Youth and Age – Vance Palmer

Youth that rides the wildest horse,
Youth that throws the deadliest steer,
Spending strength without remorse,
Grappling with the ghosts of fear,
Knows it only holds to-day
All it freely flings away.

Youth that rides a race with Death
When the frightened cattle break,
Living in the moment’s breath,
Risking all for honour’s sake,
Lightly knows it holds in fee
Life and immortality.

Age that rides the spavined grey,
Age that seeks the safest track,
Scenting perils by the way,
Dreaming of the journey back,
Leaves behind it all the truth
Known to the wild heart of youth.

See it Through – Edgar Albert Guest

When you’re up against a trouble,
Meet it squarely, face to face;
Lift your chin and set your shoulders,
Plant your feet and take a brace.
When it’s vain to try to dodge it,
Do the best that you can do;
You may fail, but you may conquer,
See it through!
Black may be the clouds about you
And your future may seem grim,
But don’t let your nerve desert you;
Keep yourself in fighting trim.
If the worst is bound to happen,
Spite of all that you can do,
Running from it will not save you,
See it through!

Even hope may seem but futile,
When with troubles you’re beset,
But remember you are facing
Just what other men have met.
You may fail, but fall still fighting;
Don’t give up, whate’er you do;
Eyes front, head high to the finish.
See it through!

Magic – Grace V. Tidrow

You have magic in your finger tips,
Magic in your eye.
Magic in the arms that hold
And tell me not to cry.
There is magic in your voice
When you talk to me each day.
There is magic in your smile
And in the things you say.
there is magic in the way
You let me be myself with you.
There is magic that you teach me
To be good and brave and true.
I am growing older
And soon I’ll go away,
But the magic that you taught me
Will go with me every day.

A Work of Artifice – Marge Piercy

The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers,
the hands you
love to touch.

Please stop the Rain – Leigh Roach

I never will understand it
How when two people fall in love,
One of them can veer off the beaten path
While the other invests their all.

And I’ll never quite comprehend it
How when two people fall in love,
One of them can plummet deeper and deeper
While the other reverses the fall.

And what makes us so oblivious
to the famous Houdini escape?
And what’s the point of your apology
when you purposely rigged the chains?

Please explain to me
What did you gain from me.
You’ll never be the same as me.

It’s pouring down rain.

I’ll never figure out the mystery
How when two people make that stand
One of them can give so unselfishly
While the other one don’t give a damn.

And I’ll never quite ever digest it
How when two people become one
One of them can nuture the tree of trust
While the other one trims off the growth.

And what makes us so oblivious
To the final curtain call?
And what’s the point of your grandious bow
When you asked for the encore?

Please explain to me
About all the pain
You caused me.
I’ll never be the same as me.

Please stop the rain.

In Your Eyes – Nicholas Robert Cangemi

On the shores of livéd time
Forgone, forgotten, and years ago,
A golden girl ran across the beach
As I waded in the shallows.

A wave swallowed me up,
Like Jonah on the sea,
And when I returned to surface,
The vision of the golden girl
Was out of sight to me.

And now I search these hills of sand,
I have been back and forth to
Ends of the horizons and back again.
I have seen my life pass me by.

But, someday…someday
When I find her, lying on the sand,
I will bring her to the water
And wade with her in the shallows
As the sea mist stings our eyes.

And when the waves
Crash down upon us,
I know not what I’ll say to her,
But I know now what I’ll think

“I want to be in your eyes
When the skies
Part your hair…
And we fall from the highlights
To the twilights of the sea…”

The Curve Of The Earth – Rebecca Lu Kiernan

Even today I blush at how I worshipped,
Learned to love being spread out on my knees.
You gave me everything I could not ask for
And nothing on my list of basic needs.

You washed up starving on the Gulf of Mexico
Your unblinking eyes fingering my blouse
In a thatched roof bar where the next James Taylor
Dabbled in the old Fire and Rain.

We left our remote sugar island
For a house of shadows on a dead end street
But my name never got on your mailbox
Your initial never added to my monogram.

I put my unworn mermaid cut gown on
Consignment and went sailing with a once
Platonic friend.
So deep we saw the curve of the earth,
So far we had to consult the stars
To get back home.

Everything old is new again.
We plant belladonna and tiger lilies
In the window box, talk about the
Fragile needs of flowers
And joke about your fancy silver car
Once in our driveway.

Loving Her – Carl Newlen

Loving her is not so bad
if you don’t mind hating you can’t live forever.

Kissing her isn’t bad either,
if you can keep from falling flat on the ground,
and you’re not bothered by the tingle
and her taste on your lips when she’s gone.

It’s not so bad when you’re driving so fast
and the moon is a blur on the river -
all you can think is the curve of the road
like the curve of her hips in your hands.