I’ve decided that I’d like to keep what I use as the intro to the featured poems each month for reference. Mostly intended for internal use but it generally contains some useful info. The intro to the Poet’s Corner is included below. After a year I’ve pulled it and only include the into for the month’s poems.
March 2025
I’ve had a rough 4 months working to get myself back into good health. It’s been one thing after another dealing with injuries and various other maladies but as the spring takes hold I look to put this all behind me. After all, I don’t want to miss out on all the fun (and hard work) I’ve been planning since last fall for our gardens.
This brings to mind a poem likely familiar to many fans of Robin Williams and his wonderful performance in Dead Poet’s Society. Carpe diem! Seize the day! We are reminded to live each day to its fullest. Known to many as “Gather Ye Rose-Buds,” take heed the message in, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.”
February 2025
I’m taking a different tack for February this year and offering a poem celebrating Imbolc. This Celtic holiday takes place on February 1 and marks the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It’s also known as Brigid’s Day for the Irish goddess and patron saint of spring, fertility and … poetry!
This time of year we see the end of winter and first signs of spring. In the US and Canada, we look forward to Groundhog Day which actually has its roots in Imbolc. Pagan belief holds that this is when the goddess is reborn as the maiden and brings new life back to the earth. As such, it’s a great time to start a new project, do some spring cleaning or maybe recommit to one of those New Year’s resolutions that’s fallen by the wayside.
January 2025
I’ve selected a couple of poems to start off 2025. The first, Ring Out, Wild Bells may be from 1850 but seems just as applicable today. We live in a divisive world. More so now than I can remember since I was a child in the 1960s. While we got through that period without the all out civil war Tennyson experienced, combatants today have transitioned from rocks and knives to pipe bombs and assault rifles, and this raises the stakes considerably. My wish for 2025 is to ring out intolerance and ring in acceptance, even though we’re off to a very poor start.
And now for something a bit more fun. Ogden Nash is known for writing lighthearted poems full of interesting rhymes and quaint wisdom. Good Riddance, But Now What? is a perfect example of this and couldn’t be more appropriate at this time of year.
Poet’s Corner (obs. Nov 2024)
I know, to many, poetry is just something that was a dreaded part of high school. But if you listen, you’ll hear lines from many of the poems you’ll find here in current music, television and movies.
A world without poetry is a world without heart and soul. If what’s listed here doesn’t move you, look elsewhere and I’m sure you’ll find verses that will add a bit of sparkle your day.
December 2024
We spend a lot of time watching birds from our family rooms here and in Kirkwood. This fall has been quite warm but beginning on Thanksgiving the cold arrived and was shortly followed by an early snow. I think our birds are rather stunned as Cairns describes so this seemed like a good choice to feature this month.
November 2024
This month’s featured poem is a bit of a departure from the generally straight forward offerings thus far presented. Since in December most heads are filled with jingle bells and merry making, November can serve as a time for reflection on the nearly ended year. What have we learned? What have we experienced? Do we even remember or has another year merely raced past?
These questions, albeit on a much grander scale, seem to parallel those found in Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality.” Through the eyes of a child each day presents new wonders and experiences. There is excitement and anticipation for each new day. But as the years pass those feelings are often replaced by apathy and indifference to the point that we lose our connection to the world around us.
It is said that for children, days are short, and years are long and for adults, days are long, and years are short. Instead of greeting each day with eagerness, grown-ups too often only go through the motions of living, day after day, year after year. “Ode” explores this transition in our mindset and suggests there may be a way to recapture what we have lost.
October 2024
At this time of Halloween when the veil between the worlds is thin, we often celebrate by watching creepy movies and decorating our houses with images of ghosts and zombies. Children trick-or-treat around their neighborhoods and know by experience or word of mouth where the best candy can be found. But, just as well known, is the house that the diminutive revelers know to avoid. The place that, without decoration, sends a little chill up their spines. The haunted house.
When at the farm we are living in a new house, built about 10 years ago. So unless some roaming phantom crept in during construction, I’m pretty sure we have no ghosts here. Certainly most people, even those living in older houses, think much the same. While there may be the odd, unoccupied house nearby where spirits abound, their house and those of their neighbors are immune from such intruders, right?
Our featured poem this month asks you to reconsider what you know and entertain the idea that many houses have a few more dwelling within than reported on their occupancy permits. So leave out a little extra candy this Halloween and enjoy, Haunted Houses.
September 2024
As the dog days of summer wain and autumn’s cool crisp days arrive I can’t help but begin to get excited. My favorite time of year has always been fall and early winter. During these months even the new school year was still enjoyable and the holidays from September through December have special meaning to me.
In the evenings while dinner is being prepared we often put an episode of The Walton’s on TV. The familiar stories and characters provide a calming background after watching what is generally disturbing local and national news. A few days ago, an episode revolved around Grandpa Walton winning a statue that was inspired by Annabel Lee and in typical fashion, Zeb quoted several lines of the poem.
So even though Halloween is still a couple months off, I’ve decided to jump into the fall spirit with both feet with this Poe classic.
August 2024
These featured poems represent a change of pace. So far my selectons have focused on the time of year or holidays. This month I’ve selected two poets that I’ve yet to include and are generally considered among the greats.
Emily Dickinson and Eugene Field were both late 19th century American poets but their style had little in common. Whereas Field is known for his easy reading and strong imagery, Dickinson’s work is more esoteric, utilizing looser rhyming patterns and expressing intense emotion. She is also known for almost never titling her poems. Another on-line source says fewer than 10 of her 1,800 poems include titles so they are generally known by their first line.
July 2024
While we didn’t get to go to Sanibel for the second year in a row, it has given me more time to really see everything in the gardens and I’ve been able to spend more time working them than ever before. Spring was wonderful and plants that weren’t munched by wandering bands of four legged marauders grew in well.
This month’s poem reflects the recent weather conditions here. June, after ample rain earlier in the year, turned rather dry. But just as things were ramping up for July 4th festivities, someone turned the rain back on in a big way!
June 2024
It’s taken almost five month but retirement is finally settling in as my new normal. My To-Do list is still very long so I keep working on it and accept that even if I never finish it, the world will turn. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day!
My new found time is split up into two categories. Things I’ve neglected and have to make right, and new things I’ve wanted to do but never had the time. So I spend a lot of time working in the gardens, exercising, reading and watching on-line courses.
My selection of poems this month reflect the time time I’ve invested in an astronomy class and the tired feeling at day’s end that comes from physical activity rather than engaging with a computer.
May 2024
Things have been getting busy as spring progresses. I’ve built a new garden area and will expand it over time. The moderate drought conditions that have persisted here for about a year have become a thing of the past with one of the heaviest April rainfall totals we’ve had in years. Ah, April showers bring May flowers!
With that in mind, my selection of poem for May is simply, The Flower. Appropriate, I think, for the time of year and my recent gardening efforts. And while this verse is probably an allegory of the flowering of new thoughts, it also speaks to the truth that one man’s weed is another man’s flower.
April 2024
This month I’ve decided to feature a guilty pleasure from my teens. My favorite poem by award winning poet and artist Shel Silverstein. Yes, the author of The Giving Tree, that countless parents have read to their children, teaching the importance of friendship.
This isn’t that book.
After working for Stars and Stripes from 1954 – 1956, Silverstein began a 40+ year stint as a columnist and cartoonist for the then young Playboy magazine during which his work was, shall we say, a little less child centric. So, in this month that includes the unofficial 4-20 holiday, here’s The Smoke Off!
March 2024
It’s been far too warm this February. A couple of very cold days along with many where we neared or broke the record high. We may be in for a rude surprise at some point this month but right now it look like spring is ready to, well, spring.
March makes me think of the NCAA basketball tournament, St. Patrick’s Day and new beginnings. Since the collective anthology of basketball poetry wouldn’t fill a pamphlet I’ll focus on the second two this month.
In the first, Yeats, one of Ireland’s most celebrated poets, expresses his longing for a simple life. The sort of pastoral simplicity imbued in Dryden’s verse of two young lovers.
February 2024
February brings to mind such wonders as bare trees, fields of snow, ice covered ponds, cold gray skies, ground hogs, well, you get the picture. So why is this also the month in which we celebrate love?
Valentine’s Day may have originated from the mid-February pagan fertility festival of Lupercalia. Later, in the 8th century, the Christian Church named February 14 as the Feast Day of St. Valentine. This probably put the kibosh on men stripping naked and sacrificing a goat but during the 14-15th century it regained its romantic overtones as courtiers associated it with the “lovebirds” of early spring.
Maybe we celebrate love this month because it warms us during an otherwise cold and bleak time of year. And, since we can always use more love in the world, I offer you two poems this month to celebrate love and beauty. Enjoy!
November 2023
At times this year seems to have moved at a glacial pace and at others it has flown by. Now that we’re in the midst of fall, my favorite time of year, it is once again speeding along. Maybe if I better understood the theory of relativity I could explain this phenomena but suspect the time required to achieve that would exceed my remaining days. So instead I submit the following poems for your consideration during this time of family gatherings, feasting and general gaiety.
October 2023
October. Fall has arrived (barely this year!), the leaves are beginning to take on orange, red and golden hues. Gardens that thrived during spring and summer are offering up the last of their bounty before their winter slumber. Pumpkins and mums are joined by spiders, ghosts and other macabre decorations on lawns and porches. This is a haunting and magical time of year. A time when the veil is said to be thinnest between this world and the next.
It’s hard to rival Poe when it comes to Halloween appropriate writings. I’ve had The Raven in mind since starting this section several months ago. Enjoy!