Poems for Anthology

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/133.html

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Summer in a Small Town

Linda Gregg

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/170.html

When the men leave me,

they leave me in a beautiful place.

It is always late summer.

When I think of them now,

I think of the place.

And being happy alone afterwards.

This time it’s Clinton, New York.

I swim in the public pool

at six when the other people

have gone home.

The sky is grey, the air hot.

I walk back across the mown lawn

loving the smell and the houses

so completely it leaves my heart empty.

The Summer I Was Sixteen

Geraldine Connolly

http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/003.html

The turquoise pool rose up to meet us,

its slide a silver afterthought down which

we plunged, screaming, into a mirage of bubbles.

We did not exist beyond the gaze of a boy.

Shaking water off our limbs, we lifted

up from ladder rungs across the fern-cool

lip of rim. Afternoon. Oiled and sated,

we sunbathed, rose and paraded the concrete,

danced to the low beat of "Duke of Earl".

Past cherry colas, hot-dogs, Dreamsicles,

we came to the counter where bees staggered

into root beer cups and drowned. We gobbled

cotton candy torches, sweet as furtive kisses,

shared on benches beneath summer shadows.

Cherry. Elm. Sycamore. We spread our chenille

blankets across grass, pressed radios to our ears,

mouthing the old words, then loosened

thin bikini straps and rubbed baby oil with iodine

across sunburned shoulders, tossing a glance

through the chain link at an improbable world

. Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.

A Prayer in Spring

Robert Frost

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-prayer-in-spring/

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,

Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;

And make us happy in the happy bees,

The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird

That suddenly above the bees is heard,

The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,

And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,

The which it is reserved for God above

To sanctify to what far ends He will,

But which it only needs that we fulfil.

"A Tropical Paradise," Madison F.

Lying on the beach
With sunglasses on your face
Shielding the harsh sunlight from your eyes.
You cover your skin with SPF 25.
Sand makes its way into your sandals,
but you don’t mind.
Off in the distance music is being played
on steel drums.
They set the mood of your whole vacation:
relaxation.
You see the boats drift by with their brightly
colored sides
And you hold onto your tropical drink that tastes
like bananas
With its tiny umbrella hanging off the side.
It makes you smile.
You wonder if the sailors on the boat are as
peaceful as you are.
Worries escape you as you drift into your own oasis
And your home life becomes something of the past.
Almost unreal.
You smell coconut everywhere you go
And wonder if you’ll miss it when you leave.
All you hear is the crashing of the waves.
All you can feel is your newly burnt skin.
All that matters is nothing.

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 leaves and blooms, they brush         

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         

   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         

   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.         

Spring

By Karla Kuskin

I’m shouting

I’m singing

I’m swinging through trees

I’m winging skyhigh

With the buzzing black bees.

I’m the sun

I’m the moon

I’m the dew on the rose.

I’m a rabbit

Whose habit

Is twitching his nose.

I’m lively

I’m lovely

I’m kicking my heels.

I’m crying “Come Dance”

To the fresh water eels.

I’m racing through meadows

Without any coat

I’m a gamboling lamb

I’m a light leaping goat

I’m a bud

I’m a bloom

I’m a dove on the wing.

I’m running on rooftops

And welcoming spring!