Poetry

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.

My November Guest Read more about November Comes Round Again

October Weather
by Mabel Douglas Essay

(October weather is unusually warm in southern Wisconsin this year. This is more a wish than an observation.)

There's a certain eerie sadness
Tempered with exultant gladness
In October weather.

Vanished is June's fertile sweetness,
July's mellow rare completeness;
August fleeing with September
Leaves a beauty earth remembers
In October weather.

I wish I could share so many of the lovely poems of autumn, the poems that tell of ripening apples and smiling sunflowers, brisk and crispy air, the laughter of children going to school, the ending of glorious summer and the beginning of a fruitful and colorful fall. But this year I just can't. From one corner of the country to another communities are on fire, cities are under water, hospitals have no room for more sick, people are dying from heat prostration and states are bent on punishing those who have learned to breath free. Read more about The Dying Garden

A Calendar of Sonnets: July Read more about July Can Be the Longest Month

Why Was June Made?
by Annette Wynne Read more about Why June?

There is May in books forever;
May will part from Spenser never;
May’s in Milton, May’s in Prior,
May’s in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer;
May’s in all the Italian books:—
She has old and modern nooks,
Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves,
In happy places they call shelves,
And will rise and dress your rooms
With a drapery thick with blooms.
Come, ye rains, then if ye will,
May’s at home, and with me still;
But come rather, thou, good weather,

by William Shakespeare Read more about Sonnet 98

March*
Emily Dickinson Read more about March