1. Saints - written by Louise Gluck
From Ararat. Published in 1990. Read 2614 times on American Poems.

In our family, there were two saints,
my aunt and my grandmother.
But their lives were different.

My grandmother's was tranquil, even at the end.
She was like a person walking in calm water;
for some reason
the sea couldn't bring itself to... (Read full poem)

Grandmother! You who sang to green valleys,
And passed to a sweet repose at ninety-six,
Here is your little Rita at last
Grown old, grown forty-nine;
Here stretched on your grave under the winter stars,
With the rustle of oak leaves over my... (Read full poem)

3. In Childhood - written by Kimiko Hahn
Published in 2002. Read 1919 times on American Poems.

things don't die or remain damaged 
but return: stumps grow back hands, 
a head reconnects to a neck, 
a whole corpse rises blushing and newly elastic. 
Later this vision is not True: 
the grandmother remains dead 
not hibernating in a wolf's belly.... (Read full poem)

Just as the sun was setting
Back of the Western hills
Grandfather stood by the window
Eating the last of his pills.

And Grandmother, by the cupboard,
Knitting, heard him say:
“I ought to have went to the village
To fetch some more pills... (Read full poem)

5. The Dead - written by Kate Northrop
From Back Through Interruption. Published in 2002. Read 696 times on American Poems.

Their reward is
they become innocent again,

and when they reappear in memory
death has completely erased
the blurs, given them boundaries. They rise

and move through their new world with clean,
clear edges. My grandmother, in particular
has become... (Read full poem)

My mother's playing cards with my aunt,
Spite and Malice, the family pastime, the game
my grandmother taught all her daughters.

Midsummer: too hot to go out.
Today, my aunt's ahead; she's getting the good cards.
My mother's dragging,... (Read full poem)

7. 45 Mercy Street - written by Anne Sexton
Read 13692 times on American Poems.

In my dream, 
drilling into the marrow 
of my entire bone, 
my real dream, 
I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill 
searching for a street sign -- 
namely MERCY STREET. 
Not there. 

I try the Back Bay. 
Not there. 
Not there. 
And yet I know the... (Read full poem)

O solo mio, hot diggety, nix "I wather think I can"
come to see Go into Your Dance on TV - 
HELEN MORGAN?  GLENDA FARRELL? 1935!?
it reminds me of my first haircut,
or an elm tree or something!
or did I fall off my bicycle when my grandmother came... (Read full poem)

9. Helga - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 2078 times on American Poems.

THE WISHES on this child’s mouth
Came like snow on marsh cranberries;
The tamarack kept something for her;
The wind is ready to help her shoes.
The north has loved her; she will be
A grandmother feeding geese on frosty
Mornings; she will... (Read full poem)

harriet
if i be you
let me not forget
to be the pistol
pointed
to be the madwoman
at the rivers edge
warning
be free or die
and isabell
if i be you
let me in my
sojourning
not forget
to ask my brothers
ain't i a woman... (Read full poem)

11. Enoch Dunlap - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 408 times on American Poems.

How many times, during the twenty years
I was your leader, friends of Spoon River,
Did you neglect the convention and caucus,
And leave the burden on my hands
Of guarding and saving the people's cause? --
Sometimes because you were ill;
Or... (Read full poem)

She begins, and my grandmother joins her. 
Mother and daughter sing like young girls. 
If my father were alive, he would play 
his accordion and sway like a boat. 

I've never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace, 
nor stood on the great... (Read full poem)

13. The Last Words Of My English Grandmother - written by William Carlos Williams
From The Broken Span. Published in 1941. Read 6193 times on American Poems.

There were some dirty plates
and a glass of milk
beside her on a small table
near the rank, disheveled bed—

Wrinkled and nearly blind
she lay and snored
rousing with anger in her tones
to cry for food,

Gimme something to eat—
They're... (Read full poem)

Praise the good-tempered summer
and the red cardinal
that jumps
like a hot coal off the track.
Praise the heavy leaves,
heroines of green, frosted
with silver.  Praise the litter
of torn paper, mulch
and sticks, the spiny holly,
its scarlet land... (Read full poem)

15. A Maiden's Secret - written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Read 1575 times on American Poems.

I have written this day down in my heart
As the sweetest day in the season;
From all of the others I've set it apart---
But I will not tell you the reason,
That is my secret---I must not tell;
But the skies are soft and tender,
And never... (Read full poem)

The day you flew in perfect arc 
from your motorcycle was the same day 
I broke the perfect formation of your women 
at the railing, leaving behind 
your grandmother and mother, to run 
and jump the fence.  The stop watch hanging 
from my neck,... (Read full poem)

17. Old Man Rocking In the Chair - written by Joseph Mayo Wristen
From Just a Dancing Bear Looking for a Star. Published in 2000. Read 2647 times on American Poems.

Old man rocking in his chair
night taking from the day
tomorrows haze.
This morning his life to bay.
The walk we take
through Alfalfa fields,
rough in wind bent face trees.
A hive of honey,
the leaves falling in the wind
a wet sky the light... (Read full poem)

Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black
faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grand-
fathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins (1st and 2nd), nieces, and nephews.They stare
across the space at me... (Read full poem)

19. Parker's Mountain - written by Kate Knapp Johnson
Read 641 times on American Poems.

It is the summer bears ruled, the last summer
of pure breathlessness
when I moved unaware, taken in
by the netted branches of raspberries, held
in trance by the sweet air
of the orchards. My grandfather
died at home one night in early July
as... (Read full poem)

This plot of ground 
facing the waters of this inlet 
is dedicated to the living presence of 
Emily Dickinson Wellcome 
who was born in England; married; 
lost her husband and with 
her five year old son 
sailed for New York in a two-master; 
was... (Read full poem)

21. June - written by Denise Duhamel
Read 2526 times on American Poems.

The blue forest, chilled and blue, like the lips of the dead
if the lips were gone. The year has been cut in half
with dull scissors, the solstice still looking for its square
on the calendar. Perhaps the scissors were really
lawn mowers or... (Read full poem)

A heap of wheat, says the Song of Songs 
but I've never seen wheat in a pile. 
Apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots 
make lumpy stacks, but you are sleek 
as a seal hauled out in the winter sun. 
I can see you as a great goose egg 
or a single... (Read full poem)

23. Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 3739 times on American Poems.

“The past is a bucket of ashes.”

            1

THE WOMAN named To-morrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it... (Read full poem)

Coming home with the last load I ride standing
on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor
in hot exhaust, lank with sweat,


my arms strung
awkwardly along the hayrack, cruciform.
Almost 5OO bales we've put up


this afternoon, Marshall and... (Read full poem)

25. Dorothy Q. - written by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Read 535 times on American Poems.

GRANDMOTHER's mother: her age, I guess,
Thirteen summers, or something less;
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair;
Lips that lover has never kissed;
Taper fingers and slender wrist;
Hanging sleeves of... (Read full poem)