The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn’t half so bad
if it isn’t you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs of having
inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
‘living it up’
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
From A Coney Island of the Mind, copyright © 1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom.
Copyright © 2005 James Wright. From Selected Poems. Reprinted with permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
You are enough
Divinity flows in your fingertips
with light so radiant
every beat of your heart
a victory march
made of whole universes
stitched by the hands of creation
with flawless design
a prophecy You fulfill perfectly with every breath
You
The sun wouldn’t shine the same without it
Creation is only waiting for You
to smile back at it
Do you see it yet?
You are enough
For the birds to sing about
For the seeds to sprout about
For the stars to shoot about
Do you see it yet?
Gardens in your speech
Fields of wildflowers in your prayers
Lighthouses in your eyes
No one else can see it for you
You have always been enough
You will always be enough
Your simple act of being is enough
Do you see it yet?
Copyright © 2022 by Andru Defeye. Sacramento Poetry Center Anthology (2022). Used with permission of the poet.
I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden Daffodils;
Beside the Lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:—
A Poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.
This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on October 1, 2017. This poem is in the public domain.
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
From Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 1923, 1931, 1935, 1940, 1951, 1959, 1963, 1968, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1976, 1978, 1979 by George James Firmage.
Twice on other travels a wolf stood on the periphery of lamplight.
Our eyes intensified in the silent distance between sanctity.
There is one who appreciates secondhand revelations of wolves.
Sparrow hawk waves fast hinges of small capture in its apex of watch.
Where are the absent coyotes of Willamina?
Winter-sleepy mice are slow.
The salmon pass the fishers’ drift into deadline.
The count is a button pushed in the rapture of instinctual homing.
An eye squint records the shrapnel glimpses of Chinook.
Our river’s low, as manly winds blur the edges of inland clouds.
Aspiring rain is a sleepy feminine whisper.
Grasses sweep patterns of mock celestial visitations.
Otter pelts feel soothingly moist in the rich depth of velvety pelage
Small bare edged ears are symbolic of ocean’s chill.
One secret otter strip is owned for future weaving.
Otter woven into a 1Ravenstail robe is royal and tide riddled.
The otter dances on prominent lineage hidden through survival.
Copper light resumes ceremony from absence to embrace our shoulders.
1. Tlingit weaving and a form that nearly died out.
Copyright © 2024 by Elizabeth Woody. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 27, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
No shade of waxy red
or soft white mealy flesh;
nothing simple—as what tempted Eve.
I crave a rarer kind:
small and bitter and hard to get—
not crab, neither gala, nor golden
but those of wild occasion:
musky ones in bloom of spring
or cool as autumn dew;
those that rise and fall the swallow,
not duds fell to the ground.
Seething with speech to defy the tree,
I want the fruit with singing taste,
grown in the throats of men.
From Amorous Shepherd (Sheep Meadow Press, 2010) by Dante Micheaux. Copyright © 2010 by Dante Micheaux. Used with the permission of the author.
To me thy lips are mute, but when I gaze
Upon thee in thy perfect loveliness,—
No trait that should not be—no lineament
To jar with the exquisite harmony
Of Beauty’s music, breathing to the eyes,
I pity those who think they pity me;
Who drink the tide that gushes from thy lips
Unconscious of its sweets, as if they were
E’en as I am—and turn their marble eyes
Upon thy loveliness, without the thrill
That maddens me with joy’s delirium.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on July 8, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.