The Clearing (Monday Poem)

by Martha Postlethwaite

Do not try to  serve

the whole world

or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create

a clearing

in the dense forest

of your life

and wait there

patiently,

until the song

that is yours alone to sing

falls into your open cupped hands

and you recognise and greet it.

Only then will you know

how to give yourself

to the world

so worthy of 

rescue.

from

https://www.mindfulnessassociation.net/words-of-wonder/clearing-martha-postlethwaite/

The End (Monday Poem)

by A. A. Milne

 

 

When I was One,

I had just begun.

 

When I was Two,

I was nearly new.

 

When I was Three,

I was hardly me.

 

When I was Four,

I was not much more.

 

When I was Five,

I was just alive.

 

But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever.

So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

 

 

 

from Now We Are Six, 

by A. A. Milne

illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard

Dell, 1955

 

Looking Around, Believing (Monday Poem)

by Gary Soto

How strange that we can begin at any time.

With two feet we get down the street.

With a hand we undo the rose.

With an eye we lift up the peach tree

And hold it up to the wind -- white blossoms

At our feet. Like today, I started

In the yard with my daughter,

With my wife poking at a potted geranium,

And now I am walking down the street,

Amazed that the sun is only so hight,

Just over the roof, and a child

Is singing through a rolled newspaper

And a terrier is leaping like a flea

And at the bakery I pass, a palm

Like a suctioning starfish is pressed

To the window.  We're keeping busy --

This way, that way, we're making shadows

Where sunlight was, making words

Where there was only noise in the trees.

from A Fire in My Hands: A Book of Poems

by Gary Soto

Scholastic, 1990

Today Was Not My Day at All (Monday Poem)

by Jack Prelutsky

 

 

Today was not my day at all,

today was not my day,

for everything went wrong today

in almost every way.

This morning I was menaced

by a troop of marching ants,

I brushed my teeth with shaving cream,

I split my brand new pants.

 

I smashed my only glasses,

and the key snapped in the lock,

the toaster didn't toast  the toast,

then handed me a shock.

I walked into a doorknob,

something squirmed inside my shoe,

I found an ugly beetle

at the bottom of my stew.

 

A bird I didn't recognize

flew down and pecked my nose,

a chimpanzee on roller skates

sped by and squashed my toes.

I wonder if I'm under

some unlucky sort of curse,

today's the twelfth, and Thursday --

tomorrow may be worse.

 

 

 

from It's Raining Pigs and Noodles

by Jack Prelutsky

illustrated by James Stevenson

Greenwillow, 2000 

 

 

Adventure (Monday Poem)

by Eileen Spinelli

 

 

I had tea with a dragon

And lunch with a mouse.

I've lived in a seashell

Instead of a house

Once I even went diving

With dolphins and whales

From the deck of a ship with

Sun on her sails.

I danced in the forest,

Flew to the moon,

Soared across town

In a hot-air balloon.

Adventure is never as hard as it looks

You'll find it, like me ---

In the pages of books.

 

 

from Tea Party Today: Poems to Sip and Savor

by Eileen Spinelli, illustrated by Karen Dugan

Boyds Mills Press, 1999