Love is a rainbow that appears
When heaven’s sunshine lights earth’s tears.
All varied colors of the light
Within its beauteous arch unite:
There Passion’s glowing crimson hue
Burns near Truth’s rich and deathless blue;
And Jealousy’s green lights unfold
‘Mid Pleasure’s tints of flame and gold.
O dark life’s stormy sky would seem,
If love’s clear rainbow did not gleam!
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 11, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
Yesterday: me, a stone, the river,
a bottle of Jack, the clouds
with unusual speed crept by.
A man was in the middle of me.
I was humbled.
Not by him. The earth,
with its unusual speed,
went from dawn to dusk to dawn.
Just like that. The light
every shade of gold. Gold. I’m
greedy for it. Light is my currency.
I am big with dawn. So hot & so
pregnant with the fire I stole.
By pregnant I mean everything
you see is of me. Daylight
is my daughter. Dusk, my lover’s
post-pleasure face. And the night?
Well. Look up.
Are you ever really alone?
Copyright © 2020 by Katie Condon. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 7, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
Though I was dwelling in a prison house,
My soul was wandering by the carefree stream
Through fields of green with gold eyed daisies strewn,
And daffodils and sunflower cavaliers.
And near me played a little browneyed child,
A winsome creature God alone conceived,
“Oh, little friend,” I begged. “Give me a flower
That I might bear it to my lonely cell.”
He plucked a dandelion, an ugly bloom,
But tenderly he placed it in my hand,
And in his eyes I saw the sign of love.
‘Twas then the dandelion became a rose.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 4, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.