Don't Tell Me

Please don't tell me I should hug,

Don't tell me I should care.

Don't tell me just how grand I'd feel

If I just learned to share.

Don't say, "It's all right to cry,"

"Be kind," "Be fair," "Be true."

Just let me see YOU do it,

Then I just might do it too.

~ Shel Silverstein

Where the Sidewalk Ends
40th anniversary special edition

~Thank you Marcia and Kayla for introducing me to this American classic by getting it for Jannah-Rae for her 5th birthday.

The Final No

The Well Dressed Man With a Beard

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.
If the rejected things, the things denied,
Slid over the western cataract, yet one,
One only, one thing that was firm, even
No greater than a cricket’s horn, no more
Than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech
Of the self that must sustain itself on speech,
One thing remaining, infallible, would be
Enough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing!
Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart,
Green in the body, out of a petty phrase,
Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed:
The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps,
The aureole above the humming house…

It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.

~ Wallace Stevens, The Well Dressed Man With a Beard first published in: Parts of a World (1942), in Collected Poetry and Prose of Wallace Stevens (Library of America ed.), p. 224.

Little hands

 

 

Little hands now,

Little hand then,

If only I could being them

back again.

 

I look and ponder,

I see and wonder,

How the littlest of hands

Have grown into little hands.

 

I tried to take it all in,

I sat and watched,

I stayed and remained,

I thought I could hold it all in.

 

But alas, she grew,

She grew and she grew and she grew

She grew until she became three

And became more her than me.

 

Her hands are tender,

They are sweet and soft.

They bring forth wonders,

and happiness and thoughts.

 

She touches flowers,

Plays with dirt,

Holds a railing,

Grips my shirt.

 

Back then I helped,

Now I ease,

Who knows tomorrow

If she will still be pleased.

 

One day those hands will no longer be this little,

this fragile, or this eager.

So for now I hold her hand as much as I can.

I try to be there as long as I can.

 

When she's awake,

Or in her sleep,

I hold her hand,

I hold my keep.



"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

  Whose woods these are I think I know.   

  His house is in the village though;   

  He will not see me stopping here   

  To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

  My little horse must think it queer   

  To stop without a farmhouse near   

  Between the woods and frozen lake   

  The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

 

~Robert Frost

"The Road Not Taken"

 

 

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 undergrowth;

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.

 

~ Robert Frost

Growing up this used to be one of my favorite poems. I rediscovered it recently. I still believe that "that has made (and will make) all the difference."

"Riveted"

It is possible that things will not get better
than they are now, or have been known to be.
It is possible that we are past the middle now.
It is possible that we have crossed the great water
without knowing it, and stand now on the other side.
Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now
we are being given tickets, and they are not
tickets to the show we had been thinking of,
but to a different show, clearly inferior.

Check again: it is our own name on the envelope.
The tickets are to that other show.

It is possible that we will walk out of the darkened hall
without waiting for the last act: people do.
Some people do. But it is probable
that we will stay seated in our narrow seats
all through the tedious denouement
to the unsurprising end- riveted, as it were;
spellbound by our own imperfect lives
because they are lives,
and because they are ours.

 ~ Robyn Sarah

This poem came to me right on time. Some days I think the universe is hearing me.