hey reblog this with a piece of your favorite poem, please

   When we sleep for good, I would like a tree. I would like Ann to have a tree, too. We can be side by side, on one of the hills that we used to explore.    My tree will be bigger. I loved him more. Ann is the one he picked first. But he came back for me.

(Rick Bass, from The Odyssey) 

Missing someone is like hearing a name sung quietly from somewhere behind you. Even after you know no one is there, you keep looking back until on a silver afternoon like this you find yourself breathing just enough to make a small dent in the air.

--from “Slow Dance” by Tim Seibles

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

-- from "My Star" by Robert Browning

And nearer fast and nearer Doth the red whirlwind come; And louder still and still more loud, From underneath that rolling cloud Is heard the trumpet’s war-note proud, The trampling, and the hum. And plainly and more plainly Now through the gloom appears, Far to left and far to right, In broken gleams of dark-blue light, The long array of helmets bright, The long array of spears.

- Horatius at the Bridge by Thomas Babington Macaulay

Yes, we’d like to clap the camels, to smell the spice, admire her hairy legs and bonny wicked smile, we want to take PhDs in Persian, be vice to her president: we want to help her ask some Difficult Questions she’s shouting for our wisest man to test her mettle: Scour Scotland for a Solomon! Sure enough: from the back of the crowd someone growls: whae do you think y'ur? and a thousand laughing girls and she draw our hot breath and shout

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA!

Kathleen Jamie’s The Queen of Sheba

The first

"I love you"

will taste like

hope.

The last

"I love you"

will taste like

a lie.

The

"I love you"

that you waited for

but never arrived

will taste like

a blade.

Kat Savage - Aquired Tastes and Retrospect

Astronomies and slangs to find you, dear, Star, art-breath, crowner, conscience! and to chart For kids unknown your distal beauty, part On part that startles, till you blaze more clear And witching than your sister Venus here To a late age can, though her senior start Is my new insomnia,—swift sleepless art To draw you even... and to draw you near.

I prod our English: cough me up a word, Slip me an epithet will justify My daring fondle, fumble of far fire Crackling nearby, unreasonable as a surd, A flash of light, an insight: I am the shy Vehicle of your cadmium shine... your choir.

—John Berryman, Berryman's Sonnets: #66

Something inspires the only cow of late

To make no more of a wall than an open gate

And think no more of wall-builders than fools

Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools

A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit

She scorns a pasture withering to the root.

She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten

The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.

She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.

She bellows on a knoll against the sky.

Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.

-- Robert Frost, The Cow in Apple Time