Lullaby
~ Steve Kowit
Sweet love, everything
closes its eyes now to sleep.
The cat
has stretched out
at the foot of your bed
& the little bug
lays its head
in its arms
& your jacket
that’s draped on the chair:
every button has fallen asleep,
even the poor torn cuff…
& your flute
& your paper boat
& your candy bar
snug in its wrapper.
Outside,
the evening is closing its eyes.
Even the hill to the dark
woods
has fallen asleep
on its side
in a quilt of blue snow.
A Little Girl’s Poem
~ Gwendolyn Brooks
Life is for me and is shining!
Inside me I
feel stars and sun and bells singing.
There are children in the world
all around me and beyond me –
here, and beyond the big waters;
here, and in countries peculiar to me
but not peculiar to themselves.
I want the children to live and to laugh.
I want them to sit with their mothers and fathers
and have happy cocoa together.
I do not want
fire screaming up to the sky.
I do not want
families killed in their doorways.
Life is for us, for the children.
Life is for mothers and fathers,
life is for the tall girls and boys
in the high school on Henderson Street,
is for the people in Afrikan tents,
the people in English cathedrals,
the people in Indian courtyards;
the people in cottages all over the world.
Life is for us, and is shining.
We have a right to sing.
You Reading This, Be Ready
~ William Stafford
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –
What can anyone give you greater than now.
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
Where the Rainbow Ends
by Richard Rive
Where the rainbow ends
There’s going to be a place, brother,
Where the world can sing all sorts of songs,
And we’re going to sing together, brother,
You and I, though you’re white and I’m not.
It’s going to be a sad song, brother,
Because we don’t know the tune,
And it’s a difficult tune to learn.
But we can learn, brother, you and I.
There’s no such tune as a black tune.
There’s no such tune as a white tune.
There’s only music, brother,
And it’s music we’re going to sing
Where the rainbow ends.
Famous
~ Naomi Shihab Nye
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous that the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.