We discuss the following poems in the Expressive Writing Zoom meetings. You are welcome to print them.
Hymn to Time
By Ursula le Guin
Time says “Let there be”
every moment and instantly
there is space and the radiance
of each bright galaxy.
And eyes beholding radiance.
And the gnats’ flickering dance.
And the seas’ expanse.
And death, and chance.
Time makes room
for going and coming home
and in time’s womb
begins all ending.
Time is being and being
time, it is all one thing,
the shining, the seeing,
the dark abounding.
Passing Time
By Maya Angelou
Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk
One paints the beginning
of a certain end.
The other, the end of a
sure beginning.
The Red Wheelbarrow
By William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Today
By Billy Collins
If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze
that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house
and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,
a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies
seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking
a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,
releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage
so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting
into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.
A poem by an Expressive Writing student
I’m sinking rapidly into quicksand
I am pulling as hard as I can to escape,
Is this vine strong enough?
My undeniable strength allowed me to be freed,
Nothing, not even quicksand,
Can hold me down for long
homage to my hips
By Lucille Clifton
these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!
Homage To My Nose
By an Expressive Writing student
This nose is a long nose, it’s a family nose,
It needs freedom,
To be appreciated for what it is,
It doesn’t like to be described
With disdain,
It adores the scents of food and flowers,
It smells beauty,
This nose is intuitive,
This nose is guiding,
I have known this nose to
Diagnose illness, to take joy in
The scent of a beautiful newborn baby.
Otherwise
By Jane Kenyon
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
Otherwise
By a student
I got out of bed,
Sheets silky, white cat purring,
It might have been otherwise.
I delighted
In a hot cup of tea.
It might have ben otherwise.
I played with my children on
My bed. Laughter, tickling, joy.
All morning I read, wrote and ran,
Some of my favorite things.
At noon I reveled in a hot shower, then
Went to a friend’s house.
It might have been otherwise.
We ate dinner, Morroccan and delicious,
Drank wine, shared stories, laughed, ate more, drank more.
Friendship. It might have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed,
Hydrangeas outside my window,
My children’s artwork on the walls and planned another day,
Just like this one.
But one day, I know it will be otherwise.
Those Winter Sundays
By Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
From a poem by Mark Burrows
The door of morning opens gently each day,
not demanding a thing of us but hoping
we’ll have eyes to catch some measure of
the waiting wonders and their delights—
You Reading This, Be Ready
By William Stafford
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life —
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
From a poem by Denise Levertov
It was she
who taught me to look;
to name the flowers when I was still close to the ground,
my face level with theirs;
She has swept the crackling seedpods,
the litter of mauve blossoms, off the cement path,
tipped them into the rubbish bucket.
She's made her bed, washed up the breakfast dishes,
wiped the hotplate. I've taken the butter and milkjug
back to the fridge next door-but it's not my place,
visiting here, to usurp the tasks
that weave the day's pattern.
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
. . . .
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Traveler, There Is No Road
By Antonio Machado
Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship’s wake on the sea.
Love after Love
By Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
I Worried
By Mary Oliver
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was taught, and if not, how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows can do it and I am. well.
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it, am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning.
and sang.
Luddite’s Lament
By Peter W. Yaremko
My iWatch won’t tell me the time unless I first prove it’s me.
Leave the car running while I step away with the fob in my pocket
and it bleats like some kind of digital sheep about to be shorn.
My passwords have morphed from a simple four numbers
to strings of upper-case-lower-case-numerals-symbols. I’m captive
to autocorrect, robocalls and that eavesdropping siren, Siri.
It’s impossible to kite a check to tide me over like I used to. But
technology has given me new prosperity of time, I’m assured,
to squander away while I wander the net or simply expend myself
with weekend work. And don’t get me started on plastic everything,
the excrement of our era. Scissors are needed– to get at a KitKat bar!
Oh give it up, I mutter, and haul your old man’s ass in for reconditioning.
The Book of Your Heart
By Alexandra Vasiliu
Your heart is a book.
Every day,
you write the chapters of your life.
Try to make them bright
like the greatest poems
you have ever read.
Every day,
you can rewrite all the wrong chapters
of your life
and change them into beautiful poems.
Remind yourself,
every day,
you are the author of your life.
The Peace Of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
But Wait
By Peter W. Yaremko
What to sing as day is darkening
and simplest breathing comes heaving
and moving me is moving weight when
seventy is for the sleek and strong?
What to sing?
Cadenced lines of loves recalled? Illicit scents under unfamiliar sheets?
Tongues and tastes and lidded eyes and salty, scalding flesh on mine?
But wait. Wait.
So much of life is mine to make, not just commemorate. Within me yet
before I pass more paths to take to break to celebrate
when seventy is for the sleek and strong.
Chemotherapy
By Julia Darling
I did not imagine being bald
at forty-four. I didn’t have a plan.
Perhaps a scar or two from growing old,
hot flushes. I’d sit fluttering a fan.
But I am bald, and hardly ever walk
by day, I’m the invalid of these rooms,
stirring soups, awake in the half dark,
not answering the phone when it rings.
I never thought that life could get this small,
that I would care so much about a cup,
the taste of tea, the texture of a shawl,
and whether or not I should get up.
I’m not unhappy. I have learnt to drift
and sip. The smallest things are gifts.
Lines from “End”
By Julia Darling
Eventually, I was placed
on a bed like a boat
in an empty room with sky
filled windows,
with azure blue pillows,
the leopard-like quilt.
It was English tea time,
with the kind of light
that electrifies the
ordinary. It had just
stopped raining.
Beads of water on glass
glittered like secrets.
Praying
By Mary Oliver
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.
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