On Aging (Monday Poem)

by Maya Angelou

 

 

When you see me sitting quietly,

Like a sack left on the shelf, 

Don't think I need your chattering.

I'm listening to myself.

Hold! Stop! Don't pity me!

Hold! Stop your sympathy.

Understanding if you got it,

Otherwise I'll do without it.

When my bones are stiff and aching,

And my feet won't climb the stair,

I will only ask one favor:

Don't bring me no rocking chair.

When you see me walking, stumbling.

Don't study and get it wrong.

'Cause tired don't mean lazy

And every goodbye ain't gone.

I'm the same person I was back then,

A little less hair, a little less chin,

A lot less lungs and much less wind.

But ain't I lucky I can still breathe in.

 

 

from The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou, by Maya Angelou

Random House, 1994

Willie (Monday Poem)

 by Maya Angelou

Willie was a man without fame,

Hardly anybody knew his name.

Crippled and limping, always walking lame,

He said, " I keep on movin'

Movin' just the same."

Solitude was the climate in his head,

Emptiness was the partner in his bed,

Pain echoed in the steps of his tread,

He said, " I keep on followin'

Where the leaders led.

"I may cry and I will die,

But my spirit is the soul of every spring.

Watch for me and you will see

That I'm present in the songs that children sing."

People called him "Uncle," "Boy" and "Hey,"

Said, "You can't live through this another day."

Then, they waited to hear what he would say.

He said, "I'm livin'

In the games that children play.

"You may enter my sleep, people my dreams,

Threaten my early morning's ease,

But I keep comin' followin' laughin' cryin',

Sure as a summer breeze.

Wait for me, watch for me.

My spirit is the surge of open seas.

Look for me, ask for me,

I'm the rustle in the autumn leaves.

When the sun rises

I am the time.

When the children sing

I am the Rhyme."

from The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou, by Maya Angelou

Random House, 1994

Passing Time (Monday Poem)

 by Maya Angelou

Your skin like dawn

Mine like dusk.

One paints the beginning 

of a certain end.

The other, the end of a 

sure beginning.

from The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou, by Maya Angelou

Random House, 1994

The New Colossus (Monday Poem)

by Emma Lazarus

 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

form Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings, 2002

My Father Sings, to My Embarrassment (Monday Poem)

by Sandra M. Castillo

 

at Las Villas, a small Carol City bar with a makeshift stage,
where he spends too much time drinking,
pretending he can learn to play the guitar at forty-five,
become a singer, a musician,
who writes about "Que Difícil Es…."
to live in Spanish in Miami,
a city yet to be translated,
in a restaurant where he has taken us for Cuban food,
where I sit, frozen, unable to make a sound,
where Mother smiles,
all her teeth exposed,
squeezes my hand,
where Mae and Mitzy hide
under the table shielding them from shame
with a blood-red tablecloth,
leaving my mother and me,
pale-faced, trapped by the spotlight shining in our eyes,
making it difficult for us to pretend
we do not know the man in the white suit
pointing to us.
 

 

from My Father Sings, to My Embarrassment, by Sandra M. Castillo

White Pine Press, 2002

The Mower (Monday Poem)

 by Philip Larkin

 

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence   
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   
While there is still time.

 

from Collected Poems, by Philip Larkin 

Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001

The Mothering Blackness (Monday Poem)

by Maya Angelou

 

She came home running
       back to the mothering blackness   
       deep in the smothering blackness
white tears icicle gold plains of her face   
       She came home running

She came down creeping
       here to the black arms waiting
       now to the warm heart waiting
rime of alien dreams befrosts her rich brown face   
       She came down creeping

She came home blameless
       black yet as Hagar’s daughter
       tall as was Sheba’s daughter
threats of northern winds die on the desert’s face   
       She came home blameless

from The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (Random House Inc., 1994)