This this will it always be, and why

To ever argue for: here walking

In its life, or sprawled, or loitering

Down shallow valleys of the lawn:

The trees that are there

The pigeon bobbing through

Its fallowgray ellipse of ground—

The comfort of this ground

Is physical: the sun

Goes through your shirt like liniment,

                                   The tilting

Child in fact now finding

Its first step, the blue balloon, the string

Of ducks drawn through the pond,

The twined twain, the air that hears

The day’s gamegame, and where

Up through the cross-rack oak

Deep gladed lofts of leaf, green

Overtaking green and light and green

Array and hold

Their silent chord,

To where the vergemost

Quibble at clear nothing—there

Is not a purer ledge of opening; nothing

Here is not enough to be without

All need to ever argue for.

BY THOMAS HOOD

I remember, I remember,

The house where I was born,

The little window where the sun

Came peeping in at morn;

He never came a wink too soon,

Nor brought too long a day,

But now, I often wish the night

Had borne my breath away!

I remember, I remember,

The roses, red and white,

The vi'lets, and the lily-cups,

Those flowers made of light!

The lilacs where the robin built,

And where my brother set

The laburnum on his birthday,—

The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember,

Where I was used to swing,

And thought the air must rush as fresh

To swallows on the wing;

My spirit flew in feathers then,

That is so heavy now,

And summer pools could hardly cool

The fever on my brow!

I remember, I remember,

The fir trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky:

It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm farther off from heav'n

Than when I was a boy.

Welcome children of the Spring,

   In your garbs of green and gold,

Lifting up your sun-crowned heads

   On the verdant plain and wold.

As a bright and joyous troop

   From the breast of earth ye came

Fair and lovely are your cheeks,

   With sun-kisses all aflame.

In the dusty streets and lanes,

   Where the lowly children play,

There as gentle friends ye smile,

   Making brighter life's highway

Dewdrops and the morning sun,

   Weave your garments fair and bright,

And we welcome you to-day

   As the children of the light.

Children of the earth and sun.

   We are slow to understand

All the richness of the gifts

   Flowing from our Father's hand.

They stand in parks and graveyards and gardens.

Some of them are taller than department stores,

yet they do not draw attention to themselves.

You will be fitting a heated towel rail one day

and see, through the louvre window,

a shoal of olive-green fish changing direction

in the air that swims above the little gardens.

Or you will wake at your aunt’s cottage,

your sleep broken by a coal train on the empty hill

as the oaks roar in the wind off the channel.

Your kindness to animals, your skill at the clarinet,

these are accidental things.

We lost this game a long way back.

Look at you. You’re reading poetry.

Outside the spring air is thick

with the seeds of their children.

[for Susannah Foster and Doctor Willie Pietri]

If some nice person

Were to be walking by the front of my house

and would pick a flower from the breasts

of my small garden,

I would notice every single one that would be missing.

I would be able to notice their long necks broken

and their juices gathered up at the tips of their wounds

like teardrops, brightly as fresh bleeding blood.

O All the surviving flowers would turn their heads

in dread, crying soft petals on the faces of the grass.

All the bees of the Universe would pass by with their grief;

The wind would blow sadly the memory of their smells

As butterflies would go in a hurry

                                                         fluttering

                                                               the sad news to their friends . . .

Just like—

                     Quite Suddenly,

                                   One lonely, long and lonesome night

                                        on which you've

                                                              tossed&turned

                                            inside your head

                                                                        —Fearing!

That in a dream—Just Now

                                               You felt

               Someone You Love                         is far

                                                                                thus, they may be Dead . . .

In the Great Distance of your late mother's love;

Across the Vast Field where your father's past would call,

Rippling wide, and wider a wave forever

    fading in a pond,

where you once so merrily played your youth away—

O, All the kisses and the pretty girls' faces now gone

In the utter restlessness that transforms midnight to dawn,

You see the Shadows passing by, 

                                                            "Goodbye! . . .

                                                                                      from Earth, to the Sky

                                                                        To be with their God.

and the garden diminishes: cucumber leaves rumpled

and rusty, zucchini felled by borers, tomatoes sparse

on the vines. But out in the perennial beds, there’s one last

blast of color: ignitions of goldenrod, flamboyant

asters, spiraling mums, all those flashy spikes waving

in the wind, conducting summer’s final notes.

The ornamental grasses have gone to seed, haloed

in the last light. Nights grow chilly, but the days

are still warm; I wear the sun like a shawl on my neck

and arms. Hundreds of blackbirds ribbon in, settle

in the trees, so many black leaves, then, just as suddenly,

they’re gone. This is autumn’s great Departure Gate,

and everyone, boarding passes in hand, waits

patiently in a long, long line.

Now that I know

How passion warms little

Of flesh in the mould,

And treasure is brittle,—

I’ll lie here and learn

How, over their ground,

Trees make a long shadow

And a light sound.

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.

Praise the rain; the seagull dive

The curl of plant, the raven talk—

Praise the hurt, the house slack

The stand of trees, the dignity—

Praise the dark, the moon cradle

The sky fall, the bear sleep—

Praise the mist, the warrior name

The earth eclipse, the fired leap—

Praise the backwards, upward sky

The baby cry, the spirit food—

Praise canoe, the fish rush

The hole for frog, the upside-down—

Praise the day, the cloud cup

The mind flat, forget it all—

Praise crazy. Praise sad.

Praise the path on which we're led.

Praise the roads on earth and water.

Praise the eater and the eaten.

Praise beginnings; praise the end.

Praise the song and praise the singer.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

Sometimes when you start to ramble
or rather when you feel you are starting to ramble
you will say Well, now I’m rambling
though I don’t think you ever are.
And if you ever are I don’t really care.
And not just because I and everyone really 
at times falls into our own unspooling
—which really I think is a beautiful softness
of being human, trying to show someone else
the color of all our threads, wanting another to know 
everything in us we are trying to show them—
but in the specific, 
in the specific of you
here in this car that you are driving
and in which I am sitting beside you
with regards to you 
and your specific mouth
parting to give way
to the specific sweetness that is
the water of your voice 
tumbling forth—like I said 
I don’t ever really mind
how much more 
you might keep speaking
as it simply means 
I get to hear you 
speak for longer. 
What was a stream 
now a river.

Please tell me that I was a good child
And that I did everything right
And that the atmosphere was exactly certain
I want you to love me
In ways that you never have
So that I become a forgotten world
With rainbow sunrises over dark green trees
And the cooling of the day
Becomes normal again
We will sit and watch the body of water
That we once called a sort of death
You know even in my dreams
You say I’ll never get it right
This is not a dream
We are burning here with no escape
But no matter how many times
They talk about the moon
It does not take a poet
To know that the moon
Is still only an illusion
Only an illusion
The moon calls out to all of us
Come back, it says
But we don’t hear it
Already on our way
To somewhere

In this version, the valley
lime green after rain
rolls its tides before us.

A coyote bush shivers with seed.

We hold out our palms as if catching snow—
our villages of circular tracts
overcast with stars.

We have been moving together in sequence
for thousands of years, paralyzed
only by the question of time.

But now it is autumn under bishop pines—
the young blown down by wind feed
their lichens to the understory.

We follow the deer-path
past the ferns, to the flooded
upper reaches of the estuary.

The channel snakes through horsetails
and hemlock as the forest deepens, rises
behind us and the blue heron,
frozen in the shallows.

The shadow of her long neck ripples.

Somewhere in the rustling tulle reeds
spider is casting her threads to the light

and we spot a crimson-hooded fly agaric,
her toadstool’s gills white
as teeth as the sun
                bleeds into the Pacific.

We will walk the trail
until it turns to sand
and wait at the spit’s edge, listening
to the breakers, the seagulls
as they chatter their twilight preparations.

What we won’t understand
about the sound of the sea is no different
than the origin of planets

or the wind’s crystalline structures
irreversibly changing.

The albatross drags her parachute
over the earth’s gaping mouth.

We turn back only for the instant
the four dimensions fold
into a sandcastle—before its towers
are collapsed by waves.

The face that turns
toward the end of its world
dissolves into space—

despite us, the continuum
remains.

Like a firefly without a light

You were there like a slow torch burning

I was a key that could use a little turning

So tired that I couldn't even sleep

So many secrets I couldn't keep

Promised myself I wouldn't weep

One more promise I couldn't keep

It seems no one can help me now

I'm in too deep

There's no way out

This time I have really led myself astray

Runaway train never going back

Wrong way on a one way track

Seems like I should be getting somewhere

Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Can you help me remember how to smile?

Make it somehow all seem worthwhile

How on earth did I get so jaded?

Life's mystery seems so faded

I can go where no one else can go

I know what no one else knows

Here I am just drownin' in the rain

With a ticket for a runaway train

Everything seems cut and dry

Day and night, earth and sky

Somehow I just don't believe it

Runaway train never going back

Wrong way on a one way track

Seems like I should be getting somewhere

Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Bought a ticket for a runaway train

Like a madman laughin' at the rain

A little out of touch, little insane

It's just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train never goin' back

Wrong way on a one way track

Seems like I should be getting somewhere

Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Runaway train never comin' back

Runaway train tearin' up the track

Runaway train burnin' in my veins

Runaway but it always seems the same

Here come Johnny singing oldies, goldies
Be-bop-a-lula, baby, what I say
Here come Johnny singin' "I got a woman"
Down in the tunnels, trying to make it pay

He got the action, he got the motion
Oh, yeah, the boy can play
Dedication, devotion
He turnin' all the nighttime into the day

The song about the sweet ole lovin' woman
He do the song about the knife
And he do the walk, do the walk of life
Yeah, he do the walk of life

Here come Johnny, gonna tell you a story
Hand me now my walkin' shoes
Here come Johnny with the power and the glory
Backbeat, the talkin' blues

He got the action, he got the motion
Oh, yeah, the boy can play
Dedication, devotion
He turnin' all the nighttime into the day

The song about the sweet ole lovin' woman
He do the song about the knife
And he do the walk, do the walk of life
Yeah, he do the walk of life

Here come Johnny singing oldies, goldies
Be-bop-a-lula, baby, what I say
Here come Johnny singing "I got a woman"
Down in the tunnels, trying to make it pay

He got the action, he got the motion
Oh, yeah, the boy can play
Dedication, devotion
He turnin' all the nighttime into the day

And after all the violence and double-talk
There's just a song in all the trouble and the strife
You do the walk, yeah, you do the walk of life
Hmm, you do the walk of life

A-woo-hoo

Woo-hoo-hoo

Woo-hoo-hoo
Woo-hoo
Woo-hoo-hoo
Yeah, do the walk of life

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be
For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
There will be an answer, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be, be

And when the night is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me
Shinin' until tomorrow, let it be
I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

And let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

And let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

    One river gives
                                              Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.
 

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people
Livin' for today
Ah

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin' life in peace
You

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one