The Rogers News

Tag: poem

  • Good to Remember

    Mysteries, Yes
    By Mary Oliver

    Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood.

    How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs.
    How rivers and stones are forever
    in allegiance with gravity
    while we ourselves dream of rising.

    How two hands touch and the bonds
    will never be broken.
    How people come, from delight or the
    scars of damage,
    to the comfort of a poem.

    Let me keep my distance, always, from
    those who think they have the answers.

    Let me keep company always with those who say
    “Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
    and bow their heads.

  • The Daily: Untitled

    The few cured leaves pinch,
    With forefinger and thumb.
    Those little daredevils
    do tempt the wind to come.
    And as they float in place,
    The white sun does rise;
    They play it like a cinema
    for his looking eyes.

  • The Road Not Taken

    Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” hung on the wall of the house in which I grew up. Here it is, so that I can remember it as one of the influential details of my life.

    Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
    And sorry I could not travel both
    And be one traveler, long I stood
    And looked down one as far as I could
    To where it bent in the undergroth;

    Then took the other, as just as fair,
    And having perhaps the better claim
    Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
    Though as for that the passing there
    Had worn them really about the same,

    And both that morning equally lay
    In leaves no step had trodden black.
    Oh, I kept the first for another day!
    Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
    I doubted if I should ever come back.

    I shall be telling this with a sigh
    Somewhere ages and ages hence:
    Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
    I took the one less traveled by,
    And that has made all the difference.

  • Year In Rear-View Mirror

    Images of my smile and yours
    Not smaller than they appear
    It must be broken ’cause
    Everything we need is close
    What I feel when I hug
    Is what I see in my head
    The prisms in my eyes
    Multiply the memories
    That I circle when I sleep
    A kiss on New Years Eve
    Then proposal in the woods
    Every moment memory
    Where we want to be

  • Happy Valentine’s Day

    Have a great Valentine’s Day. Keep it simple. That’s what I’m doing. And getting some work done on my paper. How romantic.

    Without much to say, I’ll leave you with the following Robert Frost poem that asks you to set aside your love and experience the heartbreak of two lovers unfit for one another – a warm mature woman and a dashing, but fleeting man. What more is to be expected from winter wind?

    Wind and Window Flower

    Lovers, forget your love,
    And list to the love of these,
    She a window flower,
    And he a winter breeze.

    When the frosty window veil
    Was melted down at noon,
    And the caged yellow bird
    Hung over her in tune,

    He marked her through the pane,
    He could not help but mark,
    And only passed her by,
    To come again at dark.

    He was a winter wind,
    Concerned with ice and snow,
    Dead weeds and unmated birds,
    And little of love could know.

    But he sighed upon the sill,
    He gave the sash a shake,
    As witness all within
    Who lay that night awake.

    Perchance he half prevailed
    To win her for the flight
    From the firelit looking-glass
    And warm stove-window light.

    But the flower leaned aside
    And thought of naught to say,
    And morning found the breeze
    A hundred miles away.