1. The Bridge - written by Russell Edson
Read 1270 times on American Poems.

In his travels he comes to a bridge made entirely of bones. 
Before crossing he writes a letter to his mother: Dear mother, 
guess what? the ape accidentally bit off one of his hands while 
eating a banana. Just now I am at the foot of a bone... (Read full poem)

Faith -- is the Pierless Bridge
Supporting what We see
Unto the Scene that We do not --
Too slender for the eye

It bears the Soul as bold
As it were rocked in Steel
With Arms of Steel at either side --
It joins -- behind the Veil

To what, could We... (Read full poem)

3. Metaphors Of A Magnifico - written by Wallace Stevens
Read 2926 times on American Poems.

Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into a village,
Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges,
Into twenty villages,
Or one man
Crossing a single bridge into a village.

This is old song
That will not declare itself . . .

Twenty men crossing a bridge,
Into... (Read full poem)

Barbed wire snags like briars when
fence posts rot in goldenrod,
the cows are gone, the cowpath
a thinning along the creek
to follow upstream until
water narrows, gray planks lean
over the flow like a book
open but left unfinished,
like this bridge... (Read full poem)

5. Tom Merritt - written by Edgar Lee Masters
Read 494 times on American Poems.

At first I suspected something --
She acted so calm and absent-minded.
And one day I heard the back door shut,
As I entered the front, and I saw him slink
Back of the smokehouse into the lot,
And run across the field.
And I meant to kill him... (Read full poem)

I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems... (Read full poem)

7. The Iron Bridge - written by Billy Collins
Read 2524 times on American Poems.

I am standing on a disused iron bridge
that was erected in 1902,
according to the iron plaque bolted into a beam,
the year my mother turned one.
Imagine--a mother in her infancy,
and she was a Canadian infant at that,
one of the great infants of the... (Read full poem)

I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o'er the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.

I saw her bright reflection
In the waters under me,
Like a golden goblet falling
And sinking into the sea.

And... (Read full poem)

9. Blue Bridge - written by Geraldine Connolly
From Province of Fire. Published in 1998. Read 553 times on American Poems.

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)

Knee deep in the Watauga's
rock leaping whitewater,
my brother loses his balance,
his life if our father
doesn't flail downstream swimming
the air, running the river,
tripping the stones to collar
his son gasping and coughing
onto a sandbar as... (Read full poem)

11. Concord Hymn - written by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Read 3756 times on American Poems.

Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, 4 July 1837

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in... (Read full poem)

Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, 
April 19th, 1836


By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since... (Read full poem)

13. The Road to Avignon - written by Amy Lowell
From A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass. Read 1816 times on American Poems.

A Minstrel stands on a marble stair,
Blown by the bright wind, debonair;
Below lies the sea, a sapphire floor,
Above on the terrace a turret door
Frames a lady, listless and wan,
But fair for the eye to rest upon.
The minstrel plucks at his... (Read full poem)

It nests in the hollow of my pelvis, I carry it with both hands, as if
          offering my stomach, as if it were pulling me forward.

At night the sun leaks from it, it turns cold, I sleep with it
          beside my head, I breath for... (Read full poem)

15. To Various Persons Talked To All At Once - written by Kenneth Koch
From American Poetry Review, M/J 1999. Published in 1999. Read 1084 times on American Poems.

You have helped hold me together.
I'd like you to be still.
Stop talking or doing anything else for a minute.
No. Please. For three minutes, maybe five minutes.
Tell me which walk to take over the hill.
Is there a bridge there? Will I want... (Read full poem)

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)

17. Making Love To Concrete - written by Audre Lorde
From The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance, pub. by W.W. Norton & Co.. Published in 1993. Read 4469 times on American Poems.

An upright abutment in the mouth
of the Willis Avenue bridge
a beige Honda leaps the divider
like a steel gazelle inescapable
sleek leather boots on the pavement
rat-a-tat-tat best intentions
going down for the third time
stuck in the... (Read full poem)

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand; come... (Read full poem)

19. The Blue Swallows - written by Howard Nemerov
Read 949 times on American Poems.

Across the millstream below the bridge 
Seven blue swallows divide the air 
In shapes invisible and evanescent, 
Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s 
Or memory’s power to keep them there. 

“History is where tensions were,” 
“Form is the diagram... (Read full poem)

As I sat down by Saddle Stream
  To bathe my dusty feet there,
A boy was standing on the bridge
  Any girl would meet there.

As I went over Woody Knob
  And dipped into the hollow,
A youth was coming up the hill
  Any maid would... (Read full poem)

21. Potomac Town in February - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 1073 times on American Poems.

THE BRIDGE says: Come across, try me; see how good I am.
The big rock in the river says: Look at me; learn how to stand up.
The white water says: I go on; around, under, over, I go on.
A kneeling, scraggly pine says: I am here yet; they nearly got... (Read full poem)

Before the ice is in the pools --
Before the skaters go,
Or any check at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow --

Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!

What we touch the hems of
On a... (Read full poem)

23. How brittle are the Piers - written by Emily Dickinson
From Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Published in 1955. Read 1371 times on American Poems.

How brittle are the Piers
On which our Faith doth tread --
No Bridge below doth totter so --
Yet none hath such a Crowd.

It is as old as God --
Indeed -- 'twas built by him --
He sent his Son to test the Plank,
And he pronounced it firm.(Read full poem)

Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the... (Read full poem)

25. In January - written by Ted Kooser
From Solo: A Journal of Poetry, Premiere Issue. Read 1929 times on American Poems.

Only one cell in the frozen hive of night
is lit, or so it seems to us:
this Vietnamese café, with its oily light,
its odors whose colorful shapes are like flowers.
Laughter and talking, the tick of chopsticks.
Beyond the glass, the wintry... (Read full poem)