Poem a Day

Sow a thought,  reap an act.
Sow an act,  reap a habit.
Sow a habit,  reap a character.
Sow a character,  reap a destiny.

-English Proverb

I’m so conscious of your being,
total rose,
my assent’s confusing
you with my celebrating heart.

Rose, I breathe you in as if
you were all of life,
and I feel I am the perfect
friend of such a friend.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

A single rose is every rose
and this one: irreplaceable,
perfect, a supple vocable
by the text of things enclosed.

Without her, how can we ever
talk about what our hopes were,
about the tender intervals
in this perpetual departure.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Miracle Ice Cream

Miracle’s truck comes down the little avenue,
Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls,
and, yes, you can feel happy
with one piece of your heart.

Take what’s still given: in a room’s rich shadow
a woman’s breasts swinging lightly as she bends.
Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.
Late, you sit weighing the evening news,
fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions,
the rest of your heart.

-Adrienne Rich

Blue Hydrangea

Just like the last green in a colour pot
So are these leaves, withered and wrecked
Behind the flower umbels, which reflect
A hue of blue only, more they do not.

Reflections are tear-stained, inaccurate,
As if they were about to cease,
And like old blue notepaper sheets
They wear some yellow, grey and violet,

Washed-out like on a children’s apron,
Outworn and now no more in use:
We contemplate a small life’s short duration.

But suddenly some new blue seemingly is seen
In just one umbel, and we muse
Over a moving blue delighting in the green.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

A Clear Midnight

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars.

-Walt Whitman

I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.

-Anonymous

The world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but by a spiritual journey a journey of one inch, very humbling and peaceful by which we arrive at the ground by our own two feet, and learn to be home within ourselves.

-Wendell Berry

Now the cricket is hurrying
His song. Is there yet more spring?

Whoever loses all this, loses himself.
So much green, and the field mine!

Heaven that the eye cannot fathom:
It is love that wins you.

Don’t I deserve such a morning?
My heart earns it.

-Jorge Guillén

Give me but one firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth.

-Archimedes