The Lake Isle of Innisfree (Monday Poem)

 

by William Butler Yeats

 

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

from The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats 1989

Keeping Things Whole (Monday Poem)

 by Mark Strand

 

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in   
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

from Selected Poems by Mark Strand 

Alfred A. Knopf, 2002

Invisible Children (Monday Poem)

by Mariana Llanos

 

Invisible children fall
through the cracks of the system
like Alice in the rabbit hole.
But these children won’t find
an eat-me cake or a drink-me bottle.
They won’t wake up on the lap
of a loving sister.
They’ll open their eyes on the hand
of a monster called Negligence
who’ll poke them with its sharp teeth
and bait them with its heartless laughter,
like a wild thing in a wild rumpus.
But the children won’t awake
to the smell of a warm supper,
nor will they find a purple crayon
to draw an escape door or a window.
Instead they’ll make a mirror
of a murky puddle on the city street
which won’t tell them they’re beautiful
but it’ll show their scars, as invisible to others
as these children are.

from Poetry (March 2021)

Ice (Monday Poem)

 by Gail Mazur

 

In the warming house, children lace their skates,   
bending, choked, over their thick jackets.

A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy
it’s hard to imagine why anyone would leave,

clumping across the frozen beach to the river.   
December’s always the same at Ware’s Cove,

the first sheer ice, black, then white
and deep until the city sends trucks of men

with wooden barriers to put up the boys’   
hockey rink. An hour of skating after school,

If trying wobbly figure-8’s, an hour

of distances moved backwards without falling,

then—twilight, the warming house steamy   
with girls pulling on boots, their chafed legs

aching. Outside, the hockey players keep   
playing, slamming the round black puck

until it’s dark, until supper. At night,
a shy girl comes to the cove with her father.

Although there isn’t music, they glide
arm in arm onto the blurred surface together,

braced like dancers. She thinks she’ll never
be so happy, for who else will find her graceful,

find her perfect, skate with her
in circles outside the emptied rink forever?

from Zeppo’s First Wife: New and Selected Poems by Gail Mazur. 

University of Chicago, 2005

I, Too (Monday Poem)

by Langston Hughes

 

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

from The Collected Works of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes. 

Harold Ober Associates, Inc.2002