Inspiration: Poems

The late US Representative Elijah Cummings recited this 54-word poem by Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, a pioneering civil rights leader who was the president of Morehouse College during Martin Luther King Jr. education there, during his first congressional speech. King cited...

When I die Give what’s left of me away To children And old men that wait to die. And if you need to cry, Cry for your brother Walking the street beside you. And when you need me, Put your arms Around anyone And give them What you need to give to me. I want to leave...

The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage you stand in the centre of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, knowing at last how you got there, and say, I own this, is the same moment when the trees unloose their soft arms...

The poet reads his lines to the blind. He hadn’t guessed that it would be so hard. His voice trembles. His hands shake. He senses that every sentence is put to the test of darkness. He must muddle through alone, without colors or lights. A treacherous endeavor for his...

Six humans trapped by happenstance In bleak and bitter cold. Each one possessed a stick of wood Or so the story’s told. Their dying fire in need of logs The first man held his back For of the faces round the fire He noticed one was black. The next man looking ‘cross...

Slowly She celebrated the sacrament of Letting Go… First she surrendered her Green Then the Orange, yellow, and Red… Finally she let go of her Brown… Shedding her last leaf She stood empty and silent, stripped bare Leaning against the sky she began her vigil of trust…...

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Do not search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able...

it’s 3:23 in the morning and I’m awake because my great great grandchildren won’t let me sleep my great great grandchildren ask me in dreams what did you do while the planet was plundered? what did you do when the earth was unraveling? surely you did something when...

May we raise children who love the unloved things – the dandelion, the worms and spiderlings. Children who sense the rose needs the thorn & run into rainswept days the same way they turn towards sun… And when they’re grown & someone has to speak for those who have no...

My love, I’m grateful tonight Our listing bed isn’t a raft Precariously adrift As we dodge the coast-guard light, And clasp hold of a girl and a boy. I’m glad that we didn’t wake Our kids in the thin hours, to take Not a thing, not a favorite toy, And we didn’t hand...

And one of the elders of the city said, Speak to us of Good and Evil. And he answered: Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves,...

May we come together after so many bitter words and such division. May our minds open to the experience and points of view of those who are not just like ourselves. May we heal from sexism, racism, bigotry, and misunderstandings of all kinds. May we have imagination...

Just lying on the couch and being happy. Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head. Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has so much to do in the world. People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t monitor you all the time, and sometimes they...

Tell us of a bypassed heart beating in 12C, how the woman holds a stranger’s hand to the battery sewn in beneath her collarbone, and says feel this. Tell us of the man’s ear listening across the aisle, hugging itself, a fist long since blistered by blaze. Outside,...

Good morning. I missed your “good” because a plane, because a truck, because a gun, because a cop, because a government, because a people suffering, because too many people suffering, because war, because famine, because some mornings it is so hard to rise, to wake,...

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there is music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her. The summer mornings begin inch by inch while we sleep, and walk with us later as...

Return to the most human, nothing less will nourish the torn spirit, the bewildered heart, the angry mind: and from the ultimate duress, pierced with the breath of anguish, speak of love. Return, return to the deep sources, nothing less will teach the stiff hands a...

Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a...

We have memorized America, how it was born and who we have been and where. In ceremonies and silence we say the words, telling the stories, singing the old songs. We like the places they take us. Mostly we do. The great and all the anonymous dead are there. We know...

A bear is chasing me through a meadow and I’m running as fast as I can but he’s gaining on me—it seems he’s always gaining on me. I’m running and running but also thinking I should just turn around and say, “Stop it! Stop chasing me. We both know you aren’t going to...