Most days you can visit @Thinkinthemorning on Facebook and view a poem we’ve chosen to start the morning.  We have assembled some of the poems posted thus far.  We will post a additional pages of poems from time to time.

Most Americans don’t encounter poetry in the course of their daily lives … fewer than 7% of Americans polled in 2012 had read a work of poetry in the past year.  It would seem that posting poems is a waste of time although I’m certain many, including Think in the Morning, would disagree.  In the world of social media where ideas, thoughts, pictures, events, opinions, arguments, wisdom and nonsense proliferate faster than the time to read them, a poem can slow us down, restore quiet reflection, put us in touch with whatever is important to us internally.  The Witter Bynner translation of Lao Tzu says it this way:  “Who will prefer the jingle of jade pendants if he once has heard stone growing in a cliff !

If you like these poems, go to your local bookstore and find a copy of the poet’s work and buy it, read it.

POEMS

Four in the Morning

Wizlawa Szymborska

The hour from night to day.

The hour from side to side.

The hour for those past thirty.

The hour swept clean to the crowing of cocks.

The hour when earth betrays us.

The hour when wind blows from extinguished stars.

The hour of and-what-if-nothing-remains-after-us.

The hollow hour.

Blank, empty.

The very pit of all other hours.

No one feels good at four in the morning.

If ants feel good at four in the morning

–three cheers for the ants.

And let five o’clock come

if we’re to go on living.

Sea Gull Cellar Bar Napkin Art, artist unknown

Morning

Sara Teasdale

I went out on an April morning

All alone, for my heart was high,

I was a child of the shining meadow,

I was a sister of the sky.

There in the windy flood of morning

Longing lifted its weight from me,

Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,

Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.

Sea Gull Cellar Bar Napkin Art, artist unknown

Blues at Dawn

Langston Hughes

I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. If I thought thoughts in bed, Them thoughts would bust my head – So I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. I don’t dare remember in the morning Don’t dare remember in the morning. If I recall the day before, I wouldn’t get up no more – So I don’t dare remember in the morning.

Sea Gull Cellar Bar Napkin Art, Sandra Lindstrom artist

Morning

Robert Creeley

Shadows, on the far wall,

of courtyard, from the sun
back of house, faint

traceries, of the leaves,

the arch of the balcony–

greens, faded white,

high space of flat

blind-sided building

sits opposite this

window, in high door,

across the floor here

from this table

where I’m sitting writing,

feet on cold floor’s

tiles, watching this light

Sea Gull Cellar Bar Napkin Art, Goslyn artist

Easter Morning

Christina Rossetti

The sun arises from the sea,

And all around his rays is flinging,

The flowers are opening on the lea,

The merry birds are singing.

The summer breeze is rustling past,

Sweet scents are gathering around it,

The rivulet is flowing fast,

Beside the banks that bound it.

All nature seemeth to rejoice,

In the returning summer weather;

Let us with nature raise our voice,

And harmonise together.

But not alone for summer skies

Shall praise unto our God be given:

This day our Saviour did arise,

And oped the gate of heaven.

To sinful man, if only he

His errings will confess with sorrow,

Then, after earth’s night-misery,

Shall dawn a glorious morrow:

A blissful bright eternity

Bought by the rising of the Giver,

To Whom all praise, all honour be,

For ever and for ever

Sea Gull Cellar Bar Napkin Art, Goslyn artist

Morning Song from “Senlin”

Conrad Aiken

IT is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning

When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,

I arise, I face the sunrise,

And do the things my fathers learned to do.

Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops

Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,

And I myself on swiftly tilting planet

Stand before a glass and tie my tie.

Vine-leaves tap my window,

Dew-drops sing to the garden stones, 10

The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree

Repeating three clear tones.

It is morning. I stand by the mirror

And tie my tie once more.

While waves far off in a pale rose twilight 15

Crash on a white sand shore.

I stand by a mirror and comb my hair:

How small and white my face!—

The green earth tilts through a sphere of air

And bathes in a flame of space.

There are houses hanging above the stars

And stars hung under a sea…

And a sun far off in a shell of silence

Dapples my walls for me….

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning

Should I not pause in the light to remember God?

Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable,

He is immense and lonely as a cloud.

I will dedicate this moment before my mirror

To him alone, for him I will comb my hair.

Accept these humble offerings, clouds of silence!

I will think of you as I descend the stair.

Vine-leaves tap my window,

The snail-track shines on the stones;

Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree 35

Repeating two clear tones.

It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence,

Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.

The walls are about me still as in the evening,

I am the same, and the same name still I keep. 40

The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion,

The stars pale silently in a coral sky.

In a whistling void I stand before my mirror,

Unconcerned, and tie my tie.

There are horses neighing on far-off hills 45

Tossing their long white manes,

And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,

Their shoulders black with rains….

It is morning, I stand by the mirror

And surprise my soul once more; 50

The blue air rushes above my ceiling,

There are suns beneath my floor….

…It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness

And depart on the winds of space for I know not where;

My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,

And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.

There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven,

And a god among the stars; and I will go

Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak

And humming a tune I know….

Vine-leaves tap at the window,

Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,

The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree

Repeating three dear tones.

Sea Gull Cellar Bar Napkin Art, Dasher artist

Sonnet 33

Shakespeare

Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

With ugly rack on his celestial face,

And from the forlorn world his visage hide,

Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:

Even so my sun one early morn did shine,

With all triumphant splendour on my brow;

But out, alack, he was but one hour mine,

The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now.

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;

Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.

Sea Gull Cellar Bar Napkin Art, Mike Evans artist

Robert Frost

The brain is a wonderful organ;

it starts working the moment you get up in the morning

and does not stop until you get into the office.

Sea Gull Cellar Bar Napkin Art, Sandy and Sula artists

To Morning

William Blake

O holy virgin! clad in purest white,

Unlock heav’n’s golden gates, and issue forth;

Awake the dawn that sleeps in heaven; let light

Rise from the chambers of the east, and bring

The honied dew that cometh on waking day.

O radiant morning, salute the sun,

Rouz’d like a huntsman to the chace; and,

with
 Thy buskin’d feet, appear upon our hills.

Sea Gull Cellar Bar Napkin Art, artist unknown

From Elevation

Charles Baudelaire

Behind the boredom and endless cares

Which burden our fogged existence with their weight,

Happy is the man who can with vigorous wing

Mount to those luminous serene fields!

The man whose thoughts, like larks,

Take liberated flight toward the morning skies

—Who hovers over life and understands without effort

The language of flowers and voiceless things!

From A Poem of God’s Mercy

Malcolm Lowry

Our city of dreadful night will blossom into a sea-morning!

Only bear with us, bear with my song,

For at dawn is the reckoning and the last night is long.

A Standing Ground

Wendell Berry

             Flee fro the press, and dwelle with sothfastnesse

             Suffyce unto thy thyng, tho hit be small …

However just and anxious I have been

I will stop and step back

from the crowd of those who may agree

with what I say, and be apart.

There is no earthly promise of life or peace

but where the roots branch and weave

their patient silent passages in the dark;

uprooted, I have been furious without an aim.

I am not bound for any public place,

but for ground of my own

where I have planted vines and orchard trees,

and in the heat of day climbed up

into the healing shadow of the woods.

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn

and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.