A FEW FAVORITE POEMS

Over the years of writing the newsletter, I’ve been guided to the perfect Bible quotes to accent and give credence to stories. I’ve often used quotes from famous people to add a little character to a story. The use of poetry, however, was something I felt necessary.

A really good poet gets that gift from God and a really good poem shores up the mood of the reader. I try to make sure the poem has something to do with the month of that particular newsletter, though that’s not as easy as it would seem. Here are a few of my favorites:

• The breezes taste

• Of apple peel.
• The air is full
• Of smells to feel-
• Ripe fruit, old footballs,
• Burning brush,
• New books, erasers,
• Chalk, and such.
• The bee, his hive,
• Well-honeyed hum,
• And Mother cuts

• Chrysanthemums.
• Like plates washed clean
• With suds, the days
• Are polished with
• A morning haze.
• September, John Updike

• Once upon a Lammas Night

• When corn rigs are bonny,
• Beneath the Moon's unclouded light,
• I held awhile to Annie...
• The time went by with careless heed
• Between the late and early,
• With small persuasion she agreed
• To see me through the barley...
• Corn rigs and barley rigs,
• Corn rigs are bonny!
• I'll not forget that happy night
• Among the rigs with Annie!
• Robert Burns

• The Sun's away
• And the bird estranged;
• The wind has dropped,
• And the sky's deranged;
• Summer has stopped.
• Robert Browning (1812–89)

• "I stood beside a hill

• Smooth with new-laid snow,
• A single star looked out
• From the cold evening glow.
•  
• There was no other creature

• That saw what I could see--
• I stood and watched the evening star
• As long as it watched me."
• Sara Teasdale, February Twilight

• "Since thy return, through days and weeks
• Of hope that grew by stealth,
• How many wan and faded cheeks
• Have kindled into health!
• The Old, by thee revived, have said,
• 'Another year is ours;'
• And wayworn Wanderers, poorly fed,
• Have smiled upon thy flowers."
• William Wordsworth, To May, 1830

• The wild gander leads his flock
• through the cool night,
• Ya-honk! he says, and sounds
• it down to me like an invitation:
• The pert may suppose it meaningless,
• but I listen closer,
• I find its purpose and place
• up there toward the November sky.
• Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855

• "O beautiful for spacious skies
• For amber waves of grain,
• For purple mountains majesty
• Above thy fruited plain!
• America! America!
• God shed his grace on thee
• And crown thy good with brotherhood
• From sea to shining sea!"
• (Author unknown)

I never liked poetry as a child, but few young boys do. Grade school teachers used to dissect poems on the blackboard and it made me feel like they were dissecting me instead; it was painful for me then. Now, however, they just make me strive to be a better writer. Go figure!