washing our hands. And then the schools closed, and local businesses were forced to shutter. So he wrote a poem about that. In response to COVID-19, Oregonians received a stay-home order from Gov. Kate Brown and so he wrote something for that, too.

He shares the results on Instagram, at @kimstaffordpoetry.

But he tries to see beyond the crisis at hand. He says a poem is a source of strength “because it’s short and sometimes mysterious. It invites a reader to step aside from the problem at hand and think and breathe.”

Poetry can start with a very small seed, he says. Lately he’s been latching on to words in the news — words like “pandemic” or “shelter in place.” Stafford tells his Lewis & Clark College poetry students that the news is good, but it tells only part of the story.

So each morning, Stafford sits there in his shed — in the glow of a dim lamp — waiting to see if there’s a seed.

Here, you’ll find seven poems Stafford has written on seven days since March 7, accompanied by photographs and videos Brooke Herbert and Beth Nakamura have made in recent weeks as the novel coronavirus came to dominate our lives.

He also encourages you to write or create. “I think one of my mottos is that the most important literature of our time is what has not yet been written. I encourage everyone to do some writing. Put your thoughts down on a page. It can lead to a more settled mind.”

— Brooke Herbert

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By: Margaret Walker
I like this poem because it gives us a different perspective on our world a long time ago.

For my people everywhere singing their slave songs
repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues
and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an
unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an
unseen power;

For my people lending their strength to the years, to the
gone years and the now years and the maybe years,
washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending
hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching
dragging along never gaining never reaping never
knowing and never understanding;

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama
backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor
and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking
and playhouse and concert and store and hair and Miss
Choomby and company;

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn
to know the reasons why and the answers to and the
people who and the places where and the days when, in
memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we
were black and poor and small and different and nobody
cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to
be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and
play and drink their wine and religion and success, to
marry their playmates and bear children and then die
of consumption and anemia and lynching;

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox
Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New
Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy
people filling the cabarets and taverns and other
people’s pockets needing bread and shoes and milk and
land and money and something—something all our own;

For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time
being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when
burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled
and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures
who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

For my people blundering and groping and floundering in
the dark of churches and schools and clubs and
societies, associations and councils and committees and
conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and
devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,
preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by
false prophet and holy believer;

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way
from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,
trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,
all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless
generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a
bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second
generation full of courage issue forth; let a people
loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of
healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing
in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs
be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now
rise and take control.

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I like this because it is relatable Long before the pandemic, the trees knew how to guard one place with roots and shade. Moss found how to hug a stone for life.Every stream works out how to move in place, staying home even as it flows generously outward, sending bounty far.Now is our time to practice —singing from balconies, sending words of comfort by any courier,kindling our lonesome generosity to shine in all directions like stars.Shelter in PlaceMarch 20, 2020LISTEN TO KIM STAFFORD READ THIS POEM:

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I like this because it is relatable Long before the pandemic, the trees knew how to guard one place with roots and shade. Moss found how to hug a stone for life.Every stream works out how to move in place, staying home even as it flows generously outward, sending bounty far.Now is our time to practice —singing from balconies, sending words of comfort by any courier,kindling our lonesome generosity to shine in all directions like stars.Shelter in PlaceMarch 20, 2020LISTEN TO KIM STAFFORD READ THIS POEM:

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I like this poem because I connect with it I just moved and miss my friends from Texas. This poem talks about things changing, good news, and bad news. Just like me moving.

Would you rather have the good news at a bad time, or bad news at a good?

Give me the good news, please.

Okay: Bad times don’t last forever.

Man, I needed that. And the bad news?

Good times don’t last forever, either.

So news is, basically, Things change?

When it’s bad, we need the good.

That’s new, old, and always.

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This poem spoke to me because of the imagery. The idea that people you love leave a mark on you is powerful to me.

"Footprint on Your Heart"
Gary Lenhart

Someone will walk into your life,
Leave a footprint on your heart,
Turn it into a mudroom cluttered
With encrusted boots, children's mittens,
Scratchy scarves—
Where you linger to unwrap
Or ready yourself for rough exits
Into howling gales or onto
Frozen car seats, expulsions
Into the great outdoors where touch
Is muffled, noses glisten,
And breaths stab,
So that when you meet someone
Who is leaving your life
You will be able to wave stiff
Icy mitts and look forward
To an evening in spring
When you can fold winter away
Until your next encounter with
A chill so numbing you strew
The heart's antechamber
With layers of rural garble.
From  by Gary Lenhart. Copyright © 2010 by by Gary Lenhart. Used by permission of Hanging Loose Press.

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I like this poembecause

Oregon’s poet laureate wakes before dawn. He takes a long walk around his neighborhood. When he returns to his home in Southwest Portland, he carries a cup of black coffee in his favorite chipped mug to his tiny writing shed in the front yard. It’s “about the size of Thoreau’s hut,” he says, “made of scrounged materials.” One of the walls is made of boards from the original Elephants Delicatessen, another with boards from a fence. The multi-paned door is from a barn sale in Camp Sherman.

His days since the novel coronavirus became a pandemic haven’t been much different — but the poems reflect the times.

Every morning Stafford goes out into the dark “to see what comes to the page.” From there, in silence and darkness, he says he can find the deepest source of inspiration.

Before the news.

Before the flurry of daily life.

Stafford, 70, was born in Portland and is the son of William Stafford, who served as Oregon’s poet laureate from 1975 to 1990. It’s been almost two years since Kim Stafford was bestowed the title in May 2018 and he’s settled into the role. Unlike his father, whom he saw as deeply private, the younger Stafford sees his duty as a poet to be a “witness to the world." For him, poetry comes from two places: One is a deeply personal place of “intuition.” And the other is a sense of trying to be a “servant of the world.”

On these recent morning walks, he’s been thinking more and more about the news.

At first, there were warnings to wash your hands more often. So he wrote a poem about washing our hands. And then the schools closed, and local businesses were forced to shutter. So he wrote a poem about that. In response to COVID-19, Oregonians received a stay-home order from Gov. Kate Brown and so he wrote something for that, too.

He shares the results on Instagram, at @kimstaffordpoetry.

But he tries to see beyond the crisis at hand. He says a poem is a source of strength “because it’s short and sometimes mysterious. It invites a reader to step aside from the problem at hand and think and breathe.”

Poetry can start with a very small seed, he says. Lately he’s been latching on to words in the news — words like “pandemic” or “shelter in place.” Stafford tells his Lewis & Clark College poetry students that the news is good, but it tells only part of the story.

So each morning, Stafford sits there in his shed — in the glow of a dim lamp — waiting to see if there’s a seed.

Here, you’ll find seven poems Stafford has written on seven days since March 7, accompanied by photographs and videos Brooke Herbert and Beth Nakamura have made in recent weeks as the novel coronavirus came to dominate our lives.

He also encourages you to write or create. “I think one of my mottos is that the most important literature of our time is what has not yet been written. I encourage everyone to do some writing. Put your thoughts down on a page. It can lead to a more settled mind.”

— Brooke Herbert

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I decided on this poem because the way the poem described the way nature live together in harmony. I also like how it compared nature to how we should speak up about the pandemic!

Long before the pandemic, the trees

knew how to guard one place with

roots and shade. Moss found

how to hug a stone for life.

Every stream works out how

to move in place, staying home

even as it flows generously

outward, sending bounty far.

Now is our time to practice —

singing from balconies, sending

words of comfort by any courier,

kindling our lonesome generosity

to shine in all directions like stars.

Shelter in Place

March 20, 2020

LISTEN TO KIM STAFFORD READ THIS POEM:

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I like it because it exist and its long jut iuui

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I like it because it exist and its long jut iuui

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and The Fish, the Man, and the Spirit

Leigh Hunt

You strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced,
Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea,
Gulping salt-water everlastingly,
Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced,
And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste;
And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be,—
Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry,
Legless, unloving, infamously chaste:—

O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,
What is't ye do? What life lead? eh, dull goggles?
How do ye vary your vile days and nights?
How pass your Sundays ? Are ye still but joggles
In ceaseless wash? Still nought but gapes, and bites,
And drinks, and stares, diversified with boggles?

A Fish Answers

Amazing monster! that, for aught I know,
With the first sight of thee didst make our race
For ever stare! O flat and shocking face,
Grimly divided from the breast below!
Thou that on dry land horribly dost go
With a split body and most ridiculous pace
Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace,
Long-useless-finn'd, haired, upright, unwet, slow!

O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air,
How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dry
And dreary sloth? What particle canst share
Of the only blessed life, the watery?
I sometimes see of ye an actual pair
Go by! linked fin by fin! most odiously.

The Fish Turns Into A Man, And Then Into A Spirit, And Again Speaks

Indulge thy smiling scorn, if smiling still,
O man! and loathe, but with a sort of love;
For difference must itself by difference prove,
And, in sweet clang, the spheres with music fill.
One of the spirits am I, that at their will
Live in whate'er has life—fish, eagle, dove—
No hate, no pride, beneath nought, nor above,
A visiter of the rounds of God's sweet skill.

Man's life is warm, glad, sad, 'twixt loves and graves,
Boundless in hope, honoured with pangs austere,
Heaven-gazing; and his angel-wings he craves:—
The fish is swift, small-needing, vague yet clear,
A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapped in round waves,
Quickened with touches of transporting fear.

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What I mean when I say Truck Driver By: Geffrey Davis

During the last 50 miles back from haul & some
months past my 15th birthday, my father fishes
a stuffed polar bear from a Salvation Army
gift-bin, labeled Boys: 6-10. I can almost see him
approach the decision: cold, a little hungry, not enough

money in his pocket for coffee. He worries
he might fall asleep behind the wheel as his giant,
clumsy love for that small word—son—guides
his gaze to the crudely-sewn fabric of the miniature bear
down at the bottom of the barrel. Seasons have flared

& gone out with little change in his fear of stopping
for too long in any city, where he knows the addict
in him waits, patient as a desert bloom. Meanwhile, me:
his eldest child, the uneasy guardian of the house.
In his absence, I’ve not yet lost my virginity,

but I’ve had fist-fights with grown men & seen
my mother dragging her religious beliefs to the bitter
border of divorce. For years my father’s had trouble
saying no to crack-cocaine & women flowered in cheap
summer dresses. Watch his face as he arrives at last

& stretches the toy out, my mother fixed
on the porch behind me, the word son suddenly heavy
in my father’s mouth, his gray coat gathered
around his shoulders: he’s never looked so small.
We could crush him—we hug him instead.

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I like this poem because of the great use of words and the message that it carries.

I want to put down what the mountain was awakened.

My mouthful of grass.

My curious tale. I want to stand still but find myself moved patch by patch.

There's a bleat in my throat. Words fail me here. Can you understand? I sink to

my knees tired or not. I now know the ragweed from the goldenrod, and the blinding

beauty of green. Don't you see? I am shedding my skins. I am a paper hive, a wolf spider,

the creeping ivy, the ache of a birch, a heifer, a doc. I have fallen from my dream

of progress: the clear-cut glass, the potted and balconied tree, the lemon-waxed

wood over a marbled pillar, into my own nocturne. The lullabies I had forgotten.

How could I know what slept inside? What would rend my fantasies to cud and up

from this belly's wet straw-strewn field—

these soundings.

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This poem is interesting to me (I like this poem) because I lost my grandpa this past September. And I really loved my grandpa but my sister is having the most difficult time accepting it. So I feel like this poem speaks the truth.

Rooms Remembered

Laure-Anne Bosselaar

I needed, for months after he died, to remember our rooms—
some lit by the trivial, others ample

with an obscurity that comforted us: it hid our own darkness.
So for months, duteous, I remembered:

rooms where friends lingered, rooms with our beds,
with our books, rooms with curtains I sewed

from bright cottons. I remembered tables of laughter,
a chipped bowl in early light, black

branches by a window, bowing toward night, & those rooms,
too, in which we came together

to be away from all. And sometimes from ourselves:
I remembered that, also.

But tonight—as I stand in the doorway to his room
& stare at dusk settled there—

what I remember best is how, to throw my arms around his neck,
I needed to stand on the tip of my toes.

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I like this poem because it is powerful and it uses lots of figurative language.

Maya Angelou - 1928-2014

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

From And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc

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The poem describes everything that is going on incorporating and how everyone is feeling.
After they sealed the doors and locked

the gate, after they left us mortality estimates,

on a sheet to post in the hall, after they counted

our days of water—by megaphone from outside

the perimeter—and drove away, after our desperate

questions had exhausted all our tears, after we

looked at each other, first with suspicion of contagion,

then with curiosity, and then with love, someone

found a guitar, remembered a song, and we all

got in a line, laughing arm in arm, and danced.
By KIM STAFFORD

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I choose this one because I like to travel a lot.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both And be one to traveller, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted wear, though as for that, the passing there had worn them really about the same,

And both the morning equally lay in the leaves no feet trodden black. Oh I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on the way. I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be saying this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took one less traveled by, and that has made all the differences
-Robert Frost

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Before I can get to our statistics — so many
stricken, so many dead — I’m summoned
by the bird raising a ruckus outside, crows
and jays in festive outrage, trill, chirrr, and aria
 
from the little brown birds, the mournful
dove, the querulous towhee, rusty starlings
in their see-saw mutter, and a woodpecker
flicker hammering the gutter staccato.
 
On the porch, I’m assaulted by the merciless
scent of trees opening their million flowers,
as I inhale the deep elixir of hazel, hawthorn,
maple, and oh those shameless cherry trees.
 
And just when I’ve almost recovered
my serious moment, I gasp, helpless to see
the full queen moon sidling down
through a haze of blossoms.
I like this poem because  I feel like we should all have these moments when our day starts 

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I like this one because it's talking about trying your best and even if you always try your best it's never going to be as perfect as you want it to be.

If you always try your best
Then you'll never have to wonder
about what you could have done
If you'd summoned all your thunder.

And if you do your best
Was not as good
As you hoped it would be,
"I gave today
All that I had in me" By Barbara Vance.

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An Owl once lived in a hollow tree,
And he was as wise as wise could be.
The branch of Learning he didn’t know
Could scarce on the tree of knowledge grow.
He knew the tree from branch to root,
And an Owl like that can afford to hoot.

And he hooted—until, alas! one day
He chanced to hear, in a casual way,
An insignificant little bird
Make use of a term he had never heard.
He was flying to bed in the dawning light
When he heard her singing with all her might,
“Hurray! hurray for the early worm!”

“Dear me!” said the Owl, “what a singular term!
I would look it up if it weren’t so late;
I must rise at dusk to investigate.
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes an Owl healthy and stealthy and wise!”

So he slept like an honest Owl all day,
And rose in the early twilight gray,
And went to work in the dusky light
To look for the early worm all night.

He searched the country for miles around,
But the early worm was not to be found.
So he went to bed in the dawning light,
And looked for the “worm” again next night.

And again and again, and again and again
He sought and he sought, but all in vain,
Till he must have looked for a year and a day
For the early worm, in the twilight gray.

At last in despair he gave up the search,
And was heard to remark, as he sat on his perch
By the side of his nest in the hollow tree,
“The thing is as plain as night to me—
Nothing can shake my conviction firm,
There’s no such thing as the early worm.”

— Oliver Herit is about a lark which is a person that goes to early to something

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Down there somewhere, a tent or tarp, and

a cardboard bed. Along this road, someone

saw a cougar last month. Forecast shows no sun.

After midnight, a train’s wail. At sunrise, crows, and sirens.

In the cart, neighbors start leaving food and water,

sleeping bag in a garbage bag, matches and gloves.

By dawn, they’re gone. Rain, moss, shadows. Only

a matter of time, some say, from a safe distance

across the fence. Every dawn provisions disappear,

and we celebrate. So far, the cart stands empty.

So far.

I like this poem because I think it touches on the important subject of homelessnes and how we all need to help.

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I like this poem because even though it is short the message that is shown in it is strong.
Langston Hughes - 1902-1967

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

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The poems are well worded so it sounds cool

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The poems are well worded so it sounds cool

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More Dangerous Air
BY MARGARITA ENGLE
Newsmen call it the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Teachers say it's the end of the world.

At school, they instruct us to look up
and watch the Cuban-cursed sky.
Search for a streak of light.
Listen for a piercing shriek,
the whistle that will warn us
as poisonous A-bombs
zoom close.

Hide under a desk.
Pretend that furniture is enough
to protect us against perilous flames.
Radiation. Contamination. Toxic breath.

Each air-raid drill is sheer terror,
but some of the city kids giggle.
They don't believe that death
is real.

They've never touched a bullet,
or seen a vulture, or made music
by shaking
the jawbone
of a mule.

When I hide under my frail school desk,
my heart grows as rough and brittle
as the slab of wood
that fails to protect me
from reality's
gloom.

Margarita Engle, "More Dangerous Air" from Enchanted Air.  Text copyright © 2015 by Margarita Engle.  Reprinted by permission of Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division. All rights reserved.
Source: Enchanted Air (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2015)

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Death Is Nothing At AllHenry Scott-HollandBy Henry Scott-Holland More Henry Scott-HollandDeath is nothing at all.It does not count.I have only slipped away into the next room.Nothing has happened.Everything remains exactly as it was.I am I, and you are you,and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.Call me by the old familiar name.Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.Put no difference into your tone.Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.Life means all that it ever meant.It is the same as it ever was.There is absolute and unbroken continuity.What is this death but a negligible accident?Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?I am but waiting for you, for an interval,somewhere very near,just round the corner.All is well.Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.One brief moment and all will be as it was before.How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!Its is very deep and used the right word

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Death Is Nothing At AllHenry Scott-HollandBy Henry Scott-Holland More Henry Scott-HollandDeath is nothing at all.It does not count.I have only slipped away into the next room.Nothing has happened.Everything remains exactly as it was.I am I, and you are you,and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.Call me by the old familiar name.Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.Put no difference into your tone.Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.Life means all that it ever meant.It is the same as it ever was.There is absolute and unbroken continuity.What is this death but a negligible accident?Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?I am but waiting for you, for an interval,somewhere very near,just round the corner.All is well.Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.One brief moment and all will be as it was before.How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!Its is very deep and used the right word

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i like this poem because it shows the struggles of covid and how we survived it

After they sealed the doors and locked

the gate, after they left us mortality estimates,

on a sheet to post in the hall, after they counted

our days of water—by megaphone from outside

the perimeter—and drove away, after our desperate

questions had exhausted all our tears, after we

looked at each other, first with suspicion of contagion,

then with curiosity, and then with love, someone

found a guitar, remembered a song, and we all

got in a line, laughing arm in arm, and danced.

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I like this poem because is has a great rhythm.
1

Picture a woman

riding thunder on

the legs of slavery ...

2

Picture her kissing

our spines saying no to

the eyes of slavery ...

3

Picture her rotating

the earth into a shape

of lives becoming ...

4

Picture her leaning

into the eyes of our

birth clouds ...

5

Picture this woman

saying no to the constant

yes of slavery ...

6

Picture a woman

jumping rivers her

legs inhaling moons ...

7

Picture her ripe

with seasons of

legs ... running ...

8

Picture her tasting

the secret corners

of woods ...

9

Picture her saying:

You have within you the strength,

the patience, and the passion

to reach for the stars,

to change the world ...

10

Imagine her words:

Every great dream begins

with a dreamer ...

11

Imagine her saying:

I freed a thousand slaves,

could have freed

a thousand more if they

only knew they were slaves ...

12

Imagine her humming:

How many days we got

fore we taste freedom ...

13

Imagine a woman

asking: How many workers

for this freedom quilt ...

14

Picture her saying:

A live runaway could do

great harm by going back

but a dead runaway

could tell no secrets ...

15

Picture the daylight

bringing her to woods

full of birth moons ...

16

Picture John Brown

shaking her hands three times saying:

General Tubman. General Tubman. General Tubman.

17

Picture her words:

There’s two things I got a

right to: death or liberty ...

18

Picture her saying no

to a play called Uncle Tom’s Cabin:

I am the real thing ...

19

Picture a Black woman:

could not read or write

trailing freedom refrains ...

20

Picture her face

turning southward walking

down a Southern road ...

21

Picture this woman

freedom bound ... tasting a

people’s preserved breath ...

22

Picture this woman

of royalty ... wearing a crown

of morning air ...

23

Picture her walking,

running, reviving

a country’s breath ...

24

Picture black voices

leaving behind

lost tongues ...

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i know why i love i just do

I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I’m comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul

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i like this poem because i feel like i can realte to it

When I talk to my friends I pretend I am standing on the wings

of a flying plane. I cannot be trusted to tell them how I am.
Or if I am falling to earth weighing less

than a dozen roses. Sometimes I dream they have broken up

with their lovers and are carrying food to my house.
When I open the mailbox I hear their voices

like the long upward-winding curve of a train whistle

passing through the tall grasses and ferns
after the train has passed. I never get ahead of their shadows.

I embrace them in front of moving cars. I keep them away

from my miseries because to say I am miserable is to say I am like them.

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I like this poem for not how hard life can be but how tough it may be.

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Of course there's a certificate, bleeding
carbon at the creases and impressions,

detailing my metrics and lineage the night
I entered the earthly air in a new hospital

built by the intricate partnership between
Rust Belt governance, capitalism

and Christ, though I lie to people I like,
saying I was born in a garden so near

the sea that my mother-multilingual
and remarkably tall-rinsed me at the fringe

of the tide the morning after labor,
the horizon cloudless and birdless

while the sand whispered spells of protection,
depth, and solemnity upon the pair of us,

and amid this farce my dear listeners
don expressions of distrust or ire

as likely they should, faced with evasive
me, so wearied even before boyhood

by the truth that I've forever disallowed
my ears and my mouth any songs not made

from the water, dirt, wind, salt, and fire
of American manipulation.

Summer has salted
our neighborhood to thirst;
tar that patches the wounds of roofs
heats to sluggish bubbles;
sun obligates
paint on car hoods to blotch.

Emphasized by the light
inside corner-store beer coolers,
your malt lusters.

You're cold gold down throat.

Lush like storm-brim wind.

Foam-skinned as any cleansing.

Within thick glass, you swish oceanic
as we share you palm to palm.

You have helped
this dice game clank alive,
paper-wager and victory-rake,
players with obsidian eyes.

Through an uncurtained pane,
a music video is visible;
women's shimmer slurs
like jewelry worn on a passerby.

Neighbors here and there snore,
hallway walls tacked
with flea-market art, closets
dehydrated by moth repellent.
They leave us to you.
They could plead tomorrow
in churches whose pipes
ramble behind brittle plaster.

We drink you to the pale bottom,
we drink until night sinks
into skin like silk,
until graveyard cops
circle our block like a clock arm,
until blood slides
like alloy through veins,
until words hammer
from the anvil of the brain,
until America's
continental wheel unbolts
and everybody can see
we gleam like greased bearings.

Within me, the sipped, iced bourbon enacts
the sense of a slow, April rain
blurring and nurturing a landscape.
Decades I've been pipe-dreaming of finding
a life as concise as a wartime telegram.
Ultimately, I've ended up compiling
an archive of miscommunication
and the faded receipts of secondary disgraces.
In third grade, a friend's uncle stole the two dollars
from my pocket as I slept on their couch,
and later he must've hurried into the night
toward a flat in the nearby building
where a newly minted narcotic promised
to evict the misgivings from all riled souls.
I told no one of the theft, letting the emptiness
become my government, my friend's
mother counting her food stamps while we walked
the late-morning blocks to a bustling grocery,
within which she eventually smacked
the hopeful face of my friend as he reached
again for too costly a thing.

Remember that memory.
In this dimness when the sounds I make
are foreign, my home is not my own.
when I think of another winter
and the distant whiteness of its walls-
when even the sun seems set
outside the world. In this dimness
the edge of things removed
to thought the numb call touch,
remember that memory-
the young black self
the whole black body painted hot
by the fresh orange scene in the basement
of our old house when I was nine.
When it was my turn
to keep the fire going while my family slept -
my father off divorced somewhere, my older brother resting
after work, and what shadows hovered at the fringe of light
spilt from the furnace's mouth-
I stuck my shovel in the flame,
had its intensity
its heat travel through a vein in the handle
to a part of my head.
The coals gotten smaller, brighter.
Out of that fire, my frightened shovelling in the night
now a framed power, that young effort
made a little orange scene
kept the whole world excited-
gathered near its center.

In this dimness where I can't tell
if my longing is my own, it is gotten winter.
Above me I watch a jet
that be's perfectly still, yet gets so distant,
goes so pointless. I could take a plane,
fly from here to somewhere small
till I'm ashes of myself-
but everything burns repeatedly
or keeps burning. Remember that memory.
I am dark with effort, back at my mother's house
someone's thinking of me, and old and smothered flame
gets waked, and it warms the gap
between image and real light.

-"mu" ninety-eighth part-

Remembered moment lamenting
its exit, the anaphylactic aria
fell away. What beauty promised or
we projected faded, we moved
on,
not's province the place we
now camped in... The abandoned
ones we averred we'd someday
be
fell away as well. The abandoned
girl and boy blended in... Thought's
province it was we pitched our tents
in.
Wind wrinkled our foreheads, thought
not's not someday... Not made every
eye water. In our heads more than ever,
syl-
labic beads we thumbed, not's dread
have-without-hold we bowed down to,
cried Cry blood, fell back... There
was a box inside my head, something
men-
acing shook it, Joe Henderson's tenor.
Not's woken-up-to now we backed away
from, Little Johnnie C, "Hobo Joe"...
In-
sistent, imposed itself, beside the point.
All of it was orphan song we chimed in
on, chided by it, charmed even so. I saw
no
light but said otherwise, lit by the thought
of it, not-light lytic, tear between said
and saw... Light stole away, some kind
of
spell I was under. At more removes
than there was ground for, I stole away
as well, said to have been heard to
say hush. A tiptoe ghost octet fidgeted
be-
hind us. Not was another name for
death I was afraid and afraid my feet
would fail, Idiot Footless, feet I did
in-
deed speak with, did indeed say hush...
A little bit of nothing, anaphylactic
rush, seen-say gone so soon we were
not's
understudies. Whatever it was we did,
no matter what we did, whatever we did we
did away... No one heard footsteps, no
feet
struck the dirt. Earth beset by see-thru
sleep, transparent footprint, sleepwalk's
his and hers an it club of late, the aban-
doned his and hers run come... In back
of
us the ghost octet kept at it, thread on
the box and on the backs of our necks,
hair stood on the backs of our necks.
Bal-
letic, they traipsed on tiptoe, shushed all
who stood and looked on. The sense we
were being shadowed had hold of us, the
sense
of being had we had... They were plotting
what it was to be footless, points on a graph
the ground had become. What it meant to
be
a tiptoe ghost we could see now, shushed
as we were, shadowed as we were, warned
we were better off away, beside the point,
not's null insistence, moot... All the same,
they
doused us all in fish powder, a rite we were
none
the wiser
for

____________________

I saw no way to be wise enough. Tonal
motion made me weep. I saw no way to
stay where I was, be where I was, what-
ever it was I was moved on, moved over,
what-
ever it was worried what I was... So it
was green loomed outside my window,
drawn light in Low Forest I was wise to,
saw thru, aroused by light's reluctance
but
not to be caught out, no way could I be
wise
enough I
knew (slogan)

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Of course there's a certificate, bleedingcarbon at the creases and impressions, detailing my metrics and lineage the nightI entered the earthly air in a new hospital built by the intricate partnership betweenRust Belt governance, capitalism and Christ, though I lie to people I like,saying I was born in a garden

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I like this poem because even though it is short the message that is shown in it is strong.
Langston Hughes - 1902-1967

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

# data[].attributes.body
I chose this poem because it shows love as a strength, without being a distraction from needs.

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And there's a sweet sob in it like rain-still rain in the night.
Among the leaves of the trumpet-tree, close to his nest,
The pea-dove sings, and each note thrills me with strange delight
Like the words, wet with music, that well from your trembling throat.
I'm afraid of your eyes, they're so bold,
Searching me through, reading my thoughts, shining like gold.
But sometimes they are gentle and soft like the dew on the lips of the eucharis
Before the sun comes warm with his lover's kiss,
You are sea-foam, pure with the star's loveliness,
Not mortal, a flower, a fairy, too fair for the beauty-shorn earth,
All wonderful things, all beautiful things, gave of their wealth to your birth:
O I love you so much, not recking of passion, that I feel it is wrong,
But men will love you, flower, fairy, non-mortal spirit burdened with flesh,
Forever, life-long.

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And there's a sweet sob in it like rain-still rain in the night. Among the leaves of the trumpet-tree, close to his nest, The pea-dove sings, and each note thrills me with strange delight Like the words, wet with music, that well from your trembling throat.

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Death Is Nothing At AllHenry Scott-HollandBy Henry Scott-Holland More Henry Scott-HollandDeath is nothing at all.It does not count.I have only slipped away into the next room.Nothing has happened.Everything remains exactly as it was.I am I, and you are you,and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.Call me by the old familiar name.Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.Put no difference into your tone.Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.Life means all that it ever meant.It is the same as it ever was.There is absolute and unbroken continuity.What is this death but a negligible accident?Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?I am but waiting for you, for an interval,somewhere very near,just round the corner.All is well.Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.One brief moment and all will be as it was before.How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

# data[].attributes.subject
Death Is Nothing At AllHenry Scott-HollandBy Henry Scott-Holland More Henry Scott-HollandDeath is nothing at all.It does not count.I have only slipped away into the next room.Nothing has happened.Everything remains exactly as it was.I am I, and you are you,and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.Call me by the old familiar name.Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.Put no difference into your tone.Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.Life means all that it ever meant.It is the same as it ever was.There is absolute and unbroken continuity.What is this death but a negligible accident?Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?I am but waiting for you, for an interval,somewhere very near,just round the corner.All is well.Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.One brief moment and all will be as it was before.How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

# data[].attributes.body
Its is very deep and used the right word

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I like this poem because it is powerful and it uses lots of figurative language.

Maya Angelou - 1928-2014

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

From And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc

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Resignation by Nikki Giovanni  (Chloe Bijon)     

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Resignation by Nikki Giovanni  (Chloe Bijon)     

# data[].attributes.body
This poem speaks to me because it paints not only paints a picture but makes me feel like I am in the poem.

I love you
because the Earth turns round the sun
because the North wind blows north
sometimes
because the Pope is Catholic
and most Rabbis Jewish
because the winters flow into springs
and the air clears after a storm
because only my love for you
despite the charms of gravity
keeps me from falling off this Earth
into another dimension
I love you
because it is the natural order of things

I love you
like the habit I picked up in college
of sleeping through lectures
or saying I’m sorry
when I get stopped for speeding
because I drink a glass of water
in the morning
and chain-smoke cigarettes
all through the day
because I take my coffee Black
and my milk with chocolate
because you keep my feet warm
though my life a mess
I love you
because I don’t want it
any other way

I am helpless
in my love for you
It makes me so happy
to hear you call my name
I am amazed you can resist
locking me in an echo chamber
where your voice reverberates
through the four walls
sending me into spasmatic ecstasy
I love you
because it’s been so good
for so long
that if I didn’t love you
I’d have to be born again
and that is not a theological statement
I am pitiful in my love for you

The Dells tell me Love
is so simple
the thought though of you
sends indescribably delicious multitudinous
thrills throughout and through-in my body
I love you
because no two snowflakes are alike
and it is possible
if you stand tippy-toe
to walk between the raindrops
I love you
because I am afraid of the dark
and can’t sleep in the light
because I rub my eyes
when I wake up in the morning
and find you there
because you with all your magic powers were
determined that
I should love you
because there was nothing for you but that
I would love you

I love you
because you made me
want to love you
more than I love my privacy
my freedom          my commitments
and responsibilities
I love you ’cause I changed my life
to love you
because you saw me one Friday
afternoon and decided that I would
love you
I love you I love you I love you

# data[].attributes.body
I like it because it is so true, nothing lasts forever,good or bad.

Would you rather have the good news

at a bad time, or bad news at a good?

Give me the good news, please.

Okay: Bad times don’t last forever.

Man, I needed that. And the bad news?

Good times don’t last forever, either.

So news is, basically, Things change?

When it’s bad, we need the good.

That’s new, old, and always.

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i chose this because of covid. i liked it ends on some positively.

After they sealed the doors and locked

the gate, after they left us mortality estimates,

on a sheet to post in the hall, after they counted

our days of water—by megaphone from outside

the perimeter—and drove away, after our desperate

questions had exhausted all our tears, after we

looked at each other, first with suspicion of contagion,

then with curiosity, and then with love, someone

found a guitar, remembered a song, and we all

got in a line, laughing arm in arm, and danced.

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Do you still remember: falling stars by Rainer Maria Rilke (Chloe Bijon)

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Do you still remember: falling stars by Rainer Maria Rilke (Chloe Bijon)

# data[].attributes.body
This poem means something to me because it creates a picture in my head and is calming in a way

Do you still remember: falling stars,
how they leapt slantwise through the sky
like horses over suddenly held-out hurdles
of our wishes—did we have so many?—
for stars, innumerable, leapt everywhere;
almost every gaze upward became
wedded to the swift hazard of their play,
and our heart felt like a single thing
beneath that vast disintegration of their brilliance—
and was whole, as if it would survive them!

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it shows that you can have favorites and don't have to right everything

There are lions and roaring tigers, and enormous camels and things,
There are biffalo-buffalo-bisons, and a great big bear with wings.
There’s a sort of a tiny potamus, and a tiny nosserus too—
But I gave buns to the elephant when I went down to the Zoo!

There are badgers and bidgers and bodgers, and a Super-in-tendent’s House,
There are masses of goats, and a Polar, and different kinds of mouse,
And I think there’s a sort of a something which is called a wallaboo—
But I gave buns to the elephant when I went down to the Zoo!

If you try to talk to the bison, he never quite understands;
You can’t shake hands with a mingo—he doesn’t like shaking hands.
And lions and roaring tigers hate saying, “How do you do?”—
But I give buns to the elephant when I go down to the Zoo!

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this poem shows that you shouldn't always take things literally and sometimes things are just expressions

An Owl once lived in a hollow tree,
And he was as wise as wise could be.
The branch of Learning he didn’t know
Could scarce on the tree of knowledge grow.
He knew the tree from branch to root,
And an Owl like that can afford  to hoot.

And he hooted—until, alas! one day
He chanced to hear, in a casual way,
An insignificant little bird
Make use of a term he had never heard.
He was flying to bed in the dawning light
When he heard her singing with all her might,
“Hurray! hurray for the early worm!”

“Dear me!” said the Owl, “what a singular term!
I would look it up if it weren’t so late;
I must rise at dusk to investigate.
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes an Owl healthy and stealthy and wise!”

So he slept like an honest Owl all day,
And rose in the early twilight gray,
And went to work in the dusky light
To look for the early worm all night.

He searched the country for miles around,
But the early worm was not to be found.
So he went to bed in the dawning light,
And looked for the “worm” again next night.

And again and again, and again and again
He sought and he sought, but all in vain,
Till he must have looked for a year and a day
For the early worm, in the twilight gray.

At last in despair he gave up the search,
And was heard to remark, as he sat on his perch
By the side of his nest in the hollow tree,
“The thing is as plain as night to me—
Nothing can shake my conviction firm,
There’s no such thing as the early worm.”