12 Poems Copy /Pasted for Spring

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I've been trying to change my eating and sustain it to lower some higher blood sugar, and get ready for an operation on Tuesday. I've thought about all of this way too much. That does not bode well. It's kind of overwhelming me. The doctor said I was at a crossroad but, really?
I mean I have got to change the eating and definitely work on better health but over these last twenty years wasn't I really too stressed, too taxed, dealing with a very difficult work in very difficult and overwhelming circumstances?
Was the cancer a crossroads?
When I almost bled to death numerous times with it?
When I had the hysterectomy?
Was I at a crossroad when three times they wanted to do colostomies?
Was I at a crossroad 20 years ago when these same symptoms stole my legs?
What about in all the bouts of violence within our schools?
What day was I not at the crossroad.
Crossroads, baby, I embrace that.
And that may be will become a poem later, we'll see.

I look out at folks that are handling things, and I see folks sometimes with things pretty messed up. But here the doc says intelligent people defeat themselves.
Do unintelligent people not feel defeat?
I just can't sift the sand right now very well. I'm sorry for that ambiguity and re-invention here with the advent of spring. But this is the stuff of a life in teaching.
So one thing I've been doing is trying to crawl around inside my head and figure out how to find a comfort zone, a rhythm, a routine. Something like an awareness of acceptance, and possibility, I guess.

But it's not easy. No.

My blood sugar is down. It's actually lower than they want. Or said to maintain. After 3 months I'll try that three month test again to confirm that. My problem was drinking soda. Well, one of my problems, carbs being another, lack of moving the third, altho that presents the worst part of that triangle to work on, this cycle that was feeding itself was eating me and I hear it calling don't you think I don't. It's just 12 days of change, a dozen, so it's not like I have conquered anything. I doubt short of two weeks I even qualify as having jumped a hurdle.

I used to teach a dozen , the number, to my 1st grade students in just the most amazing ways. Starting with time and the calendar.

Dozens..

Eggs come in dozens.

Doughnuts...badthought...

I wonder if poetry is available in dozens...

or about dozens.

Well how about a dozen poems about spring...love...joy...things right now I wish I could pull around me.

1.

The Enkindled Spring

D.H. Lawrence (1916)

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration, Faces of people streaming across my gaze. And I, what fountain of fire am I among This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed About like a shadow buffeted in the throng Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.

2.

Three Spring Notations on Bipeds

by Carl Sandburg (1920)

1 The down drop of the blackbird, The wing catch of arrested flight, The stop midway and then off: off for triangles, circles, loops of new hieroglyphs— This is April’s way: a woman: “O yes, I’m here again and your heart knows I was coming.” 2 White pigeons rush at the sun, A marathon of wing feats is on: “Who most loves danger? Who most loves wings? Who somersaults for God’s sake in the name of wing power in the sun and blue on an April Thursday.” So ten winged heads, ten winged feet, race their white forms over Elmhurst. They go fast: once the ten together were a feather of foam bubble, a chrysanthemum whirl speaking to silver and azure. 3 The child is on my shoulders. In the prairie moonlight the child’s legs hang over my shoulders. She sits on my neck and I hear her calling me a good horse. She slides down—and into the moon silver of a prairie stream She throws a stone and laughs at the clug-clug.

3.

"Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sellp-song on our roof at night--
And I love the rain."- Langston Hughes, 1902-1967, April Rain Song

"I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face. "- Langston Hughes

4.

"To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?"- Edna St. Vincent Millay, Spring

5.

"The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings."- Joyce Kilmer, Spring

6.

spring omnipotent goddess Thou
by: e.e. cummings (1894-1962)

PRING omnipotent goddess Thou

dost stuff parks

with overgrown pimply

chevaliers and gumchewing giggly

damosels Thou dost

persuade to serenade

his lady the musical tom-cat

Thou dost inveigle

into crossing sidewalks the

unwary june-bug and the frivolous

angleworm

Thou dost hang canary birds in parlour windows

Spring slattern of seasons

you have soggy legs

and a muddy petticoat

drowsy

is your hair your

eyes are sticky with

dream and you have a sloppy body from

being brought to bed of crocuses

when you sing in your whisky voice

the grass rises on the head of the earth

and all the trees are put on edge

spring

of the excellent jostle of

thy hips

and the superior

slobber of your breasts i

am so very fond that my

soul inside of me hollers

for thou comest

and your hands are the snow and thy

fingers are the rain

and your

feet O your feet

freakish

feet feet incorrigible

ragging the world

7.

"From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play."- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 98

8.
"This morning, flowers cracked open
the earth’s brown shell. Spring
leaves spilled everywhere
though winter’s stern hand
could come down again at any moment
to break the delicate yolk
of a new bloom.

The crocus don’t see this as they chatter
beneath a cheerful petal of spring sky.
They ignore the air’s brisk arm
as they peer at their fresh stems, step
on the leftover fragments
of old leaves.

When the night wind twists them to pieces,
they will die like this: laughing,
tossing their brilliant heads
in the bitter air."- Christine Klocek-Lim

9.

Spring Wind in London

I blow across the stagnant world,
I blow across the sea,
For me, the sailor's flag unfurled,
For me, the uprooted tree.
My challenge to the world is hurled;
The world must bow to me.

I drive the clouds across the sky,
I huddle them like sheep;
Merciless shepherd-dog am I
And shepherd-watch I keep.
If in the quiet vales they lie
I blow them up the steep.

Lo !In the tree-tops do I hide,
In every living thing;
On the moon's yellow wings I glide,
On the wild rose I swing;
On the sea-horse's back I ride,
And what then do I bring ?

And when a little child is ill
I pause, and with my hand
I wave the window curtain's frill
That he may understand
Outside the wind is blowing still.
… It is a pleasant land.

O stranger in a foreign place,
See what I bring to you.
This rain—is tears upon your face;
I tell you—tell you true
I came from that forgotten place
Where once the wattle grew.

All the wild sweetness of the flower
Tangled against the wall.
It was that magic, silent hour. …
The branches grew so tall
They twined themselves into a bower.
The sun shone … and the fall

Of yellow blossom on the grass !
You feel that golden rain ?
Both of you could not hold, alas,
(Both of you tried—in vain)
A memory, stranger. So I pass. …
It will not come again.

10.

"carrying moonlight
into the house
white peony"- Margaret Chula

11.

"In spring when maple buds are red,
We turn the clock an hour ahead;
Which means, each April that arrives,
We lose an hour out of our lives.

Who cares? When autumn birds in flocks
Fly southward, back we turn the clocks,
And so regain a lovely thing
That missing hour we lost in spring."- Phyllis McGinley, Daylight Savings Time

12.

Portraits of Ladies....a seemingly endless subject in which I never was sure I was comfortable, but I recalled a few lines related to spring...

A Portrait of A Lady

T. S. Eliot

Thou hast committed—
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.
The Jew of Malta.


I

AMONG the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do—
With “I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and fingertips.
“So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.”
—And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you—
Without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!”

Among the windings of the violins
And the ariettes
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite “false note.”
—Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments,
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

II

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in his fingers while she talks.
“Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands”;
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.”
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.”

The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:
“I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.

You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles’ heel.
You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say: at this point many a one has failed.

But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey’s end.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends...”

I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends
For what she has said to me?
You will see me any morning in the park
Reading the comics and the sporting page.
Particularly I remark
An English countess goes upon the stage.
A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,
Another bank defaulter has confessed.
I keep my countenance,
I remain self-possessed
Except when a street piano, mechanical and tired
Reiterates some worn-out common song
With the smell of hyacinths across the garden
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong?

III

The October night comes down; returning as before
Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease
I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door
And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.
“And so you are going abroad; and when do you return?
But that’s a useless question.
You hardly know when you are coming back,
You will find so much to learn.”
My smile falls heavily among the bric-à-brac.

“Perhaps you can write to me.”
My self-possession flares up for a second;
This is as I had reckoned.
“I have been wondering frequently of late
(But our beginnings never know our ends!)
Why we have not developed into friends.”
I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark
Suddenly, his expression in a glass.
My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.

“For everybody said so, all our friends,
They all were sure our feelings would relate
So closely! I myself can hardly understand.
We must leave it now to fate.
You will write, at any rate.
Perhaps it is not too late.
I shall sit here, serving tea to friends.”

And I must borrow every changing shape
To find expression ... dance, dance
Like a dancing bear,
Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.
Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance—

Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,
Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose;
Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand
With the smoke coming down above the housetops;
Doubtful, for a while
Not knowing what to feel or if I understand
Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon...
Would she not have the advantage, after all?
This music is successful with a “dying fall”
Now that we talk of dying—
And should I have the right to smile?

Portrait of a Lady

Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady's
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze -- or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?
-- As if that answered
anything. -- Ah, yes. Below
the knees, since the tune
drops that way, it is
one of those white summer days,
the tall grass of your ankles
flickers upon the shore --
Which shore? --
the sand clings to my lips --
Which shore?
Agh, petals maybe. How
should I know?
Which shore? Which shore?
-- the petals from some hidden
appletree -- Which shore?
I said petals from an appletree.
William Carlos Williams

Shall it be a Baker's Dozen then...ok...

My favorite of course.

13.

Philip Larkin - First Sight

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasurable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.