Sophie Hannah - Absence Makes the Heart Grow Henry

[pjcop.livejournal.com]

Ann was the love of Colin's life
Until the day he went to meet her.
Later she became his wife
But absence makes the heart grow Peter.

Jack was obsessed with Debby's writing.
Then one day he caught the train
And found the woman less exciting.
Absence makes the heart grow Jane.

I love you when you're not around.
If we come face to face again we
Stand to lose by being found,
For absence makes the heart grow Henry

Jill, Afterwards

[sina-says.livejournal.com]

Jill, Afterwards
Philip Dacey

He had this idea about the hill,
How at the top there would be water
Sweeter than any in any pail
Lugged previously, and to come down
Would be the easiest part of all.
I told him it was a kids' story.

Before I had knockers that story
Was making the rounds in my gang. Hell,
We laughed at it even then. We all
Knew better than to think sweet water
Could be had for the price of a pail
And a little legwork up and down

A hill that had been standing there, dawn
To dreary dawn, our whole life's story
Long. Not to mention the probabil-
ity such a thing as sweet water,
Hill or no hill, didn't exist. I'll
Give him credit for this, though: a wall

Couldn't have been more stubborn. He'd call
Me late at night even, to break down
My resistance. Okay, I said, I'll
Go. The truth is, he was cute. Starry-
eyed but cute. And I wondered whether
He had anything in his pants. Pale

Dawn found us taking turns with the pail
As we rose above the town. Not all
The money down there beats the water
We'll find, he said. Now I was poor, down
To a few bucks. It's no mystery
Money talks. Loud. But I climbed the hill.

To the top. And there was this big hole.
And deep. I got dizzy to look down
It. He had rope and let the pail fall
Yards and yards. 'Got something, he yelled, pull-
ing the catch in. Later the story
He told, back in town, was the water

Spilled out. But the fact of the matter
Is I saw what he had. Nothing. Damn
If he didn't claim different, though. Al-
ways. Damn, too, if his pants weren't full.
I've got these kids to prove that story.
When they whine, I tell them: climb a hill.

Billy Collins Another Reason why I don't keep a Gun in the House

[ijournaler.livejournal.com]

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

Goodbye Poem?

[ranegrrrl.livejournal.com]

Hello Everyone -

I'm looking for a good poem to read to my class for the last day of the semester. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

To Boredom By Charles Simic

[runamucky.livejournal.com]

I’m the child of your rainy Sundays.

I watched time crawl

Over the ceiling

Like a wounded fly.

 

A day would last forever,

Making pellets of bread,

Waiting for a branch

On a bare tree to move.

 

The silence would deepen,

The sky would darken,

As Grandmother knitted

With a ball of black yarn.

 

I know Heaven’s like that.

In eternity’s classrooms,

The angels sit like bored children

With their heads bowed.

Shapeshifter by Maureen McQuerry

[pirate-poet.livejournal.com]

Shapeshifter
Maureen McQuerry

There is a moment
when the creature seems to disappear.
Nothing remains, but a quivering
in the air, the invisible finger
that runs your ridge of spine

My students ask if it hurts
to become another. We’ve read
the stories of humans furred,
flesh erupting to wings, or scales,
gill-gasp of transformation.

I tell them some are stories of pursuit,
a dove answered with a hawk,
a hare with greyhound as reply.
Pursuer and pursued, their deft dance
that ended once with a grain of corn,
swallowed by a hen who birthed
the storyteller,Taliesin.

But what the students want to know is pain.
That remembered moment when
quills pierce skin, fingernails bleed
to claws. Beyond the window
winter’s first kiss startles the grass with frost.

I tell them yes,
there is always pain at birth or when,
our tent of flesh opens
like a door to the sky,
and something more, you must
lean close to hear
the single note of joy.