You Reading This, Be Ready

 by

William Stafford

Mark Belo

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

Credits:  This poem can be found online at thedewdrop.org.

Seashore

by

Kathryn A. Kopple

From the shore, we look and say, "There!" and point out there, using our hands to commute unfathomable latitudes into the discrete anatomy of mast and skiff, ship and seabird, lighthouse and rockcliff. All the vocabulary of summer objects and all the wide sky for a backdrop. We make of it a little picture, a keepsake of the Cape, that we can pocket.


The always going sea
The fate of unanchored things
Found and then lost again

André Derain

Credits:  This poem was originally published in Contemporary Haibun Online in 2009.