“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

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.

“The Pig” by Anonymous.

The Pig
by Anonymous

It was the first of May
A lovely warm spring day
I was strolling down the street in drunken pride,
But my knees were all a-flutter,
And I landed in the gutter
And a pig came up and lay down by my side.

Yes, I lay there in the gutter
Thinking thoughts I could not utter
When a lady passing by did softly say
‘You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses’ — And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

“The Pig” by Anonymous.

"The Country" by Billy Collins

I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night? MORE…

"The Execution of Maximilian" by Edouard Manet

"Lazarus Reflects" by Susan Skelton

In sickness unto death one does not mend.
Embalmed, entombed, insensate, there I lay,
No breath to smell earth, spice, my own decay—
Nor sight in formless darkness without end.

I heard your voice and hastened to obey
Even before I sensed the miracle.
I stood there—witness, sign, and spectacle—
In Christ’s own light and light of sunlit day.

That we behold God’s glory and believe:
I live, embrace my loved ones, see the sky,
And marvel at the gifts that I receive.

But Lord, I pray you next time when I die,
Wherever I’m interred by those who grieve,
There—till you come to judge me—let me lie.

"Retriever" by Barbara Crooker

If’ “Heaven is a lovely lake of beer” as St. Bridget wrote,
then dog heaven must be this tub of kibble, where you can push
your muzzle all day long without getting bloat or bellyache,
Where every toilet seat is raised, at the right level
for slurping and fire hydrant and saplings tell you, “Here.
Relieve yourself on us.” And the sun and moon
fall at your feet, celestial frisbees flinging themselves
in shining arcs for your soft mouth to retrieve.

More…

"Prayer" by Keetje Kuipers

Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox
and your mother, to soothe you in your fever
or to help you fall asleep, came into your room
and read to you from some favorite book,
Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie,
a long story that she quietly took you through
until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering
lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then…. MORE

"Ice Out" by Jane Kenyon

As late as yesterday ice preoccupied
the pond—dark, half-melted, waterlogged.
Then it sank in the night, one piece,
taking winter with it. And afterward
everything seems simple and good.

All afternoon I lifted oak leaves
from the flowerbeds, and greeted
like friends the green-white crowns
of perennials. They have the tender,
unnerving beauty of a baby's head.

How I hated to come in! I've left
the windows open to hear the peepers'
wildly disproportionate cries.
Dinner is over, no one stirs. The dog
sighs, sneezes, and closes his eyes.

A documentary on married poets Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall

"The Zen of Housework" by Al Zolynas

I look over my own shoulder
down my arms
to where they disappear under water
into hands inside pink rubber glove
moiling among dinner dishes.

My hands lift a wine glass,
holding it by the stem and under the bowl.
It breaks the surface
like a chalice
rising from a medieval lake. MORE…

"Everything Wakes Up" by Christopher Snook

There is a grave conspiracy between sleep and death --
those little deaths each night that we call slumber,
and those long sleeps at the end of days that we call death.

So when she asked if the black dragonfly
on the edge of the civic fountain
was dead or only sleeping
(in much the same way she might have asked if
the waving-man were drowning
or the drowning-man only waving)

I could only recall this --
from years of sleep-like-death
overtaking me each night
and death-like-sleep
claiming those I love --

I could recall only this --

from the stillborn child at dawn
and the vigil at bedsides
and the quick, violent deaths
and the slow painful losses --

I could recall only this when together
we looked at the dragonfly
dark against the edge of the fountain
and she asked

still a child

is it dead or only sleeping?

I recalled only this: Everything wakes up.

"The Agony" by George Herbert

Philosophers have measured mountains,
Fathomed the depths of seas, of states and kings;
Walked with a staff to heav’n, and traced fountains:

But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove;
Yet few there are that sound them—Sin and Love.

Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A Man so wrung with pains, that all His hair,
His skin, His garments bloody be.
Sin is that press and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through ev’ry vein.

Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice which, on the cross, a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like,
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood, but I as wine.

“More Beautiful than the Honey Locust Tree Are the Words of the Lord” by Mary Oliver

In the household of God, I have stumbled in recitation,
and in my mind I have wandered.
I have interrupted worship with discussion.
Once I extinguished the Gospel candle after all the others.
But never held the cup to my mouth lagging in gratitude. MORE…

Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. MORE…

"The Second Music" by Annie Lighthart

Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other

lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.

When all other things seem lively and real,
this one fades. Yet the notes of it

touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound
of the names laid over each child at birth. MORE….

"Under the Apple Tree" by Rutger Kopland

I came home, it was about
eight and remarkably
close for the time of the year,
the garden seat stood waiting
under the apple tree….MORE…

“String Theory” by Ronald Wallace

I have to believe a Beethoven
string quartet is not unlike
the elliptical music of gossip:
one violin excited
to pass its small story along
to the next violin and the next
until, finally, come full circle,
the whole conversation is changed. MORE…

"The Man in the Yard" by Howard Nelson

My father told me once
that when he was about twenty
he had a new girlfriend, and once
they stopped by the house on the way
to somewhere, just a quick stop
to pick something up, MORE…

“Sonnet 116” by William Shakespeare.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out ev’n to the edge of doom.
      If this be error and upon me proved,
      I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

"Her Husband Away on a Business Trip, She Takes the Old Pontiac In for Repairs" by Jo McDougall

The young service manager
comes round to explain,
as if someone were dying,
what will have to be done. “It’s more,”
he says, “than we thought.”
I want to tell him it’s all right,
I’ve heard worse;
we’re all orphans here. MORE…