Inspiration: Poems
Poem: “Epitaph,” by Merrit Malloy
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...
Poem: “Poem Beginning with a Retweet,” by Maggie Smith
If you drive past horses and don’t say horses you’re a psychopath. If you see an airplane but don’t point it out. A rainbow, a cardinal, a butterfly. If you don’t whisper-shout albino squirrel! Deer! Red fox! If you hear a woodpecker and don’t shush everyone around...
Poem: “Everything is waiting for you,” by David Whyte
Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely, even you, at times, have felt the...
Poem: “This is what I have to say to you,” by Danna Faulds
This is what I have to say to you . . . Live as if the earth exhales blessings in your direction, As if trees speak their deepest secrets In your ear, As if bird songs can lift you outside your Ordinary state of mind and bring you into truth. Be the creative juice...
Poem: “What Kind of Times Are These,” by Adrienne Rich
There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who disappeared into those shadows. I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of...
Poem: “In Praise of Craziness, of a Certain Kind,” by Mary Oliver
On cold evenings my grandmother, with ownership of half her mind- the other half having flown back to Bohemia- spread newspapers over the porch floor so, she said, the garden ants could crawl beneath, as under a blanket, and keep warm, and what shall I wish for, for...
Poem: “Saint Francis and the Sow,” by Galway Kinnell
The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don’t flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing; though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and in...
Poem: “Forgiveness,” by John Greenleaf Whittier
My heart was heavy, for its trust had been Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong; So, turning gloomily from my fellowmen, One summer Sabbath day I strolled among the green mounds of the village burial place; Where, pondering how all human love and hate Find...
Poem: “Escape,” by D. H. Lawrence
When we get out of the glass bottles of our own ego, and when we escape like squirrels from turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves. Cool,...
Poem: “New Day’s Lyric,” by Amanda Gorman
May this be the day We come together. Mourning, we come to mend, Withered, we come to weather, Torn, we come to tend, Battered, we come to better. Tethered by this year of yearning, We are learning That though we weren't ready for this, We have been readied by it. We...
Poem: “The Amaranth,” by Vachel Lindsay
Ah, in the night, all music haunts me here. . . . Is it for naught high Heaven cracks and yawns And the tremendous Amaranth descends Sweet with the glory of ten thousand dawns? Does it not mean my God would have me say: — “Whether you will or no, O city young, Heaven...
Poem: “What is it That I Seek?” by Akbar Ahmed
What is it that I seek? A force of such might it sets me free A light so bright it blinds me I heard it in the voice of the nightingale I know it was in the hearts of the wise I sensed it in the lover’s tale I saw it in your eyes I heard it in Rumi’s poetry I know it...
“AMAZING PEACE: A Christmas Poem,” by Maya Angelou
Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses. Flood waters await us in our avenues. Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche Over unprotected villages. The sky slips low and grey and threatening. We question ourselves....
Poem: “Santa Claus,” by Howard Nemerov
Somewhere on his travels the strange child Picked up with this overstuffed confidence man, Affection's inverted thief, who climbs at night Down chimneys into dreams, with this world's goods, Bringing all the benevolence of money, He teaches the innocent to want, thus...
Poem: “Prayer for the Morning,” by Audette Fulbright
Did you rise this morning broken and hung over with weariness and pain and rage, tattered from waving too long in a brutal wind? Get up, child. Pull your bones upright. Gather your skin and muscle into a patch of sun. Draw breath deep into your lungs; you will need it...
Poem: “Where The Mind Is Without Fear,” by Rabindranath Tagore
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection...
Poem: “The Quality of Mercy,” by William Shakespeare
The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: ‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown: His...
Poem: “The Clod and the Pebble,” by William Blake
‘Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.’ So sung a little Clod of Clay Trodden with the cattle’s feet, But a Pebble of the brook Warbled out these metres meet: ‘Love...
Poem: “I am my ancestors dream,” by Nikita Gill
Your ancestors did not survive everything that nearly ended them for you to shrink yourself to make someone else comfortable. This sacrifice is your warcry, be loud, be everything and make them proud.
Poem: “Gift of the Sloth,” by Debbie Lim
To live like this demands a talent for hanging by toenails curved as a Balinese dancer’s for over a decade. For clinging the soft pendulum of your body to a tree (in wind, hail or heat) because your life depends on it. Even though your muscles are weak as ribbons,...
Poem: “Three Words of Strength,” by Friedrich Schiller
There are three lessons I would write — Three words, as with a burning pen, In tracings of eternal light, Upon the hearts of men. Have hope! though clouds environ round, And gladness hides her face in scorn, Put though the shadow from the brow, No night but hath its...