Wild Yeasts - Annie Finch

Rumbling a way up my dough's heavy throat to its head,
seeping the trailed, airborne daughters down into the core,
bubbles go rioting through my long-kneaded new bread;
softly, now, breath of the wildest yeast starts to roar.

The Bagel - David Ignatow

I stopped to pick up the bagel

Babylon - Robert Graves

The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.

Be Near Me - Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Be near me now,
My tormenter, my love, be near me—

Mary's Lamb - Sarah Josepha Hale

Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
And every where that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go;
He followed her to school one day—
That was against the rule,
It made the children laugh and play,
To see a lamb at school.

Niggerlips - Martín Espada

Niggerlips was the high school name
for me.
So called by Douglas
the car mechanic, with green tattoos
on each forearm,
and the choir of round pink faces
that grinned deliciously
from the back row of classrooms,
droned over by teachers
checking attendance too slowly.

Disclosure - Anne Lewin

Prayer is like watching for the
Kingfisher.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond - ee cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

A Birthday - Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

Wind at Tindari - Salvatore Quasimodo

Tindari, I know you
mild between broad hills, overhanging the waters
of the god’s sweet islands.
Today, you confront me
and break into my heart.

Sunday Visit - Christy Brown

We finally found him
curled up in the chair like a many-wrinkled shell
staring blindly out at nothing
among a gathering of imbecilic fossils
his one good eye fastening fiercely onto life
the hair still sturdy though silver under the old cloth cap.

Majung Village - Ko Un

Over the steep, panting hills where
I rest my heart.
I like the simple homeliness
of the bitch and her puppies.
For how many centuries have
such homely sights been dear to us?
The stern old nettle tree standing by the village gate
gathers sweeping winds.

My Aunts - Adam Zagajewski

Always caught up in what they called
the practical side of life
(theory was for Plato),
up to their elbows in furniture, in bedding,
in cupboards and kitchen gardens,
they never neglected the lavender sachets
that turned a linen closet to a meadow.

A Lesson for This Sunday - Derek Walcott

The growing idleness of summer grass
With its frail kites of furious butterflies
Requests the lemonade of simple praise
In scansion gentler than my hammock swings
And rituals no more upsetting than a
Black maid shaking linen as she sings
The plain notes of some Protestant hosanna—
Since I lie idling from the thought in things—

Un petit d'un petit - Luis d'Antin van Rooten

Un petit d'un petit
S'étonne aux Halles

Russian Letter - John Yau

It is said, the past
sticks to the present

Evening Concert, Sainte-Chapelle - John Updike

The celebrated windows flamed with light
directly pouring north across the Seine;

My Father's Hat - Mark Irwin

Sunday mornings I would reach
high into his dark closet while standing
on a chair and tiptoeing reach
higher, touching, sometimes fumbling

When Malindy Sings - Paul Laurence Dunbar

G'way an' quit dat noise, Miss Lucy--
Put dat music book away;
What's de use to keep on tryin'?
Ef you practise twell you're gray,
You cain't sta't no notes a-flyin'
Lak de ones dat rants and rings
F'om de kitchen to de big woods
When Malindy sings.

Trees - Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

Vertical - Linda Pastan

Perhaps the purpose
of leaves is to conceal
the verticality
of trees

bush-clover flowers - Matsuo Basho

bush-clover flowers —

Sometime During Eternity - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Sometime during eternity
some guys show up

How Doth the Little Busy Bee - Isaac Watts

How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!

Shanti Mantra - Ravi Shankar

Lead me from the unreal to the real
Lead me from darkness to light
Lead me from death to immortality
Aum peace, peace and perfect peace

---

Ravi Shankar (1920 - 2012) India

The Mountain And The Lake - Robert Service

I know a mountain thrilling to the stars,
Peerless and pure, and pinnacled with snow;
Glimpsing the golden dawn o'er coral bars,
Flaunting the vanisht sunset's garnet glow;
Proudly patrician, passionless, serene;
Soaring in silvered steeps where cloud-surfs break;
Virgin and vestal -- Oh, a very Queen!
And at her feet there dreams a quiet lake.