In Winter by Michael Ryan
"are you smiling / at an idea met in a book / the way you smiled with your whole body / the first night we talked?"
Where We Are Headed by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
"At first we just say flower. How / thrilling it is to name."
When Your Life Looks Back by Jane Hirshfield
"Whatever direction you turned toward was face to face. / No back of the world existed, / No unseen corner, no test. No other earth to prepare for."
Naming the Heartbeats by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
"When you / get a group of heartbeats together you get names that call out / into the evening’s first radiance of planets"
Heavy by Mary Oliver
"Have you heard / the laughter / that comes, now and again, / out of my startled mouth?"
Happiness by Raymond Carver
"Such beauty that for a minute / death and ambition, even love, / doesn't enter into this."
i am running into a new year by Lucille Clifton
"it will be hard to let go / of what i said to myself / about myself / when i was sixteen and / twenty-six and thirty-six / even thirty-six"
Autobiographia Literaria by Frank O’Hara
"And here I am, the / center of all beauty! / writing these poems! / Imagine!"
For The Moment by Pierre Reverdy
"This morning the light hits it all / The footlights of my head are lit again / And the room I live in is finally bright"