Category: Poems I Love

Appeal to the Grammarians

by Paul Violi

Poem of the Day: The Snow Man

by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Treeby George StarbuckOfury-bedecked!O glitter-torn!Let the wild wind erectbonbonbonanzas; junipers affectfrostyfreeze turbans; iciclestuff adornall cuckolded creation in a madcap crown of horn!It’s a new day; no scapegrace of a secttidying up the ashtrays playing Daughter-in-Law Elect;bells! bibelots! popsicle cigars! shatter the glassware! a son bornnownowwhile ox and ass and infant lietogether as poor creatures willand tears of her exertion stillcling in the spent girl’s eyeand a great firework in the skydrifts to the western hill.

Chicago and December

by W. S. Di Piero

Let Evening Come by Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving   

up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing   

as a woman takes up her needles   

and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned   

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.   

Let the wind die down. Let the shed   

go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop   

in the oats, to air in the lung   

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t   

be afraid. God does not leave us   

comfortless, so let evening come.