Abandoned Farmhouse - Ted Kooser

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
a tall man too, says the length of the bed
in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,
says the Bible with a broken back
on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
but not a man for farming, say the fields
cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall
papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves
covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,
says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.
Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves
and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.
And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.
It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard
like branches after a storm—a rubber cow,
a rusty tractor with a broken plow,
a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.

And the Ghosts - Graham Foust

The Rose that Grew From Concrete

by Tupac Shakur

Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.

I Have News for You - Tony Hoagland

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians. I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy lemon-yellow moon? There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as unattainable as that moon; thus, they do not later have to waste more time defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in and let it touch them all over their faces and their bodies.

Monday

Monday - Billy Collins 

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

They are at their windows
in every section of the tangerine of earth-
the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,
the American poets gazing out
at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.

The clerks are at their desks,
the miners are down in their mines,
and the poets are looking out their windows
maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

Which window it hardly seems to matter
though many have a favorite,
for there is always something to see-
a bird grasping a thin branch,
the headlight of a taxi rounding a corner,
those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.

The fishermen bob in their boats,
the linemen climb their round poles,
the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,
and the poets continue to stare
at the cracked birdbath or a limb knocked down by the wind.

By now, it should go without saying
that what the oven is to the baker
and the berry-stained blouse to the dry cleaner,
so the window is to the poet.

Just think-
before the invention of the window,
the poets would have had to put on a jacket
and a winter hat to go outside
or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.

And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
and a sketch of a cow in a frame.

I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
the wall of the medieval sonnet,
the original woman's heart of stone,
the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Billy Collins

The Cast

The Cast
BY CAROL LYNN PEARSON

I lost the starring part in Our Town
To Linda, a girl not half as good as me,
Who kept her eyes down
For the whole tryout, and even stuttered.

When the cast was posted
And the high school drama coach
Saw me reading it through my tears,
He put an arm around me and said,
“Now, look—things are not always as they appear.
This is not Broadway;
It’s an educational institution.
We’re here for two reasons—to put on a show,
And, more important, to help people grow.
Someday you’ll see.”

So Linda played Emily,
And she didn’t even stutter.
And I was Third Woman at the Wedding,
Watching and wondering how he knew
What she could really do
If she had the chance.

Since then I have guessed that God,
Being a whole lot smarter
Than my high school drama coach, might be offstage sometimes
With an arm around a questioning cast:
“Now, don’t try to outguess me.
Sometimes the first shall be last
And the last shall be first,
And I’ve got my own reasons.
I need some strong ones to star
And some strong ones to stand back.
And I’m going to put out front
Some you might not choose,
But you’ll see what they can really do
When they have the chance.
Mortality is an educational institution.
We’ve got to put on the show,
And, too, we’ve got to help people grow.”

As I walk through the scenes,
Watch the costumes move,
And listen to the lines
Of the powerful, the weak,
The rich, the poor,
I look at the leads with less awe than most,
And at the spear-carriers with more.