Good Poems for Hard Times

by Various

though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

The cats doze near the stove. They lift their heads as the plow goes down the road, making the house tremble as it passes.

Good image.

Job (Job 28:28)

Really? A bible verse?

There’s not one leaf left to bear witness, with twitch and scuttle, rattle and rasp, against the blatant roaring of the wrongway wind. Only my nose running and my face frozen into a kind of a grin which has nothing to do with the ice and the wind or death and December, but joy pure and simple when my black and tan puppy, for the first time ever, lifts his hind leg to pee.

Dogs can always make you smile.

a hand’s width and two generations away,

When I am sixty-three, when you are ten, and you are neither closer nor as far, your arms will fill with what you know by then, the arithmetic and love we do and are.

Starting the Subaru at Five Below

Oh you already know this is going to be good.

The battery cranks, the engine gives 2 or 3 low groans and starts. My God it starts. And unlike my family in the house, the job I’m headed towards, the poems in my briefcase, the dreams I had last night, there is no question about what makes sense.

Good to know he has something that is steady and constant.

Let me celebrate you.

What a damn line.

watching That still grace of hand and thigh,

Oooh.

these nights we hear the horses running in the rain it stops and the moon comes out and we are still here the leaks in the roof go on dripping after the rain has passed smell of ginger flowers slips through the dark house down near the sea the slow heart of the beacon flashes

What a stanza!

I keep wanting to give you what is already yours it is the morning of the mornings together breath of summer oh my found one the sleep in the same current and each waking to you

"Oh my found one."

when I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see

And all I spend my time doing is waiting/hoping for the day someone says this to me.

Mary Oliver

We know shit's about to get real when Mary rolls up in the club.

all day I think of her— her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love.

Nature is so much more beutiful than our world.

The State of the Economy

:(

nature, unrestrained, lops the weaker limbs of shrubs and trees with a sense of aesthetics that is practical and sinister.

No words are better at describing nature conditioning itself than those to.

and when you consider the altitude, the secret parts of the engines, and all the hard water and the deep canyons below . . . well, I just think it would be good if one of us maybe stood up and said a few words, or, so as not to involve the police, at least quietly wrote something down.

You never know what could happen.

i know all about what is happening in this city at just this moment, every last grain of dark, i conceive. but what i see now is the 2 little girls flung up flung up, the sun snatch ing them, their mouths rounded in gasps. they are there, they fly up.

Nothing like chilodhood imagination and innocence.

What you will do with the mean annual rainfall On Plato’s Republic, or the calorie content Of the Diet of Worms, such things are said to be Good for you, and you will have to learn them In order to become one of the grown-ups

Hit the nail on the head. You learn things you don't need to know in college.

This is your invitation to the Ninth-Grade Play At Jackson Park Middle School 8:00 P.M., November 17, 1947. Macbeth, authored by Shakespeare And directed by Mr. Grossman and Mrs. Silvio With scenery from Miss Ferguson’s art class.

Not gonna lie, never thought I'd see a poem written like a school bulletin.

Working in the Rain Robert Morgan

This is why I'll run in the rain. Invigoration. That and privacy.

THIS LUST OF TENDERNESS

Another great line. You know these poems will be greatt.

You do not want to be here You wish it were you

Perfect words to follow this title.

You want to think of water A surface with no scars

But about all the unremarkable years that Hallmark doesn’t even make a card for.

I fell in love with her under the blanket of snow that settled on all the roofs of the town, filling up every dark depression.

Snow is pure.

Love, whoever you are, your courage was my companion for many cold towns after the betrayal of Ithaca, and when I order coffee in a strange place, still I say, lifting, this is for you.

Two caught on film who hurtle from the eighty-second floor, choosing between a fireball and to jump holding hands,

I like the nod to that photo.

Sonnet No. 6: Dearest, I never knew such loving

Snowflake William Baer

Favorite so far.

Timing’s everything. The vapor rises high in the sky, tossing to and fro, then freezes, suddenly, and crystalizes into a perfect flake of miraculous snow.

Nature is crazy, man.

For countless miles, drifting east above the world, whirling about in a swirling free-for-all, appearing aimless, just like love,

Snow to love? I love it.

Feasting Elizabeth W. Garber

Treat yourself to this one.

I am so amazed to find myself kissing you with such abandon, filling myself with our kisses astounding hunger for edges of lips and tongue. Returning to feast again and again, our bellies never overfilling from this banquet.

I've been itching for a kiss. This makes it far worse. Killer lines.

The undertaker Pins a small note on the coffin saying “Wait till I return, I’ve got a date with Love.”

Yes Catherine Doty

What a damn poem.

Afterward, the compromise. Bodies resume their boundaries.

But that's no fun. :'(

A Spiral Notebook Ted Kooser

Another killer poem.

The bright wire rolls like a porpoise in and out of the calm blue sea of the cover,

Killer simile.

Because my mind flies into it through my fingers

Me and my mac right there.

Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly layed out and then highlighted and vanish in a flash at “delete” so it teaches of impermanence and pain;

I like this.

Although most people I know were condemned years ago by Judge Necessity to life in condos near a freeway exit convenient to their twice-a-day commutes through traffic jams to jobs that they dislike,

Laugh emoji.

working’s better here and easier than trying to have fun. Is that the way it is where you’re stuck, too?

Good to know I'm not alone.

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre, If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame, If we skip the Champs Elysées And remain here in this sleazy Old hotel room Doing this and that To what and whom Learning who you are, Learning what I am. Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris, The little bit of Paris in our view. There’s that crack across the ceiling And the hotel walls are peeling And I’m in Paris with you.

Simplicity is key sometimes.

Whatever is invisible to one Is to the other an enormous golden lion

Great words.

A pleasure never mentioned to the young, Is the sweet heat made from two bodies in a bed Curled together on a winter night, The smell of the other always in the quilt, The hand set quietly on the other’s flank

Talk about imagery.

idea of love was not to fall. And neither was the whole idea of God. We put him well above ourselves, because we meant, in time, to measure up.

You are your own God.

Things Lisel Mueller

Clever one.

To A Frustrated Poet R. J. Ellmann