Animal poems
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The Oldest Living Thing in L.A.
© Larry Levis
At Wilshire & Santa Monica I saw an opossum
Trying to cross the street. It was late, the street
Wormwood And Nightshade
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
The troubles of life are many,
The pleasures of life are few;
When we sat in the sunlight, Annie,
I dreamt that the skies were blue -
The Recluse - Book First
© William Wordsworth
HOME AT GRASMERE
ONCE to the verge of yon steep barrier came
A roving school-boy; what the adventurer's age
Hath now escaped his memory--but the hour,
Brothers-American Drama
© James Weldon Johnson
See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air
Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he
Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye!
No light is there; none, save the glint that shines
In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs
Of some wild animal caught in the hunter’s trap.
Proem.
© Robert Crawford
I only knew one poet in my life.
BROWNING.
I have not known a poet but myself,
If I'm indeed one, as I ought to be,
The Animal Store
© Rachel Field
If I had a hundred dollars to spend,
Or maybe a little more,
I’d hurry as fast as my legs would go
Straight to the animal store.
The Laws of Motion
© Nikki Giovanni
(for Harlem Magic)
The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as
much as a pound of flour though if dropped from any
undetermined height in their natural state one would
reach bottom and one would fly away
The Snowmass Cycle
© Stephen Dunn
If the rich are casually cruel
perhaps its because
they can stare at the sky
and never see an indictment
in the shape of clouds.
The animals in that country
© Margaret Atwood
the fox run
politely to earth, the huntsmen
standing around him, fixed
in their tapestry of manners
Insomnia and the Seven Steps to Grace
© Joy Harjo
At dawn the panther of the heavens peers over the edge of the world.
She hears the stars gossip with the sun, sees the moon washing her lean
darkness with water electrified by prayers. All over the world there are those
who can't sleep, those who never awaken.
The Season Of Loves
© Paul Eluard
By the road of ways
In the three-part shadow of troubled sleep
I come to you the double the multiple
as like you as the era of deltas.
Grace
© Joy Harjo
Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a season of false midnights. We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey. And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.
I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn.
I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw. We didn’t; the next season was worse. You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south. And, Wind, I am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it.
from Paragraphs from a Day-Book (section 1 only)
© Marilyn Hacker
For Hayden Carruth
Thought thrusts up, homely as a hyacinth
Michael: A Pastoral Poem
© William Wordsworth
Thus in his Father's sight the Boy grew up:
And now, when he had reached his eighteenth year,
He was his comfort and his daily hope.
Modern Love XXX
© George Meredith
What are we first? First, animals; and next
Intelligences at a leap; on whom
