May Day
One of the Seven Has Somewhat to Say
-Sarah Teasdale
-Sara Henderson Hay
A delicate fabric of bird song*
Floats in the air,
The smell of wet wild earth
Is everywhere.
Remember how it was before she came--?
The picks and shovels dropped beside the door,
The sink piled high, the meals any old time,
Our jackets where we’d flung them on the floor?
The mud tracked in, the clutter on the shelves,
None of us shaved, or more than halfway clean…
Just seven old bachelors, living by ourselves?
Those were the days, if you know what I mean.
Red small leaves of the maple
Are clenched like a hand,
Like girls at their first communion*
The pear trees stand.
Oh I must pass nothing by
Without loving it much
The raindrop try with my lips
The grass at my touch.
For how can I be sure
I shall see again
The world on the first of May
Shining after the rain?
*fabric – a large swath of material
Used to make clothing – similar
To a blanket
*communion – religious ceremony
Where it is traditional to wear all
White clothing
She scrubs, she sweeps, she even dusts the ceilings;
She’s made us build a tool shed for our stuff.
Dinner’s at eight, the table setting’s formal.
And if I weren’t afraid I’d hurt her feelings
I’d move, until we get her married off,
And things can gradually slip back to normal.
Fog
The Caterpillar
-Robert Graves
Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A creeping, colored caterpillar,
I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray,
I nibble it leaf by leaf away.
Down beneath grow dandelions,
Daisies, old-man’s-looking-glasses;
Rooks flap croaking across the lane.
I eat and swallow and eat again.
Here come raindrops helter-skelter;
I munch and nibble unregarding;
Hawthorn leaves are juicy and firm.
I’ll mind my business: I’m a good worm.
When I’m old, tired, melancholy,
I’ll build a leaf-green mausoleum
Close by, here on this lovely spray,
And die and dream the ages away.
-Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Some say worms win resurrection,
With white wings beating flitter-flutter,
But wings or a sound sleep, why should I care?
Either way I’ll miss my share.
Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A hungry, hairy caterpillar,
I crawl on my high and swinging seat,
And eat, eat, eat—as one ought to eat.
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Living Tenderly
maggie and milly and molly and may
in Just-
-May Swenson
-e. e. cummings
-e. e. cummings
My body a rounded stone
with a pattern of smooth seams.
My head a short snake,
retractive, projective.
My legs come out of their sleeves
or shrink within,
and so does my chin.
My eyelids are quick clamps.
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)
in Justspring when the world is mudluscious the little
lame balloonman
My back is my roof.
I am always at home.
I travel where my house walks.
It is a smooth stone.
It floats within the lake,
or rests in the dust.
My flesh lives tenderly
inside its bone.
I’m Nobody
and Maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and
milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.
Little Things
-James Stephens
Little things, that run, and quail,
And die, in silence and despair!
-Emily Dickerson
Little things, that fight, and fail,
And fall, on sea, and earth, and air!
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.
All trapped and frightened little things,
The mouse, the coney, hear our prayer!
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
As we forgive those done to us,
--The lamb, the linnet, and the hare—
Forgive us all our trespasses,
Little creatures, everywhere!
whistles
far
and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan
far
and
wee
whistles
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HAIKU
The Spider
-Walter de la Mare
-Robert P. Tristram Coffin
With six small diamonds for his eyes
He walks upon the summer skies,
Drawing from his silken blouse
The lacework of his dwelling house.
He lays his staircase as he goes,
5
Under his eight thoughtful toes
And grows with the concentric flower
Of his shadowless thin bower.
His back legs are a pair of hands,
They can spindle out the strands
Of a thread that is so small
It stops the sunlight not at all.
He spins himself to threads of dew
Which will harden soon into
Lines that cut like slender knives
Across the insects’ airy lives.
He makes no motion but is right,
He spreads out his appetite
Into a network, twist on twist,
This little ancient scientist.
He does not know he is unkind,
He has a jewel for a mind
And logic deadly as dry bone,
This small son of Euclid’s own
The Listeners
10
A haiku (hi’koo) is a three-line poem, of Japanese
origin, containing seventeen syllables. There are five
syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line,
and five syllables in the third line. Such a poem must
communicate meaning through very few words, and should
only have one idea (or topic) per Haiku. The subject
matter of a haiku is usually drawn from nature.
Broken and broken
Again on the sea, the moon
So easily mends
Color explosions
all over my garden
flowers are so cool
Big, fuzzy sideburns
teaching English is his thing
what a funny guy
Birdfoot’s Grampa
-Joseph Bruchac III
15
20
The old man
must have stopped our car
two dozen times to climb out
and gather into his hands
the small toads blinded
5
by our lights and leaping,
live drops of rain.
The rain was falling,
a mist about his white hair
and I kept saying
you can't save them all,
accept it, get back in
we've got places to go.
10
But, leathery hands full
of wet brown life,
15
knee deep in the summer
roadside grass,
he just smiled and said
they have places to go to too.
'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveler,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
5
Above the Traveler's head
And he smote upon the door again a second time;‘
“Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveler;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
10
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
15
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveler's call.
20
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
25
Louder, and lifted his head:
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
30
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
35
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
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