Tag: Pocket Poems

Poem-A-Day April 21: This Spring

Hello Friends,

Yesterday’s poem was about a human saving animals. Today’s poem is about animals, and nature more broadly, saving us. You may also notice a similarity to the first poem we read this month, “Thinking” by Danusha Laméris, which also expresses a sense that “everything seems to be speeding up” and turns to nature to slow down.

“This Spring” appears in poet James A. Pearson‘s 2024 collection The Wilderness That Bears Your Name.

Enjoy,
Ællen

This Spring

How can I love this spring
when it’s pulling me
through my life faster
than any time before it?
When five separate dooms
are promised this decade
and here I am, just trying
to watch a bumblebee cling
to its first purple flower.
I cannot save this world.
But look how it’s trying,
once again, to save me.

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Poem-A-Day April 20: The plum you’re going to eat next summer

Hello Friends,
Poet Gayle Brandeis shared today’s poem at an open mic in 2024 and it quickly found its way to Instagram. The way Gayle Brandeis feels about plums in this piece reminds me of how I feel about poems.
Enjoy.
— Ællen

The plum you’re going to eat next summer

The plum you’re going to eat next summer
doesn’t exist yet; its potential
lives inside a tree you’ll never see
in an orchard you’ll never see, will be touched
by a certain number of water droplets
before it reaches you, by certain angles
of light, by a finite amount of bugs
and dust motes and hands
you’ll never know. The plum you are
going to eat next summer will gather
sugar, gather mass, will harden
at its center so it can soften toward
your mouth. The plum
you’re going to eat next
summer doesn’t know
you exist. The plum you are
going to east next summer
is growing just for you.

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Poem-A-Day April 16: prove him wrong

He Tells Her
(for Ruth B.)

He tells her that the Earth is flat —
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.

The planet goes on being round.

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Hello Friends,

Do you have an argument you lost that’s stuck with you? Do you believe “she cannot win” is a permanent state, or does the last line indicate it might just be temporary?

It was hard to pick just one poem to send you from the delightful 2023 collection The Orange and Other Poems by Wendy Cope. The title poem from that collection, “The Orange,” was previously featured for poem-a-day here.

— Ællen

Poem-A-Day April 10: Allowables

Hello Friends,
Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day, and I couldn’t think of a better poet to have stashed in your pocket than Nikki Giovanni, who we lost this past year. Today’s selection comes from her 2013 collection Chasing Utopia and is about a spider, but also about how we treat other animals and our fellow human beings.
Enjoy.
— Ællen

Allowables

I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her

I don’t think
I’m allowed

To kill something

Because I am

Frightened

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Poem-A-Day April 29: Grocery List Poems

Hello Friends,
Today’s poem by Rhiannon McGavin appears in her 2021 collection Grocery List Poems. McGavin uses slant rhymes in this sonnet, like “loves” and “carves” or “driver’s” and “stranger’s.”
Enjoy.
Ællen

Manifesto in an unknown language

No, I couldn’t sleep, I’m building my loves
from the smell of rain and the bus driver’s
soft wave when I’m broke, from a sea that carves
cracked bottles into gems, and a stranger’s
laugh runs a vein of silver through the night,
a love cut from the dark when a kissing
scene fades on a film screen. Say the last time
someone touches me with a tender feeling
and I’ll eat the clock. Name the next time, win
all the lucky pennies I’ve thrown away
waiting for that love like a nasturtium,
the petals with their birthday candle flame,
hot and sweet. The kind of love in my steps
where empty rooms are only rooms you’ve left.

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Poem-A-Day April 28: Thank You

Thank You

If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden’s dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

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Today’s poem by Ross Gay appears in his 2006 collection Against Which.

Poem-A-Day April 10: Enough Music

Enough Music

Sometimes, when we’re on a long drive,
and we’ve talked enough and listened
to enough music and stopped twice,
once to eat, once to see the view,
we fall into this rhythm of silence.
It swings back and forth between us
like a rope over a lake.
Maybe it’s what we don’t say
that saves us.

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“Enough Music” appears in poet Dorianne Laux’s 1994 collection What We Carry.