Inspiration: Poems

Trucks would be obliged to have inspiring, upbeat messages on their trailers ? like the Kane Truck from Scranton, PA that encourages everyone to Be Your Best Self. Imagine driving a highway being advised to Smile! Sing Along Breathe Deeply Forgive Somebody Stay Calm...

Sitting in Mrs. Goodman’s fifth-grade class, red-faced and hot from lunch recess, I bent over my Spanish/English dictionary, the one we’d made from lined paper, folding it in half lengthwise, stapling it down the middle, English on one side, Spanish on the other, our...

Anger in its time and place May assume a kind of grace. It must have some reason in it, And not last beyond a minute. If to further lengths it go, It does into malice grow. 'Tis the difference that we see Twixt the serpent and the bee. If the latter you provoke, It...

Something is always broken. Nothing is perfect longer than a day – Every roof has a broken tile, Every mouth a chipped tooth. Something is always broken But the world endures the break: The broken twig is how we follow the trail. The broken promise is the one we...

Speak gently! – It is better far To rule by love, than fear – Speak gently – let not harsh words mar The good we might do here! Speak gently! – Love doth whisper low The vows that true hearts bind; And gently Friendship's accents flow; Affection's voice is kind. Speak...

Lord, on 8th Street between 6th Avenue and Broadway in Greenwich Village there are enough shoe stores with enough shoes to make me wonder why there are shoeless people on the earth. Lord, You have to fire the Angel in charge of distribution.

how can I be in the present when I need two hands to twitter and tweet when world events are everywhere all the time above below under inside outside slithering through ear buds flat screens cell phones and I miss the exact second the rose opens its red lips or the...

Well you Sincerity display, A virtue wond’rous rare! Nor value, tho’ the world should say, You’re rude, so you’re sincere. To be sincere, then, give me leave; And I will frankly own, Since you but this one virtue have, ’Twere better you had none.  Mary Barber (1685 -...

Lying, thinking Last night How to find my soul a home Where water is not thirsty And bread loaf is not stone I came up with one thing And I don’t believe I’m wrong That nobody, But nobody Can make it out here alone. Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out...

August 22, 1920 Ray Bradbury "Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall." August 22, 1935 Annie Proulx "What we fear we often rage against."

Atop ragged-edged scratch paper I write "Mon." and under this copy Sun.’s uncrossed-off items: "buy birdseed," "b-day e-card to Adele," "call re: basement leak," "bring ashes to cemetery," for instance I notice one task on the Sunday list ("Pour boiling H2O down...

On a summer morning I sat down on a hillside to think about God - a worthy pastime. Near me, I saw a single cricket; it was moving the grains of the hillside this way and that way. How great was its energy, how humble its effort. Let us hope it will always be like...

It can happen like that: meeting at the market, buying tires amid the smell of rubber, the grating sound of jack hammers and drills, anywhere we share stories, and grace flows between us. The tire center waiting room becomes a healing place as one speaks of her...

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is...

If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the...

My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand. Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young and still not...

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice – – – though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. ‘Mend my life!’ each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew...

1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons. 2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and...

Who was it who suggested that the opposite of war Is not so much peace as civilization? He knew Our assassinated Catholic greengrocer who died At Christmas in the arms of our Methodist minister, And our ice-cream man whose continuing requiem Is the twenty-one flavours...