Progress Does Not Always Come Easy

As a legislator in my state
I drew up my first law to say
that citizens could never vote again
after they had passed away.

My fellow members faced the troubling issue
bravely, locked in hard debate
on whether, after someone's death had come,
three years should be adequate

to let the family, recollecting him,
determine how a loved one may
have cast a vote if he had only lived
to see the later voting day.

My own neighbors warned me I had gone
too far in changing what we had always done.
I lost the next campaign, and failed to carry
a single precinct with a cemetery.

Jimmy Carter, Always a Reckoning and Other Poems, (Crown Publishers, 1995)

When Death Comes

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me; and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1992) 

If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Emily Dickinson

Lesson

It was 1963 or 4, summer,
and my father was driving our family
from Ft. Hood to North Carolina in our 56 Buick.
We'd been hearing about Klan attacks, and we knew

Mississippi to be more dangerous than usual.
Dark lay hanging from trees the way moss did,
and when it moaned light against the windows
that night, my father pulled off the road to sleep.

Noises
that usually woke me from rest afraid of monsters
kept my father awake that night, too,
and I lay in the quiet watching him listen, learning
that he might not be able always to protect us

from everything and the creatures besides;
perhaps not even from the fury suddenly loud
through my body about his trip from Texas
to settle us home before he would go away

to a place no place in the world
he named Viet Nam. A boy needs a father
with him, I kept thinking, fixed against noise
from the dark.

Forrest Hamer, Call & Response (Alice James Books, 1995)

The Girl with the Pearl Earring

What was she thinking, sitting there?
Her blue and gold scarf hanging
Down her back, that pearl earring, those
Those bright red lips drawn slightly apart.

Was it a worried look on her face? A look
Of a servant girl about to be found out
By her mistress wearing THAT earring. Those
Deep brown pleading eyes looking at Vermeer

With affection waiting and wanting to be loved.
How many times had she sat there posing for
Him to paint that beautiful face whilst the
Mistress of the house was away?

And what did his wife think on first viewing
The painting? Was she pleased, jealous,
upset, angry? And what happened to the girl?
There is more to a painting than what you see.

David Wood, no other attribution could be found.
Enjoy Vermeer's painting 'The Girl with the Pearl Earring' here

Grandchild

You lean your small body
closer into mine.
Your shyness
morphs into animation
as you tell me
of the snow sculpture
you made
an icy chair, you say,
sit-able
but not lean-backable.

This facility with words
delights me.
I want to pull you
on to my lap
put my arms around you
hold you close.
But we talk on
of planets, dinosaurs
where the ladybugs go in the winter
before you kiss me on the cheek
and stomp away in the snow
to find your friends
leaving me with a small
hole in my heart.

I join the grown-ups
in the backyard
where the talk there is of
weight loss and joint replacement
a newly acquired cough
the best wine for the money
and
teeing off.

Nanci Lee Woody, yourpoemdaily.com

Song for the New Year (Excerpt)

Old time has turned another page

of eternity and truth;

He reads with a warning voice to age,

And whispers a lesson to youth.

A year has fled o'er heart and head

Since last the yule log burnt;

And we have a task to closely ask,

What the bosom and brain have learnt?

Oh! let us hope that our sands have run

With wisdom's precious grains;

Oh! May we find that our hands have done

Some work of glorious pains.

Then a welcome and cheer to a merry new year,

While the holly gleams above us;

With a pardon for the foes who hate,

And a prayer for those who love us.

We may have seen some loved ones pass

To the land of hallow'd rest;

We may miss the glow of an honest brow

And the warmth of a friendly breast;

But if we nursed them while on earth,

With hearts all true and kind,

Will their spirits blame the sinless mirth

Of those true hearts left behind?

No, no! It were not well or wise

To mourn with endless pain;

There's a better world beyond the skies,

Where the good shall meet again.

Then a welcome and cheer to the merry new year,

While the holly gleams above us;

With a pardon for the foes who hate,

and a prayer for those who love us.

Eliza Cook, public domain, published in Poem-a-Day, December 29, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets