Swimming Poems
To A Sad Daughter
by Michael Ondaatje
All night long the hockey pictures
gaze down at you
sleeping in your tracksuit.
Belligerent goalies are your ideal.
Threats of being traded
cuts and wounds
--all this pleases you.
O my god! you say at breakfast
reading the sports page over the Alpen
as another player breaks his ankle
......
Featherstonhaugh
by Barcroft Henry Tho Boake
Brookong station lay half-asleep
Dozed in the waning western glare
('Twas before the run had stocked with sheep
And only cattle depastured there)
As the Bluccap mob reined up at the door
And loudly saluted Featherstonhaugh.
"My saintly preacher," the leader cried,
"I stand no nonsense, as you're aware,
I've a word for you if you'll step outside,
......
Leaves Of Grass. A Carol Of Harvest For 1867
by Walt Whitman
A SONG of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms--a song of the soil of fields.
A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers
handle the pitch-fork;
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself,
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields,
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,
......
A Bird Came Down
by Emily Dickinson
A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.
And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.
......
Come Up From The Fields, Father
by Walt Whitman
Come up from the fields, father, here's a letter from our Pete;
And come to the front door, mother-here's a letter from thy dear
son.
Lo, 'tis autumn;
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages, with leaves fluttering in the
moderate wind;
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellis'd
vines;
......
Sink, Float, Swim
by Benjamin Wolf
I kept it to myself
And while you slept I witnessed things that words can not give life to.
You know me oh so well
But I can’t bear to place this weight into your hands, my burdens are just for me to carry.
We laughed just for a moment.
You smiled through tears after that,
But you don’t look at me the same.
......
A Calf Love Crisis
by Carl Halling
I couldn’t be more sure
Of all the nostalgia I’d endure,
If I were to explore
A calf love crisis
That was so hard to cure,
How your mummy, she knew mine,
They’d been friends
For a little time,
And the time that you explained,
......
A Woman Waits For Me
by Walt Whitman
A WOMAN waits for me--she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the
right man were lacking.
Sex contains all,
Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results,
promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal
milk;
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals,
......
Leaves Of Grass. A Carol Of Harvest For 1867
by Walt Whitman
A SONG of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms--a song of the soil of fields.
A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers
handle the pitch-fork;
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself,
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields,
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,
......
I Sing The Body Electric
by Walt Whitman
I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the
Soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal
themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the
dead?
......
