Pedestrian ambitions

Related poetry:

1. Whether my bark went down at sea Whether my bark went down at sea Whether she met with gales Whether to isles enchanted She bent her docile sails By what mystic mooring She is held today This is the errand of the eye Out upon the Bay....
2. The Big Heart “Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.” – From an essay by W. B. Yeats Big heart, Wide as a watermelon, But wise as birth, There is so much abundance In the people I have: Max, Lois, Joe, Louise, Joan, Marie, Dawn, Arlene, Father Dunne, And all in their short […]...
3. Shoes when you’re young A pair of Female High-heeled shoes Just sitting Alone In the closet Can fire your Bones; When you’re old It’s just A pair of shoes Without Anybody In them And Just as Well....
4. Where Is Heaven? Where is Heaven? Is it somewhere in outer space? Where does my loved one now dwell… In some far and distant place? Heaven is all around you… It’s as close as the air and love that surround you. Heaven is everywhere…it’s not just in the skies, It’s a spiritual dimension that can’t be seen Through […]...
5. Canute the Great I’ll tell of Canute, King of England, A native of Denmark was he, His hobbies was roving and raiding And paddling his feet in the sea. By trade he were what’s called a Viking, Every summer he’d visit our shore, Help himself to whatever he wanted, And come back in the autumn for more. These […]...
6. Yes Yes when God created love he didn’t help most When God created dogs He didn’t help dogs When God created plants that was average When God created hate we had a standard utility When God created me He created me When God created the monkey He was asleep When He created the giraffe He was drunk […]...
7. Tenth Commandment The woman said yes she would go to Australia with him Unless he heard wrong and she said Argentina Where they could learn the tango and pursue the widows Of Nazi war criminals unrepentant to the end. But no, she said Australia. She’d been born in New Zealand. The difference between the two places was […]...
8. Virgin Youth Now and again All my body springs alive, And the life that is polarised in my eyes, That quivers between my eyes and mouth, Flies like a wild thing across my body, Leaving my eyes half-empty, and clamorous, Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame, Gathering the soft ripples below my breast […]...
9. It seldom snowed – Part IV It seldom snowed they said, Perhaps they’re right Although seldom was never In that endless summer Which tightened a fiery grip by day, Baking the plateau, Relentlessly melting its snow. It began as a cliché On a slow day In a new January Of stupid heat That penetrated the heart, Enslaving energies replete With blinding […]...
10. Growing Apart We knew their names Or thought we did, we knew their faces From an album of places we’d played In a fabulous lifetime of childhood shared. Events of our beginnings declared us united By common ascent, whether they liked it or cared, But they were there to be watched and we knew, If we dared […]...
11. Philosophy Ere all the world had grown so drear, When I was young and you were here, ‘Mid summer roses in summer weather, What pleasant times we’ve had together! We were not Phyllis, simple-sweet, And Corydon; we did not meet By brook or meadow, but among A Philistine and flippant throng Which much we scorned; (less […]...
12. Sonnet XIII IN that proud port, which her so goodly graceth, Whiles her faire face she reares vp to the skie: And to the ground her eie lids low embaseth, Most goodly temperature ye may descry, Myld humblesse mixt with awfull maiesty, For looking on the earth whence she was borne: Her minde remembreth her mortalitie, What […]...
13. Eat Your Heart Out I’ve come by, she says, to tell you That this is it. I’m not kidding, it’s Over. this is it. I sit on the couch watching her arrange Her long red hair before my bedroom Mirror. She pulls her hair up and Piles it on top of her head- She lets her eyes look at […]...
14. Hymn 87 God dwells with the humble and penitent. Isa. 47:15,16. Thus saith the high and lofty One: “I sit upon my holy throne; My name is God, I dwell on high, Dwell in my own eternity. “But I descend to worlds below, On earth I have a mansion too; The humble spirit and contrite Is an […]...
15. Questions of Travel There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams Hurry too rapidly down to the sea, And the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops Makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion, Turning to waterfalls under our very eyes. For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains, Aren’t waterfalls yet, In a […]...
16. Almost taste the flavour It was a fat-tyred 4WD utility hard back, The sort of ute you’d expect a contractor To drive, except it was plastered with tacky Stickers, and no genuine subby does that. It snailed down the Range at 30KmH, girl-like, Braking every bend, the donkey driver Sending bad karma, wandering double white Lines again and again. […]...
17. Chorus Give away her gowns, Give away her shoes; She has no more use For her fragrant gowns; Take them all down, Blue, green, blue, Lilac, pink, blue, From their padded hangers; She will dance no more In her narrow shoes; Sweep her narrow shoes From the closet floor....
18. Song of Karen, the Dancing Child (O little white feet of mine) Out in the storm and the rain you fly; (Red, red shoes the colour of wine) Can the children hear my cry? (O little white feet of mine) Never a child in the whole great town; (Red, red shoes the colour of wine) Lights out and the blinds pulled […]...
19. Of Such Simplicity You and me, The proof is there to see, Our lives are held within the spell of great simplicity, We’re free of all the shadows dwelling in the hall, Seen in awe like pretty pictures hanging on the wall; Was it meant to be, intentionally, Of such simplicity? The pace of Life Is not predictably […]...
20. Old Memory O thought, fly to her when the end of day Awakens an old memory, and say, ‘Your strength, that is so lofty and fierce and kind, It might call up a new age, calling to mind The queens that were imagined long ago, Is but half yours: he kneaded in the dough Through the long […]...
21. Brockley Coomb Lines composed while climbing the left ascent of Brockley Coomb, May 1795 With many a pause and oft reverted eye I climb the Coomb’s ascent: sweet songsters near Warble in shade their wild-wood melody: Far off the unvarying Cuckoo soothes my ear. Up scour the startling stragglers of the flock That on green plots o’er […]...
22. The Married Lover Why, having won her, do I woo? Because her spirit’s vestal grace Provokes me always to pursue, But, spirit-like, eludes embrace; Because her womanhood is such That, as on court-days subjects kiss The Queen’s hand, yet so near a touch Affirms no mean familiarness; Nay, rather marks more fair the height Which can with safety […]...
23. Success Oft have I brooded on defeat and pain, The pathos of the stupid, stumbling throng. These I ignore to-day and only long To pour my soul forth in one trumpet strain, One clear, grief-shattering, triumphant song, For all the victories of man’s high endeavor, Palm-bearing, laurel deeds that live forever, The splendor clothing him whose […]...
24. A Precise Woman A precise woman with a short haircut brings order To my thoughts and my dresser drawers, Moves feelings around like furniture Into a new arrangement. A woman whose body is cinched at the waist and firmly divided Into upper and lower, With weather-forecast eyes Of shatterproof glass. Even her cries of passion follow a certain […]...
25. The Savior must have been The Savior must have been A docile Gentleman To come so far so cold a Day For little Fellowmen The Road to Bethlehem Since He and I were Boys Was leveled, but for that ‘twould be A rugged billion Miles...
26. The Abortion Somebody who should have been born Is gone. Just as the earth puckered its mouth, Each bud puffing out from its knot, I changed my shoes, and then drove south. Up past the Blue Mountains, where Pennsylvania humps on endlessly, Wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair, Its roads sunken in like a gray […]...
27. 198. Song-Braving Angry Winer's Storms WHERE, braving angry winter’s storms, The lofty Ochils rise, Far in their shade my Peggy’s charms First blest my wondering eyes; As one who by some savage stream A lonely gem surveys, Astonish’d, doubly marks it beam With art’s most polish’d blaze. Blest be the wild, sequester’d shade, And blest the day and hour, Where […]...
28. Sonnet 02 Not that I always struck the proper mean Of what mankind must give for what they gain, But, when I think of those whom dull routine And the pursuit of cheerless toil enchain, Who from their desk-chairs seeing a summer cloud Race through blue heaven on its joyful course Sigh sometimes for a life less […]...
29. This docile one inter This docile one inter While we who dare to live Arraign the sunny brevity That sparkled to the Grave. On her departing span No wilderness remain As dauntless in the House of Death As if it were her own...
30. Sorrow Sorrow like a ceaseless rain Beats upon my heart. People twist and scream in pain,- Dawn will find them still again; This has neither wax nor wane, Neither stop nor start. People dress and go to town; I sit in my chair. All my thoughts are slow and brown: Standing up or sitting down Little […]...
31. Hymn 50 The song of Zacharias. Lk. 1:68ff; John 1:29,32. Now be the God of Isr’el blessed, Who makes his truth appear; His mighty hand fulfils his word, And all the oaths he sware. Now he bedews old David’s root With blessings from the skies; He makes the Branch of Promise grow, The promised Horn arise. [John […]...
32. The Oxford Thrushes FEBRUARY, 1917 I never thought again to hear The Oxford thrushes singing clear, Amid the February rain, Their sweet, indomitable strain. A wintry vapor lightly spreads Among the trees, and round the beds Where daffodil and jonquil sleep, Only the snowdrop wakes to weep. It is not springtime yet. Alas, What dark, tempestuous days must […]...
33. She laid her docile Crescent down She laid her docile Crescent down And this confiding Stone Still states to Dates that have forgot The News that she is gone So constant to its stolid trust, The Shaft that never knew It shames the Constancy that fled Before its emblem flew...
34. Seascape With Sun And Eagle Freer Than most birds An eagle flies up Over San Francisco Freer than most places Soars high up Floats and glides high up In the still Open spaces Flown from the mountains Floated down Far over ocean Where the sunset has begun A mirror of itself He sails high over Turning and turning Where seaplanes […]...
35. We like March We like March. His Shoes are Purple He is new and high Makes he Mud for Dog and Peddler. Makes he Forests dry. Knows the Adder Tongue his coming And presents her Spot Stands the Sun so close and mighty That our Minds are hot. News is he of all the others Bold it were […]...
36. We say we say blame the teachers Don’t we send our young to school To be taught the simple rules For decent public-spirited behaviour Do we pay such crushing rates To have our children turned to louts We’re sick of all this fuss We say blame the teachers Or the preachers They’re all the same to us […]...
37. Prayer To Persephone Be to her, Persephone, All the things I might not be: Take her head upon your knee. She that was so proud and wild, Flippant, arrogant and free, She that had no need of me, Is a little lonely child Lost in Hell,-Persephone, Take her head upon your knee: Say to her, “My dear, my […]...
38. Day And Night Through my heart’s palace Thoughts unnumbered throng; And there, most quiet and, as a child, most wise, High-throned you sit, and gracious. All day long Great Hopes gold-armoured, jester Fantasies, And pilgrim Dreams, and little beggar Sighs, Bow to your benediction, go their way. And the grave jewelled courtier Memories Worship and love and tend […]...
39. Terra nullis ignorata We came to find the place contained In legendary tracts, the hidden land Of fulsome wealth that we had sorely lacked, An empty land of winsome dreams. We found the continent intact with Evidence of everything the schemers Claimed except it wasn’t empty, we marked Our landing with a pile of sticks and scratched our […]...
40. In A London Square Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane, East wind and frost are safely gone; With zephyr mild and balmy rain The summer comes serenly on; Earth, air, and sun and skies combine To promise all that’s kind and fair:- But thou, O human heart of mine, Be still, contain thyself, and bear. December days were […]...