1. The Ripest Peach - written by James Whitcomb Riley
Read 2627 times on American Poems.

The ripest peach is highest on the tree -- 
And so her love, beyond the reach of me, 
Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes, bow 
Her heart down to me where I worship now! 

She looms aloft where every eye may see 
The ripest peach is highest... (Read full poem)

WHAT cry of peach blossoms
  let loose on the air today
I heard with my face thrown
  in the pink-white of it all?
  in the red whisper of it all?
  
What man I heard saying:
  Christ, these are beautiful!
  
And Christ and Christ was in his mouth,... (Read full poem)

3. Spanish - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 2189 times on American Poems.

FASTEN black eyes on me.
I ask nothing of you under the peach trees,
Fasten your black eyes in my gray with the spear of a storm.
The air under the peach blossoms is a haze of pink.(Read full poem)

The Sun and Moon must make their haste --
The Stars express around
For in the Zones of Paradise
The Lord alone is burned --

His Eye, it is the East and West --
The North and South when He
Do concentrate His Countenance
Like Glow Worms, flee away... (Read full poem)

5. Otherwise - written by Jane Kenyon
From Otherwise. Published in 1996. Read 2113 times on American Poems.

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my... (Read full poem)

In town to sell his fruit, he saw her—
Françoise in her summer slacks—
turning to him, coming back
to feel the swelling plums,
one held in each soft hand, breast-high,
above them her eyes enclosing him
in quietness brushed up to... (Read full poem)

7. An Eternity - written by Archibald MacLeish
Read 1845 times on American Poems.

There is no dusk to be, 
There is no dawn that was, 
Only there's now, and now, 
And the wind in the grass.

Days I remember of 
Now in my heart, are now; 
Days that I dream will bloom 
White the peach bough.

Dying shall never be 
Now... (Read full poem)

It bloomed and dropt, a Single Noon --
The Flower -- distinct and Red --
I, passing, thought another Noon
Another in its stead

Will equal glow, and thought no More
But came another Day
To find the Species disappeared --
The Same Locality --

The... (Read full poem)

9. Dream Song 135: I heard said 'Cats that walk by their wild lone' - written by John Berryman
From His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. Published in 1968. Read 727 times on American Poems.

I heard said 'Cats that walk by their wild lone'
but Henry had need of friends. They disappeared
Shall I follow my dream?
Clothes disappeared in a backward sliding, zones
shot into view, pocked, exact & weird:
who is what he seem?

I will... (Read full poem)

No one is safe. The streets are unsafe.
even in the safety zones, it's not safe.
Even safe sex is not safe.
Even things you lock in a safe
are not safe. Never deposit anything
in a safety deposit box, because it
won't be safe there. Nobody... (Read full poem)

11. Thin Strips - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 1350 times on American Poems.

IN a jeweler’s shop I saw a man beating
out thin sheets of gold. I heard a woman
laugh many years ago.
  
Under a peach tree I saw petals scattered
.. torn strips of a bride’s dress. I heard
a woman laugh many years ago.(Read full poem)

Color of lemon, mango, peach,
These storybook villas
Still dream behind
Shutters, thier balconies
Fine as hand-
Made lace, or a leaf-and-flower pen-sketch.

Tilting with the winds,
On arrowy stems,
Pineapple-barked,
A green crescent of palms
Sends... (Read full poem)

13. Mithridates - written by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Read 2405 times on American Poems.

I cannot spare water or wine,
Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;
From the earth-poles to the Line,
All between that works or grows,
Every thing is kin of mine.

Give me agates for my meat,
Give me cantharids to eat,
From air and ocean bring me... (Read full poem)

cirque: (surk)n. [Fr.Lat. circus, circle.]

A steep hollow, often 
containing a small lake, at the upper end of a mountain valley. 
    

to have tried in vain to catch the marble eyes of statues 
and to stir 

unconsciously, like a river... (Read full poem)

15. Picnic Boat - written by Carl Sandburg
From Chicago Poems. Published in 1912. Read 4275 times on American Poems.

SUNDAY night and the park policemen tell each other it
is dark as a stack of black cats on Lake Michigan.
A big picnic boat comes home to Chicago from the peach
farms of Saugatuck.
Hundreds of electric bulbs break the night's darkness, a
flock of... (Read full poem)

Reading in Li Po
how "the peach blossom follows the water"
I keep thinking of you
because you were so much like
Chairman Mao,
naturally with the sex 
transposed
and the figure slighter.
Loving you was a kind
of Chinese guerilla war.
Thanks to your... (Read full poem)

17. The Evening Of The Mind - written by Donald Justice
From Night Light. Published in 1965. Read 2189 times on American Poems.

Now comes the evening of the mind.
Here are the fireflies twitching in the blood;
Here is the shadow moving down the page
Where you sit reading by the garden wall.
Now the dwarf peach trees, nailed to their trellises,
Shudder and droop. Your know... (Read full poem)

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the joy 
at the bend in the road where we turned toward 
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands, 
from sweet fellowship in the bins, 
comes nectar at the... (Read full poem)

19. A Maiden To Her Mirror - written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Read 687 times on American Poems.

He said he loved me! Then he called my hair
Silk threads wherewith sly Cupid strings his bow,
My cheek a rose leaf fallen on new snow;
And swore my round, full throat would bring despair
To Venus or to Psyche.

Time and care
Will fade these... (Read full poem)

In the spring of the year, in the spring of the year, 
I walked the road beside my dear. 
The trees were black where the bark was wet. 
I see them yet, in the spring of the year. 
He broke me a bough of the blossoming peach 
That was out of the way... (Read full poem)

21. Accomplished Facts - written by Carl Sandburg
From Smoke and Steel. Published in 1922. Read 1871 times on American Poems.

EVERY year Emily Dickinson sent one friend
the first arbutus bud in her garden.
  
In a last will and testament Andrew Jackson
remembered a friend with the gift of George
Washington’s pocket spy-glass.
  
Napoleon too, in a last testament,... (Read full poem)

THE working girls in the morning are going to work--
long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores
and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped
lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms.
Each morning as I move through this river of... (Read full poem)

23. And One For My Dame - written by Anne Sexton
Read 5270 times on American Poems.

A born salesman,
my father made all his dough
by selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo.

A born talker,
he could sell one hundred wet-down bales
of that white stuff.  He could clock the miles and the sales

and make it pay.
At home each... (Read full poem)

the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight--
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to... (Read full poem)

25. The Idea Of Order At Key West - written by Wallace Stevens
Read 4671 times on American Poems.

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we... (Read full poem)