This document contains summaries of 30 poems for National Poetry Month. Each summary is 1-2 sentences and provides the title of the poem, author and a brief description of the theme or subject matter. Images from Flickr accompany many of the poem summaries. The poems cover a wide range of topics from nature and seasons to love, curiosity, identity and more.

1. Picturing Poetry:
30 poems for National Poetry Month
by Diane Cordell
“Water dance” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/6264147679/

2. "I'm glad I am alive, to see and feel
The full deliciousness of this bright day,
That's like a heart with nothing to conceal..."
-William Allingham, On a Forenoon of Spring
“Grape leaf” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/7029435223/

3. “We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.”
-Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy, Ode
“Silver gleam” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/5497877225/

4. "Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy'd the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought,
to have done..."
-Matthew Arnold,
From the Hymn of Empedocles
“So Small a Thing” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/6833739034/

5. "i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes"
-e. e. cummings, i thank you
“A Blue True Dream of Sky” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/5740161357/

6. “When I am an old woman, I shall
wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go, and
doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on
brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we've no
money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement
when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and
press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public
railings
and make up for the sobriety of my
youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the
rain
and pick the flowers in other
people's gardens
and learn to spit.”
-Jenny Joseph, “The Purple House” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/4993960674/
Warning - When IAm an Old Woman
I Shall Wear Purple

7. “...remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive...
Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,
It will vanish and the stars will shine again,
Because, for all our power and weight and size,
We are nothing more than children of your brain!”
-Rudyard Kipling, The Secret of the Machines
“Gears” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/4639244273/

8. “Start with the underwear. Sit him down.
Hopping on one leg may stir unpleasant
memories.
If he gets his tights on, even backwards, praise
him.
Fingers, formerly webbed, struggle over buttons.
Arms and legs, lengthened out of proportion,
wait,
as you do, for the rest of him to catch up.
This body, so recently reformed, reclaimed,
still carries the marks of its time as a frog. Be
gentle.
Avoid the words awkward and gawky.
Do not use tadpole as a term of endearment.
His body, like his clothing, may seem one size
too big.
Relax. There's time enough for crowns. He'll
grow into it.”
-Anna Denise,
How to Change a Frog Into a Prince
“The Frog Prince” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/5662493656/

9. “There are laws in the village against weeds.
The law says a weed is wrong and shall be killed.
The weeds say life is a white and lovely thing
And the weeds come on and on in irrepressible regiments.”
-Carl Sandburg, Weeds
“The Down on a Thistle” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/4910332505/

10. “I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes”
-Kaylin Haught, God Says Yes to Me
“Consignment shop” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/2937151948/

11. “Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die-
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Only the curious
have if they live a tale
worth telling at all.”
-Alastair Reid, Curiosity
“Learning” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/4618997470/

12. “A poem should be equal to:
Not true.
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.
For love
The leaning grasses
and two lights above the sea--
A poem should not mean
But be.
-Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica
“Doorway” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/7032607411/

13. “I am a willow of the wilderness,
Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts
My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk,
A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush,
A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine,
Salve my worst wounds.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Musketaquid
“A Woodland Walk: Columbine” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/6886692522/

14. “Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses --
As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --
Rationalists would wear sombreros.”
-Wallace Stevens, Six Significant Landscapes
“Fedora” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/6886626172/

15. “...What’s left is a photo of
A completely solitary sight
In a book anyone might open.
But whether our touch at the door
gets forgotten
Or turned into other sights, light, form,
I hope you’ll be truthful
To me. At least as truthful as lightning,
Skinning a tree.”
-Ruth Padel,
Icicles Round a Tree in Dumfriesshire
“photographer” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/7032851475/

16. "The flower offered of itself
And eloquently spoke
Of gods
In languages of rainbows
Perfumes
And secret silence..."
-Phillip Pulfrey,
Love, Abstraction
“Secret Silence” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/5638698800/ and other Speculations

17. "(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift."
-Mary Oliver,
The Uses of Sorrow
“The Uses of Sorrow” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/6883359520/

18. "Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapory air,
Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare...”
-William Cullen Bryant, Autumn
“One Smile More” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/6302182883/

19. “I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.”
-Pablo Neruda, Love Sonnet XVII
“Arabesque” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/5748259750/

20. “Glory be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow,
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange,
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim...”
-Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty
“Autumn” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/5072935794/

21. “They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.”
-Laurence Binyon, For the Fallen
“Reflected Glory” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/4778990296/

22. “September leaf
Blushing...
Remembering...
The torrid kisses
...Of July
September leaf
Sensing winter
....And oblivion
Shivers...
And whispers
‘July, my only love’ ‘Say you remember.’”
-LaRetha Adams, Before Winter
“Say You Remember” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/6189594015/

23. “The poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's—he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed...”
-John Keats, On the Grasshopper and Cricket
“Hiding in Plain Sight” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/6039613010/

24. “Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
And against the morning's white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
Have sheltered for the night,
We'll turn our faces southward, love,
Toward the summer isle
Where bamboos spire to shafted grove
And wide-mouthed orchids smile.
And we will seek the quiet hill
Where towers the cotton tree,
And leaps the laughing crystal rill,
And works the droning bee.
And we will build a cottage there
Beside an open glade,
With black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near,
And ferns that never fade.”
-Claude McKay, After the Winter
“Icy” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/6715466795/

25. "Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes - do your recall? And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,
knowing somehow we had survived their fall."
-Rainer Maria Rilke, Falling Stars IV
“Falling Stars” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/7026818599/

26. "I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."
- Robert Frost, Birches
“Birch Trees” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/6277610899/

27. "The world turns softly
Not to spill its lakes and rivers,
The water is held in its arms
And the sky is held in the water.
What is water,
That pours silver,
And can hold the sky?"
-Hilda Conkling, Water
“What is Water? by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/5172616442/

28. “I stand between the past and the pursuing,
Between the dream'd of deed and the undone,
With all the earth on tiptoe for the doing,
And breathless for the start-word of the sun...”
-Theophilus Marzials, Spring
“A Promise of Blackberries” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/5733737401/

29. "Today I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew."
-Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Dragonfly
“A Living Flash of Light” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/6029773687

30. “Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.”
-T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
“The Future” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/6881358296/

31. “There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.”
-Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends
“Where the sidewalk ends” by dmcordell http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmcordell/3727475622/

32. What I'm Thinking: http://dmcordell.blogspot.com/
What I'm Tweeting: http://twitter.com/dmcordell
My Photos: http://www.flickr.com/dmcordell/
My Slidedecks http://www.slideshare.net/diane/presentations