National Poetry Month Reading Challenge

[AACPL]

Let's celebrate National Poetry Month by reading a collection of poems or just a poem or two if you're short on time. Share your favorite poem or your favorite few lines with us here. If you're feeling crafty maybe share a haiku or a few lines of your own verse!

[Carol Jen]

My favorite poem of all time is The Daffodils by William Wordsworth and I've been reminded of it (yay!) lately but them starting to spring up everywhere. Here is my favorite section of the poem:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

[Rachel]

There are so many poems I love, but like Carol I also think of one that it timely for this season:

April Rain Song by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.

[Cindy]

My favorite poem of all time is:

Fog
by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

----

It's practically perfect in its simplicity.

[Elaine]

A Poison Tree
by William Blake

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,--

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

[Kelly]

Carol wrote: "My favorite poem of all time is The Daffodils by William Wordsworth and I've been reminded of it (yay!) lately but them starting to spring up everywhere. Here is my favorite section of the poem:

..."

Carol, that's one of my all time favorites, too!

[Monica]

One of my long time favorites, but there are so many others. This one I revisit often...

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

[Hepatica]

Bed in Summer
From Child's Garden of Verses

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

[Kate Alanna]

I attended St. Mary's College of Maryland, and our homegrown poet laureate was Lucille Clifton. This poem is posted on the wall leading to our Great Room to remind everyone who passes of the amazing power of the St. Mary's River that impacts us all so much.

blessing the boats
by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary's)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that