White Eyes

By MARY OLIVER

In winter
all the singing is in
the tops of the trees
where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
shoves and pushes
among the branches.
Like any of us Read more about White Eyes

The first two verses will give you the gist of the thing. The rest spells out a Halloween night of the "merry, friendly, country-folks" in Scottish dialect, if you're up for the full adventure.

Halloween

Robert Burns - 1759-1796 Read more about Halloween

Walker Art Center
Minneapolis
Alexander Calder Exhibit

Just people, you know -
Their shapes and sizes
And the things they do
with their hands;
How they move their feet and fingers,
All crossed and stretched and
moving together;
The movement of faces,
lifting lips and eyebrows.
Nodding and turning.
The free-form people, you know.
They were all there.

Song Of Aragorn

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

J.R.R. Tolkien Read more about A Little Gold for August

This was written in the 1930's. I post it here for all the kids since then, from Ukraine to Uvalde and everywhere in between.

Kids Who Die

Langston Hughes Read more about Kids Who Die

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever. Read more about The Brook

I had forgotten or perhaps had never noticed that this is an April poem. I've always liked it, though.

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.

Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain Read more about Earth by April

by Allen R. Darrow Read more about February Gems

A Calendar of Sonnets: January
Helen Hunt Jackson Read more about In the Heart of Winter

Oranges

The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.

December.
Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone,
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.