A Classic Favorite

The Road Not Taken
By: Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Happiness

So Much Happiness
By: Naomi Nye

You can't help but smile

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records…..
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known. 
   

Oh My Oh Nye!

Making A Fist

By: Naomi Nye



For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

'How do you know if you are going to die?'
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
'When you can no longer make a fist.'

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.      

Memories with Mom

To A Daughter Leaving Home

By: Linda Pastan

 

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.      

Dreaming...

Echo
By: Christina Georgina Rossetti

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low
As long ago, my love, how long ago.      

Something to make you giggle

A Word to Husbands

By: Ogden Nash

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

A Little Cynical...

Never give all the heart

By: W.B. Yeats

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

In My Top 10 Favorite Poems

I Carry your Heart with me

By: E.E. Cummings

I carry your heart with me

I carry it in my heart

I am never without it

anywhere I go you go,my dear

 and whatever is done

by only me is your doing my darling.

I fear no fate for you are my fate, my sweet
I want no world for beautiful you are my world,my true

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

 

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows

here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life
which grows higher than the soul can hope
or mind can hide
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
I carry your heart
I carry it in my heart

 

One of My Personal Favorites

Hug-O-War

By: Shel Silverstein

I will not play tug o’ war

I’d rather play at hug o’ war

Where everyone hugs

Instead of tugs

Where everyone giggles

And rolls on the rug

Where everyone kisses

And everyone grins

And everyone cuddles

And everyone wins

I am Women

I Am Women

By: Esther Melbourne

I am women
Empress
Daughter of Afro Caribbean roots
Full figured
Ebony coco brown
is my
Exterior
My Face oval shaped
Eyes wide
Resembling moon
Lips almond
sideways
Hair as deep as indigo
black
Short
I stand
5”8 feet tall

Un perfect in many ways
I have desires to seek all within my soul
Penetrating the spirit which resides
Within

Mother
I do all to provide for my seed
I cry
when the pain and struggle is too much to bear
I laugh
Controlling my frustrations when
Pushed by the lips of my young
transcending through to the other side
I am Women
I am women

Hurt
Disappointment
from all directions
Has been a visitor
Yet I over come
And continue
To live
I have desires
To become that women
The women who lives
inside my dreams
the one no one but I can see

Beautiful
Graceful
Powerful
Secure
A women of courage
Happy
Motivated to challenge myself until
success
is what I posses

I am women
I am Women
Inspiring many
I’ve fallen at the hands of abuse in ways only few have
Been informed of
But it shapes me into my transcending transformation stages to
Rise
Rise
I am women
Seen through these eyes
Hate
war
rape
domestic Violence to those who could not defend themselves
I am women
Wonderful

I am women
I am women