Think in the Morning continues to believe in the importance of reading a poem every day.  If you “Like” our Facebook page, you will see a poem posted there every day.  We collected our first two weeks of selected poems in Poems – 1.  This is the second in what we hope will be a series of poems to please you.  Additional links and articles on the poets can be found on my personal Facebook page.  Your comments, thoughts, ideas are much appreciated.

 

When I Woke

Dylan Thomas

 

When I woke, the town spoke.

Birds and clocks and cross bells

Dinned aside the coiling crowd,

The reptile profligates in a flame,

Spoilers and pokers of sleep,

The next-door sea dispelled

Frogs and satans and woman-luck,

While a man outside with a billhook,

Up to his head in his blood,

Cutting the morning off,

The warm-veined double of Time

And his scarving beard from a book,

Slashed down the last snake as though

It were a wand or subtle bough,

Its tongue peeled in the wrap of a leaf.

 

Every morning I make,

God in bed, good and bad,

After a water-face walk,

The death-stagged scatter-breath

Mammoth and sparrowfall

Everybody’s earth.

Where birds ride like leaves and boats like ducks

I heard, this morning, waking,

Crossly out of the town noises

A voice in the erected air,

No prophet-progeny of mine,

Cry my sea town was breaking.

No Time, spoke the clocks, no God, rang the bells,

I drew the white sheet over the islands

And the coins on my eyelids sang like shells.

 

 

Owls

Witter Bynner

 

How can it be a train? It must have been an owl

Whistling his stations. I remember the story

That Juan, the ranchero, told me about owls.

There had been no owls at his farm, until one night

On every moonlit pole of a scaffolding

Erected to repair the family chapel

An owl had perched, and early in the dawn

They had all flown away with his father’s soul.

 

 

The Origin of Baseball

Kenneth Patchen

 

Someone had been walking in and out

Of the world without coming

To much decision about anything.

The sun seemed too hot most of the time.

There weren’t enough birds around

And the hills had a silly look

When he got to the top of one.

The girls in heaven, however, thought

Nothing of asking to see his watch

Like you would want someone to tell

A Joke—“Time,” they’d say, “what’s

That mean—time?”, laughing with the edges

Of their white mouths, like a flutter of paper

In a madhouse. And he’d stumble over

General Sherman or Elizabeth B.

Browning, muttering, “Can’t you keep

Your big wings out of the aisle?” But down

Again there’d be millions of people without

Enough to eat and men with guns just

Standing there shooting each other.

 

So he wanted to throw something

And he picked up a baseball.

 

 

This Morning

Raymond Carver

 

This morning was something. A little snow

lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear

blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue=green,

as far as the eye could see.

Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went

for a walk – determined not to return

until I took in what Nature had to offer.

I passed close to some old, bent-over trees.

Crossed a field strewn with rocks

where snow had drifted. Kept going

until I reached the bluff.

Where I gazed at the sea, and the sky, and

the gulls wheeling over the white beach

far below. All lovely. All bathed in a pure

cold light. But, as usual, my thoughts

began to wander. I had to will

myself to see what I was seeing

and nothing else. I had to tell myself this is what

mattered, not the other. (And I did see it,

for a minute or two!) For a minute or two

it crowded out the usual musings on

what was right, and what was wrong – duty,

tender memories, thoughts of death, how I should treat

with my former wife. All the things

I hoped would go away this morning.

The stuff I live with every day. What

I’ve trampled on in order to stay alive.

But for a minute or two I did forget

myself and everything else. I know I did.

For when I turned back I didn’t know

where I was. Until some birds rose up

from the gnarled trees. And flew

in the direction I needed to be going.

 

 

Let’s Voyage into the New American House

Richard Brautigan

 

There are doors

that want to be free

from their hinges to

fly with perfect clouds.

There are windows

that want to be

released from their

frames to run with

the deer through

back country meadows.

There are walls

that want to prowl

with the mountains

through the early

morning dusk.

There are floors

that want to digest

their furniture into

flowers and trees.

There are roofs

that want to travel

gracefully with

the stars through

circles of darkness.

 

 

Crazy Weather

John Ashbery

 

It’s this crazy weather we’ve been having:

Falling forward one minute, lying down the next

Among the loose grasses and soft, white, nameless flowers.

People have been making a garment out of it,

Stitching the white of lilacs together with lightening

At some anonymous crossroads. The sky calls

To the deaf earth. The proverbial disarray

Of morning corrects itself as you stand up.

You are wearing a text. The lines

Droop to your shoelaces and I shall never want or need

Any other literature than this poetry of mud

And ambitious reminiscences of times when it came easily

Through the then woods and ploughed fields and had

A simple unconscious dignity we can never hope to

Approximate now except in narrow ravines nobody

Will inspect where some late sample of the rare,

Uninteresting specimen might still be putting out shoots,

for all we know.

 

 

Landscape With the Fall of Icarus

William Carlos Williams

 

According to Brueghel

when Icarus fell

it was spring

a farmer was ploughing

his field

the whole pageantry

of the year was

awake tingling

near

the edge of the sea

concerned

with itself

sweating in the sun

that melted

the wings’ wax

unsignificantly

off the coast

there was

a splash quite unnoticed

this was

Icarus drowning

 

 

From the Diary of Frida Kahlo

 

The horrible

“Eyesaurus”

primitive

ancient

animal, which

dropped dead

to link up

the sciences.

It looks up . .

and has no name.

— We’ll give it One:

THE horrible EYESAURUS!

 

Astonished she remained seeing

the sun-stars

and the live-dead world

and being in the

shade

 

 

Not a Knowing When Dawn Will Come

Emily Dickinson

 

Not knowing when the Dawn will come,

I open every Door,

Or has it Feathers, like a Bird,

Or Billows, like a Shore.

 

 

 

“Frail clouds arrayed in sunlight lose the glory”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

 

 

Elizabeth Bishop

 

The great light cage has broken up in the air,

freeing, I think, about a million birds

whose wild ascending shadows will not be back,

and all the wires come falling down.

No cage, no frightening birds; the rain

is brightening now. The face is pale

that tried the puzzle of their prison

and solved it with an unexpected kiss,

whose freckled unsuspected hands alit.