Singing on the Chesapeake Bay

Everyone Sang by Siegfried Sassoon Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on- and out of sight Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun; My heart was […]

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Hidden in my sister’s car

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze.  No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were […]

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A peaceful day on the National Mall

At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border by William Stafford This is the field where the battle did not happen, where the unknown soldier did not die. This is the field where grass joined hands, where no monument stands, and the only heroic thing is the sky. Birds fly here without any sound, unfolding […]

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Dang, the cherry blossoms are gone

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now by A.E. Housman Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me […]

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Empty high school on Saturday

The Clothes Pin by Jane Kenyon How much better it is to carry wood to the fire than to moan about your life. How much better to throw the garbage onto the compost, or to pin the clean sheet on the line with a gray-brown wooden clothes pin! Did I really think a lonely and despondent […]

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