Category: Poetry

Helen says heaven, for her, would be complete immersion in physical process, without self-consciousness—   to be the respiration of the grass, or ionized agitation just above the break of a wave, traffic in a sunflower's thousand golden rooms. from Mark Doty, Hea

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it; As a mantis, arranged On a green leaf, grows Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves Any greenness is greener than anyone knows. from Richard Wilbur, The beautiful changes

Oh, the littles that remain! Scent of mint out in the lane; Flare of window; sound of bees; — These, but these.   Three times sitting down to bread; One time climbing up to bed; Table-setting o’er and o’er; Drying herbs for winter’s store; This thing; that

They say eyes clear with age, As dew clarifies air To sharpen evenings, As if time put an edge Round the last shape of things To show them there; The many-levelled trees, The long soft tides of grass Wrinkling away the gold Wind-ridden waves--all these, They say, come back to f

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.   I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.   Or I guess it is the handkerchief of

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread: you put this rather beautifully, and gave me leave to sing my work until my work became the song.   In sorrow shalt thou eat of it: a line on which a man might ring the changes as he tills the ground from which he was t

An emerald is as green as grass; A ruby red as blood; A sapphire shines as blue as heaven; A flint lies in the mud.   A diamond is a brilliant stone, To catch the world’s desire; An opal holds a fiery spark; But a flint holds fire. Christina Rossetti, Jewels

Delivered out of raw continual pain, smell of darkness, groans of those others to whom he was chained--   unchained, and led past the sleepers, door after door silently opening-- out! And along a long street's majestic emptiness under the moon: one hand on the an

  The curl of the ribbon by leaves of the reeds, the grasses paint peeling on the wet clapboards like the curl of the flat ribbon pulled by the blade of scissors wrapping a package in gold moving in the autumn breeze bathed in a puddle of light grasses above the m

  Beauty and Beauty's son and rosemary - Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly - born of the sea supposedly, at Christmas each, in company, braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary -   since the flight to Egypt, blooming indifferently. With la

here’s to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap and to your(in my arms flowering so new) self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain   and here’s to silent certainly mountains; and to a disappearing poet of always, snow and to morning; and to morning’s beautiful

  Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dream

  The roaring alongside he takes for granted, And that every so often the world is bound to shake. He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward, In a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.   The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet Of interrup

  Light splashed this morning on the shell-pink anemones swaying on their tall stems; down blue-spiked veronica light flowed in rivulets over the humps of the honeybees; this morning I saw light kiss the silk of the roses in their second flowering, my late bloome

  A gentle spring evening arrives airily, unclouded by the world.   Three times the bell tolls; it echoes like a wave. We see heaven upside-down in the lake.   Love is a vast sea. It cannot be emptied. And, like springtime,  insight flows easily, everywh

  The dawn light. A light rain. I hear it on the treetop leaves. Then, the mist. The morning wind blows it and the clouds away.   Now colours deepen, and a sense of grace: the presence of water. And then, across the landscape the smell of morning rain.