Poem a Day

Whatever you can do
or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it.

-Goethe

In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen—
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That’s the way it was.

-eskimo

Dance as though no one is watching you,
Love as though you have never been hurt before,
Sing as though no one can hear you,
Live as though heaven is on earth.

(unknown)

If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.

He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by–
you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
“Who are you really, wanderer?”–
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”

-William Stafford

Seeing the snowman standing all alone
In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.
The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare
A night of gnashings and enormous moan.
His tearful sight can hardly reach to where
The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes
Returns him such a God-forsaken stare
As outcast Adam gave to Paradise.

The man of snow is, nonetheless, content,
Having no wish to go inside and die.
Still, he is moved to see the youngster cry.
Though frozen water is his element,
He melts enough to drop from one soft eye
A trickle of the purest rain, a tear
For the child at the bright pane surrounded by
Such warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear.

-Richard Wilbur

Not because of his eyes,
    the eyes of a bird,
        but because he is beaked,

birdlike, to do an injury,
    has the turtle attracted you.
        He is your only pet.

When we are together
    you talk of nothing else
        ascribing all sorts

of murderous motives
    to his least action.
        You ask me

to write a poem,
    should I have a poem to write,
        about a turtle.

The turtle lives in the mud
    but is not mud-like,
        you can tell it by his eyes

which are clear.
    When he shall escape
        his present confinement

he will stride about the world
    destroying all
        with his sharp beak.

Whatever opposes him
    in the streets of the city
        shall go down.

Cars will be overturned.
    And upon his back
        shall ride,

to his conquests,
    my Lord,
        you!

You shall be master!
    In the beginning
        there was a great tortoise

who supported the world.
    Upon him
        All ultimately

rests.
    Without him
        nothing will stand.

He is all wise
    and can outrun the hare.
        In the night

his eyes carry him
    to unknown places.
        He is your friend.

-William Carlos Williams

How intelligent he looks!
        on his back
        both feet caught in my one hand
        his glance set sideways,
        on a giant poster of Geronimo
        with a Sharp’s repeating rifle by his knee.

I open, wipe, he doesn’t even notice
        nor do I.
Baby legs and knees
        toes like little peas
        little wrinkles, good-to-eat,
        eyes bright, shiny ears,
        chest swelling drawing air,

No trouble, friend,
        you and me and Geronimo
        are men.

-Gary Snyder

A young spring-tender girl
combed her joyous hair
‘You are very ugly’ said the mirror.
But,
on her lips hung
a smile of dove-secret loveliness,
for only that morning had not
the blind boy said,
‘You are beautiful’?

-Spike Milligan

Frogs sit more solid
than anything sits. In mid-leap they are
parachutists falling
in a free fall. They die on roads
with arms across their chests and
heads high.

I love frogs that sit
like Buddha, that fall without
parachutes, that die
like Italian tenors.

Above all, I love them because,
pursued in water, they never
panic so much that they fail
to make stylish triangles
with their ballet dancer’s
legs.

-Norman McCraig

What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Into my mouth do crush their wine
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach
Stumbling on melons, as I pass.
Insnar’d with flowers, I fall on grass.

-Andrew Marvell