Featured Topic: Dreams
Featured Product: Seasons
Featured Writer: poets better and more famous than me
Featured Form: Rondel
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The prayer of a wife who will not be had
The wedding invitation I refuse; I cannot match your hunger for delight. In black robes instead of white I recuse myself; I do not have the appetite. Only a perfect one could be your muse; I wear more sensible shoes. Why do you keep me, pampered as a house-cat basking...
From Aurora Leigh by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
TRUTH, so far, in my book;—the truth which draws Through all things upwards,—that a twofold world Must go to a perfect cosmos. Natural things And spiritual,—who separates those two In art, in morals, or the social drift Tears up the bond of nature and brings death,...
Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney
Late August, given heavy rain and sun for a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it leaving...
To Autumn by John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;...
October by Robert Frost
O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow. Make the day...
Ballad of a Dog Lady
Blankets hide the holes punched through hollow doors and she covers the shelves with plastic dragonflies or ceramic angels bought cheap at dollar stores. Everyday some lone unguarded trinket dies, the victim of a clumsy hand or wagging tail. The epileptic dog will be...
Of Titans and Totem Kings: a sonnet for the mountains that surround my home.
Who is the maker of these mighty hills; what hands could draw these from the deep? Are they the battle scars of contesting wills —a shield shattered 'gainst a granite keep? On the ridge there lurks a murder of crows scavenging the flesh from Nike's broken wings. These...
We are everyday becoming who we will forever be: a villanelle on age and eternity
He turns five today; all is future, nothing past. All his days are yet to flower, yet to come. Wherever he goes, he runs—those shoes will not last. He grows and his slumber is not, as yet, harassed by twilight's pestering flies, those furies born from ...something. So...
A Poem for Father’s day by John Piper
No tree however deep the roots, However high and green the shoots, However strong the trunk has stood, Or firm the fibers of the wood, No tree was ever meant to be A never-ending shade for me Or you. Save one: where Jesus died With bleeding branches spread as wide And...
Then I Was Rechristened Gus
After Andrew, Elizabeth Marie— second child, first daughter, I was to be, but the Canadian ultrasound failed and my parents' baby-naming plans derailed. My name, Matthew, decided on a whim, somehow always seemed to fit me wrong and joined me to a wide and WASPy throng...
New Loneliness by Sarah Harmer
There is just one apple on the tree It isn't like I'd hoped it'd be. Yesterday when there was still you I looked, and I swear that I saw two. Maybe a wandering white tail deer came in the night to make it even more clear and left me just one, a spartan no less, to...
Rock of Ages by Augustus Montague Toplady
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee; Let the water and the blood, From Thy wounded side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure; Save from wrath and make me pure. Not the labor of my hands Can fulfill Thy law’s demands; Could my zeal no respite...
Spring by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Nothing is so beautiful as spring – When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree...
The Sea Bends her Knees to the Moon
All flowers lift their hands to praise the sun— raising their lauds at dawn, their sexts at noon and vespers when the dwindling day is done— but the sea bends her knees to the moon. Such is the worship of waves and the liturgy of leaves. But what of human kings,...
Noah Wakes from a Recurring Nightmare
Before the earth was swallowed up in sea Noah barred the doors and all skies darkened grey, for once the gate was shut, he heard no beggar's plea; to flinch at life's last moment could not the hammer stay. Did he hear their clawing hands in his dreams? The corpse...