Category Archives: Poetry

Happy New Year!

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Happy New Year!  In honor of 2012: a poem from one of our household’s favorite children’s books, A Child’s Calendar by John Updike, which takes readers month-by-month through the months and seasons of the year.  So lovely!

This January poem paints a cozy winter scene — though, am I the only one to wonder if snow will ever visit Williamsburg this winter?

Enjoy this beautiful, warm New Year’s Day, everyone!

January

The days are short,
The sun a spark
Hung thin between
The dark and dark.

Fat snowy footsteps
Track the floor,
And parkas pile up
Near the door.

The river is
A frozen place
Held still beneath
The trees’ black lace.

The sky is low.
The wind is gray.
The radiator
Purrs all day.

Being Born Is Important

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Gray, rainy days and poetry just seem to complement one another, yes?  Here is an all-time favorite birth poem, from an all-time favorite poet — I hope you enjoy this piece as much as I do!

Being Born Is Important

Being born is important
You who have stood at the bedposts
and seen a mother on her high harvest day,
the day of the most golden of harvest moons for her.

You who have seen the new wet child
dried behind the ears,
swaddled in soft fresh garments,
pursing its lips and sending a groping mouth
toward nipples where white milk is ready.

You who have seen this love’s payday
of wild toiling and sweet agonizing.

You know being born is important.
You know that nothing else was ever so important to you.
You understand that the payday of love is so old,
So involved, so traced with circles of the moon,
So cunning with the secrets of the salts of the blood.
It must be older than the moon, older than salt.

- Carl Sandburg, from Breathing Tokens (1978)