1. Snow Day - written by Billy Collins
Read 11068 times on American Poems.

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the... (Read full poem)

AN old man’s thought of School; 
An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself cannot. 
  
Now only do I know you! 
O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the grass! 
  
And these I see—these sparkling eyes,
These... (Read full poem)

3. The Suitor - written by Jane Kenyon
Read 2003 times on American Poems.

We lie back to back. Curtains
lift and fall,
like the chest of someone sleeping. 
Wind moves the leaves of the box elder; 
they show their light undersides,
turning all at once
like a school of fish. 
Suddenly I understand that I am happy.... (Read full poem)

Calmly we walk through this April's day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all... (Read full poem)

5. What Fifty Said - written by Robert Frost
From West-Running Brook. Published in 1928. Read 12039 times on American Poems.

When I was young my teachers were the old.
I gave up fire for form till I was cold.
I suffered like a metal being cast.
I went to school to age to learn the past.

Now when I am old my teachers are the young.
What can't be molded must be... (Read full poem)

Oh, Marcia, 
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsicord.
I want high school report cards 
to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass... (Read full poem)

7. One Third Of The Calendar - written by Ogden Nash
Read 2467 times on American Poems.

In January everything freezes.
We have two children. Both are she'ses.
This is our January rule:
One girl in bed, and one in school.

In February the blizzard whirls.
We own a pair of little girls.
Blessings upon of each the head ----
The one in... (Read full poem)

'Tis One by One -- the Father counts --
And then a Tract between
Set Cypherless -- to teach the Eye
The Value of its Ten --

Until the peevish Student
Acquire the Quick of Skill --
Then Numerals are dowered back --
Adorning all the Rule --

'Tis... (Read full poem)

9. September, The First Day Of School - written by Howard Nemerov
From The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov. Read 6867 times on American Poems.

I

My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting... (Read full poem)

When I was ten (no, younger
than that), my mother tried
to kill herself (without the facts
there can't be faith). One death
or another every day, Tanqueray bottles
halo the bed and she won't wake up
all weekend. In the myth book's... (Read full poem)

11. A Negro Love Song - written by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Read 3198 times on American Poems.

Seen my lady home las' night, 
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hel' huh han' an' sque'z it tight,
Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hyeahd huh sigh a little sigh,
Seen a light gleam f'om huh eye,
An' a smile go flittin' by --
Jump back,... (Read full poem)

One wants a teller in a time like this

One's not a man, one's not a woman grown
To bear enormous business all alone.

One cannot walk this winding street with pride
Straight-shouldered, tranquil-eyed,
Knowing one knows for sure the way back... (Read full poem)

13. Recovering Amid The Farms - written by Jack Gilbert
From The Great Fires. Published in 1994. Read 1070 times on American Poems.

Every morning the sad girl brings her three sheep 
and two lambs laggardly to the top of the valley, 
past my stone hut and onto the mountain to graze. 
She turned twelve last year and it was legal 
for the father to take her out of school. She... (Read full poem)

(For My Mother)

The halls that were loud with the merry tread of 
young and careless feet
Are still with a stillness that is too drear to seem like holiday,
And never a gust of laughter breaks the calm of the dreaming street
Or rises to shake... (Read full poem)

15. Elizabeth Childers - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 627 times on American Poems.

Dust of my dust, 
And dust with my dust, 
O, child who died as you entered the world, 
Dead with my death! 
Not knowing breath, though you tried so hard, 
With a heart that beat when you lived with me, 
And stopped when you left me for Life.... (Read full poem)

Many decades after graduation
the students sneak back onto
the school-grounds at night
and within the pane-lit windows
catch me their teacher at the desk
or blackboard cradling a chalk:
someone has erased their youth,
and as they crouch closer to... (Read full poem)

17. In Childhood - written by Kimiko Hahn
Published in 2002. Read 1930 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)

TWO boats with nets lying off the sea-beach, quite still, 
Ten fishermen waiting—they discover a thick school of mossbonkers—they drop the
	join’d seine-ends in the water, 
The boats separate and row off, each on its rounding course... (Read full poem)

19. M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School--Detroit, 1942 - written by Philip Levine
Read 891 times on American Poems.

He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, "What have I done?"
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, "You've broken a piece
of... (Read full poem)

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook.  Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to... (Read full poem)

21. Losses - written by Randall Jarrell
Read 3578 times on American Poems.

It was not dying: everybody died. 
It was not dying: we had died before 
In the routine crashes-- and our fields 
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks, 
And the rates rose, all because of us. 
We died on the wrong page of the almanac,... (Read full poem)

We real cool. We
Left School. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.(Read full poem)

23. Zilpha Marsh - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 383 times on American Poems.

At four o'clock in late October
I sat alone in the country school-house
Back from the road 'mid stricken fields,
And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane,
And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove,
With its open door blurring the... (Read full poem)

Bound to your bookseller, leap to your library,
Deluge your dealer with bakshish and bribary,
Lean on the counter and never say when,
Wodehouse and Wooster are with us again.
Flourish the fish-slice, your buttons unloosing,
Prepare for the fabulous... (Read full poem)

25. Taken from men -- this morning - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 3656 times on American Poems.

Taken from men -- this morning --
Carried by men today --
Met by the Gods with banners --
Who marshalled her away --

One little maid -- from playmates --
One little mind from school --
There must be guests in Eden --
All the rooms are full --

Far... (Read full poem)