a song in the front yard, poem by Gwendolyn Brooks

a song in the front yard
by Gwendolyn Brooks

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

SOURCE:  “a song in the front yard” appears in Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, available at Amazon.com.

IMAGE: “My Little Butterfly” by Bob Salo. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gwendolyn Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 and was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.

Two Old Crows, poem by Vachel Lindsay

TWO OLD CROWS
by Vachel Lindsay

Two old crows sat on a fence rail.
Two old crows sat on a fence rail,
Thinking of effect and cause,
Of weeds and flowers,
And nature’s laws.
One of them muttered, one of them stuttered,
One of them stuttered, one of them muttered.
Each of them thought far more than he uttered.
One crow asked the other crow a riddle.
One crow asked the other crow a riddle:
The muttering crow
Asked the stuttering crow,
“Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?
Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?”
“Bee-cause,” said the other crow,
“Bee-cause,
B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.”

Just then a bee flew close to their rail:—
“Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz             zzzzzzzzz             zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ.”
And those two black crows
Turned pale,
And away those crows did sail.
Why?
B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.
B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.
“Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz             zzzzzzzzz             zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was born in Springfield, Illinois, in 1879 — in a house where Abraham Lincoln had visited several times. He is considered the father of modern singing poetry, as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted. Because of his identity as a performance artist and his use of American Midwest themes, Lindsay became known in the 1910s as the “Prairie Troubador.” The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency helps to maintain the Vachel Lindsay House at 603 South Fifth Street in Springfield, the site of Lindsay’s birth and death in 1931. (Read more at wikipedia.org and poetryfoundation.org.)

Photo: “Two Crows on a Fence” by kitten, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

a song in the front yard, poem by Gwendolyn Brooks

a song in the front yard
By Gwendolyn Brooks

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.   
A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now   
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.   
I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.   
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae   
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace   
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

… “a song in the front yard” appears in Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, available at Amazon.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gwendolyn Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 and was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.

Photo: Gwendolyn Brooks, 1950s.

…and a happy June 7th birthday to Gwendolyn Brooks!