Howl Poems
Postcards
by Margaret Atwood
I'm thinking about you. What else can I say?
The palm trees on the reverse
are a delusion; so is the pink sand.
What we have are the usual
fractured coke bottles and the smell
of backed-up drains, too sweet,
like a mango on the verge
of rot, which we have also.
The air clear sweat, mosquitoes
& their tracks; birds & elusive.
......
What Weather
by Angela Fletcher
The leaves are blowing away
Up, up, and away they go.
Swish, swoosh, they go.
Like a dancing ballerina
Up, up and away they go
Way up , in the sky.
The trees standing there,
Their branches all bare.
The wind whistling throughout empty branches,
......
The Moon
by Robert Louis Stevenson
The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.
The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,
The howling dog by the door of the house,
The bat that lies in bed at noon,
All love to be out by the light of the moon.
......
Night
by William Blake
The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine.
The moon, like a flower,
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night.
Farewell, green fields and happy groves,
......
Lower Bogue's Calamity
by Carmelina Dean-Burrows
The July 1928 morn was calm, fair and crystal clear,
And no Bogueman 'bout hurricane warnings did hear.
So about their fishing/farming chores they did go,
While eyeing the weather for signs that could spell "woe." When of a sudden the sea raged and howling winds blew high,
And across the sky darkened clouds did fly.
Beating rain, like angry bees, the Boguemen's feet did sting
While these people to houses on the hill, some food and themselves
did bring. Later through battened windows their eyes popped wide,
For gone was all the water from the bay and all the weather commotion died.
Then like happy children, Boguemen over dry sea bottom walked,
......
From The Woolworth Tower
by Sara Teasdale
Vivid with love, eager for greater beauty
Out of the night we come
Into the corridor, brilliant and warm.
A metal door slides open,
And the lift receives us.
Swiftly, with sharp unswerving flight
The car shoots upward,
And the air, swirling and angry,
Howls like a hundred devils.
Past the maze of trim bronze doors,
......
American Feuillage
by Walt Whitman
AMERICA always!
Always our own feuillage!
Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of
Louisiana! Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas!
Always California's golden hills and hollows--and the silver
mountains of New Mexico! Always soft-breath'd Cuba!
Always the vast slope drain'd by the Southern Sea--inseparable with
the slopes drain'd by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the eighty-third year of These States--the three and a half
millions of square miles;
......
The Moon
by Robert Louis Stevenson
The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.
The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,
The howling dog by the door of the house,
The bat that lies in bed at noon,
All love to be out by the light of the moon.
......
The Wind Is Without There And Howls In The Trees
by Robert Louis Stevenson
THE wind is without there and howls in the trees,
And the rain-flurries drum on the glass:
Alone by the fireside with elbows on knees
I can number the hours as they pass.
Yet now, when to cheer me the crickets begin,
And my pipe is just happily lit,
Believe me, my friend, tho' the evening draws in,
That not all uncontested I sit.
Alone, did I say? O no, nowise alone
......
Time
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality,
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?
......
