Explore all poems

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of...

I love red,
not in the way most do,
with roses or sunsets,
but in the way it bleeds—
bleeds from my soul.
I wear it on my skin
like a silent scream,
a language only I understand,
when the world becomes too...

Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better
To paint a picture, or write a letter,
Bake a cake, or plant a seed;
Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there’s not much time,
With rivers to swim,...

Under a maple tree
the dog lies down,
Lolls his limp
Tongue, yawns,
Rests his long chin
Carefully between
Front paws;
Looks up, alert;
Chops, with heavy
Jaws, at a slow fly,
Blinks, rolls
On his...

I guess you think you know this story.
You don't. The real one's much more gory.
The phoney one, the one you know,
Was cooked up years and years ago,
And made to sound all soft and sappy
just to keep the children...

Though the road be rough and stormy,
trackless as the foaming see,
thou hast trod this way before me,
and I gladly follow Thee.

Though 'tis lone and dark and dreary,
cheerless though my path may be,
if Thy voice I hear...

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound...

A funny old bird is a pelican.
His beak can hold more than his belican.
Food for a week
He can hold in his beak,
But I don't know how the helican.

What days are these?
Where the gods walk amongst us
Is it a shame to them
Or vain glory to us
When they muddle themselves
The trivialities of mere mortals!

Sultry heat
A tad bit softened
But concrete is still burning
With rays of summer
Trees are getting ready
For autumn
A radical discoloration
A jaw-dropping
Transformation
That would leave
The...

I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame...

Ecstatic bird songs pound
the hollow vastness of the sky
with metallic clinkings—
beating color up into it
at a far edge,—beating it, beating it
with rising, triumphant ardor,—
stirring it into warmth,
quickening in it a spreading...