1. Samuel Gardner - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 689 times on American Poems.

I who kept the greenhouse,
Lover of trees and flowers,
Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm,
Measuring its generous branches with my eye,
And listened to its rejoicing leaves
Lovingly patting each other
With sweet aeolian whispers.
And well... (Read full poem)

Samuel is forever talking of his elm --
But I did not need to die to learn about roots:
I, who dug all the ditches about Spoon River.
Look at my elm!
Sprung from as good a seed as his,
Sown at the same time,
It is dying at the top:
Not from... (Read full poem)

3. First Love - written by Stanley Kunitz
Read 1640 times on American Poems.

At his incipient sun 
The ice of twenty winters broke, 
Crackling, in her eyes. 

Her mirroring, still mind, 
That held the world (made double) calm, 
Went fluid, and it ran. 

There was a stir of music, 
Mixed with flowers, in her blood;... (Read full poem)

RIDING against the east,
A veering, steady shadow
Purrs the motor-call
Of the man-bird
Ready with the death-laughter
In his throat
And in his heart always
The love of the big blue beyond.

Only a man,
A far fleck of shadow on the east
Sitting at... (Read full poem)

5. Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 3249 times on American Poems.

ROOTS and leaves themselves alone are these; 
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods, and from the pond-side, 
Breast-sorrel and pinks of love—fingers that wind around tighter than vines, 
Gushes from the throats of birds, hid in... (Read full poem)

In youth my wings were strong and tireless,
But I did not know the mountains.
In age I knew the mountains
But my weary wings could not follow my vision --
Genius is wisdom and youth. (Read full poem)

7. Drying Their Wings - written by Vachel Lindsay
Read 5179 times on American Poems.

What the Carpenter Said

THE moon's a cottage with a door. 
Some folks can see it plain. 
Look, you may catch a glint of light, 
A sparkle through the pane, 
Showing the place is brighter still 
Within, though bright without. 
There, at a cosy open... (Read full poem)

UNDER THE BLESSING OF YOUR PSYCHE WINGS


Though I have found you llke a snow-drop pale, 
On sunny days have found you weak and still,
Though I have often held your girlish head
Drooped on my shoulder, faint from little ill:—

Under the... (Read full poem)

9. For Him I Sing. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 23126 times on American Poems.

FOR him I sing, 
(As some perennial tree, out of its roots, the present on the past:) 
With time and space I him dilate—and fuse the immortal laws, 
To make himself, by them, the law unto himself.(Read full poem)

The Bat is dun, with wrinkled Wings --
Like fallow Article --
And not a song pervade his Lips --
Or none perceptible.

His small Umbrella quaintly halved
Describing in the Air
An Arc alike inscrutable
Elate Philosopher.

Deputed from what Firmament... (Read full poem)

11. Love The Wild Swan - written by Robinson Jeffers
Published in 1935. Read 1456 times on American Poems.

"I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one... (Read full poem)

And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
at each election
as if it really mattered who the pilot is
of Air Force One
(They're interchangeable, stupid!)
While this... (Read full poem)

13. Scented Herbage of My Breast. - written by Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass. Published in 1900. Read 2242 times on American Poems.

SCENTED herbage of my breast, 
Leaves from you I yield, I write, to be perused best afterwards, 
Tomb-leaves, body-leaves, growing up above me, above death, 
Perennial roots, tall leaves—O the winter shall not freeze you, delicate leaves,... (Read full poem)

Blessed is the One who lifts the slow sun
above this morning's raw orange edge,
who moves the ewe to nudge her birth-
stunned lamb into the flock's heat, who
leads the hen to steer her keets as soon as
they can walk into the insect-
filled,... (Read full poem)

15. No Music - written by John Montague
From About Love. Published in 1993. Read 652 times on American Poems.

I'll tell you a sore truth, little understood
It's harder to leave, than to be left:
To stay, to leave, both sting wrong.

You will always have me to blame,
Can dream we might have sailed on;
        From absence's rib, a warm fiction.

To tear up... (Read full poem)

There was a man who found two leaves and came 
indoors holding them out saying to his parents 
that he was a tree.

  To which they said then go into the yard and do 
not grow in the living room as your roots may 
ruin the carpet.

  He said I was... (Read full poem)

17. Who Said It Was Simple - written by Audre Lorde
Read 5339 times on American Poems.

There are so many roots to the tree of anger 
that sometimes the branches shatter 
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march 
discussing the problematic girls 
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman... (Read full poem)

(A Poem Game.)


The King of Yellow Butterflies,
The King of Yellow Butterflies,
The King of Yellow Butterflies,
Now orders forth his men.
He says "The time is almost here
When violets bloom again."
Adown the road the fickle rout
Goes... (Read full poem)

19. River Roads - written by Carl Sandburg
From Cornhuskers. Published in 1918. Read 2469 times on American Poems.

LET the crows go by hawking their caw and caw.
They have been swimming in midnights of coal mines somewhere.
Let ’em hawk their caw and caw.
 
Let the woodpecker drum and drum on a hickory stump.
He has been swimming in red and blue pools... (Read full poem)

I heard it once, smoothed-out
by gallons of coffee,
chest husking like a plow
and pulled it into a basement.
Cardigan-wrapped the next morning
and only then was it true, only then
was I so hungry I could eat at the roots of it,

and lay down like a... (Read full poem)

21. In Tall Grass - written by Carl Sandburg
From Cornhuskers. Published in 1918. Read 2767 times on American Poems.

BEES and a honeycomb in the dried head of a horse in a pasture corner—a skull in the tall grass and a buzz and a buzz of the yellow honey-hunters.
 
And I ask no better a winding sheet
            (over the earth and under the sun.)
 
Let the... (Read full poem)

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to... (Read full poem)

23. On the Garden Wall - written by Vachel Lindsay
Read 1858 times on American Poems.

OH, once I walked a garden 
In dreams. 'Twas yellow grass. 
And many orange-trees grew there 
In sand as white as glass. 
The curving, wide wall-border 
Was marble, like the snow. 
I walked that wall a fairy-prince 
And, pacing quaint and slow,... (Read full poem)

Oh, once I walked a garden 
In dreams. 'Twas yellow grass. 
And many orange-trees grew there 
In sand as white as glass. 
The curving, wide wall-border 
Was marble, like the snow. 
I walked that wall a fairy-prince 
And, pacing quaint and... (Read full poem)

25. A Tree Telling of Orpheus - written by Denise Levertov
Read 1014 times on American Poems.

White dawn. Stillness.When the rippling began
I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog
didn't stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched, unmoving.
Yet the rippling drew... (Read full poem)