May with Flowers, poem by Thom Amundsen (May Poetry Series)

MAY WITH FLOWERS 
by Thom Amundsen

A melancholy ordinary day
while traveling along a dusty way,
I thought of the month of May
how sweet to see your eyes today.
 
That’s when the flowers begin
a sojourn outward from within.
In May our hearts long to pin
us down with sweet romancin’
 
Remember those distant afternoons
we’d linger passing minutes in swoon
I might now in May recall a tune
making love underneath the moon
 
I would believe in you in May.
A saucy time when hips would sway,
dances while your eyes made me stay
in your arms – please don’t go away.
 
Let you hold me in your arms tonight
I want to comfort you too if I might
we can win the war of evil tonight —
May flowers bloom in morning sunlight
 
Spring is in the air, it’s May everywhere
so don’t despair, soft wispy eyes so fair.

IMAGE: “May Blossom” by Priska Wettstein. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Thomas Amundsen has been writing poetry nearly all his life, but recently attacked it with a feverish urgency, enjoying dabbling in many different variations of verse. He is a family man, teacher, director of theater, and an uncertain poet. Visit him at thinkingoutloudagain.wordpress.com.

Ode in May, poem by William Watson

ODE IN MAY
by William Watson

What is so sweet and dear
As a prosperous morn in May,
The confident prime of the day,
And the dauntless youth of the year,
When nothing that asks for bliss,
Asking aright, is denied,
And half of the world a bridegroom is,
And half of the world a bride?

MORE: Read “Ode in May” by William Watson in its entirety at poemhunter.com.

PHOTO: “The Bride” by Joana Kruse. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sir William Watson (1858–1935), was an English poet, whose reputation was established in 1891, with the publication of ‘Wordsworth’s Grave,” thought by many to be his finest work. After WWI, he was largely forgotten, until a number of literary men in 1935 issued a public appeal for a fund to support him in his old age, but he died the following year. He was an example of a writer who, though initially popularly recognized, went out of fashion because of changing tastes. (Source: Wikipedia.org.) Read his collected poems at gutenberg.org.

May, haiku by Nimuae

MAY
by Nimuae

Welcome the May as
life weaves a new spring from her
pink and white blossoms. 

IMAGE: “Pink cherry blossoms” by Sonja Quintero. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

Hay Fever, poem by Caitlin Stern (May Poetry Series)

HAY FEVER
by Caitlin Stern

Some view the coming of Spring with dismay
as May flowers blossom from April showers
and more pollen wafts on the breeze every day.
Noses sneeze mayday messages that last for hours
eyes water, and throats catch. For those it seems
the flowers and new leaves in glorious hues
deliberately wreak mayhem on outdoor dreams
of picnics or bike rides—only stuck indoor blues
unless with luck and medicine they can find
uncongested breathing and maybe peace of mind.

IMAGE: “A Single Wish” by Amy Tyler. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Caitlin Stern grew up in San Antonio, Texas, where she read in trees, avoided team sports, and “published” her first book in elementary school. As she grew, she wrote and read more, developing into an avid bibliophile and writer. She followed her love of books to Angelo State University, where she worked as a tutor at her school’s Writing Center, and later as a Teaching Assistant while she earned an English MA. Recently, she has edited two mystery novels and a poetry collection, and had poems published in Silver Birch Press’ Summer Anthology and Noir Erasure Poem Anthology.

May, poem by Hilaire Belloc

MAY
by Hilaire Belloc

This is the laughing-eyed amongst them all:
My lady’s month. A season of young things.
She rules the light with harmony, and brings
The year’s first green upon the beeches tall.
How often, where long creepers wind and fall
Through the deep woods in noonday wanderings,
I’ve heard the month, when she to echo sings,
I’ve heard the month make merry madrigal.

How often, bosomed in the breathing strong
Of mosses and young flowerets, have I lain
And watched the clouds, and caught the sheltered song —
Which it were more than life to hear again —
Of those small birds that pipe it all day long
Not far from Marly by the memoried Seine.

PAINTING: “The Seine at Port Marly” by Camille Pissarro (1872).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (1870–1953), born in France and raised in England, was a writer, orator, poet, satirist, and political activist. He has been called one of the Big Four of Edwardian Letters, along with H.G.Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and G. K. Chesterton. Belloc observed that “the first job of letters is to get a canon,” that is, to identify those works which a writer looks upon as exemplary of the best of prose and verse. For his own prose style, he claimed to aspire to be as clear and concise as “Mary had a little lamb.” (Source: wikipedia.org.)

May, poem by Jonathan Galassi

MAY
by Jonathan Galassi

The backyard apple tree gets sad so soon,
takes on a used-up, feather-duster look
within a week.

The ivy’s spring reconnaissance campaign
sends red feelers out and up and down
to find the sun.

Ivy from last summer clogs the pool,
brewing a loamy, wormy, tea-leaf mulch
soft to the touch

and rank with interface of rut and rot.
The month after the month they say is cruel
is and is not.

SOURCE: “May” appears in Jonathan Galassi‘s collection North Street, available at Amazon.com.

IMAGE: “Apple tree blooming in late spring” by Steve Kuzma, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  In addition to publishing two volumes of poetry, Morning Run (1998) and North Street (2000), Jonathan Galassi is an eminent translator of Italian poetry. Galassi studied poetry at Harvard University with Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and is an honorary chairman of the Academy of American Poets. In addition to acting as poetry editor of the Paris Review for 10 years, Galassi has served as a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin, and as executive editor and later president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In 2008, he received the Maxwell E. Perkins Award, which recognizes an editor, publisher, or agent who “has discovered, nurtured and championed writers of fiction in the U.S.”

May, poem by Linda Pastan

MAY
by Linda Pastan

May apple, daffodil,
hyacinth, lily,
and by the front
porch steps

every billowing
shade of purple
and lavender lilac,
my mother’s favorite flower,

sweet breath drifting through
the open windows:
perfume of memory—conduit
of spring.

SOURCE: “The Months” by Linda Pastan appears in its entirety at poetryfoundation.org. Originally published in Poetry (October 1999).

PAINTING: “Lilacs, Grey Weather” by Claude Monet (1873).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Linda Pastan has published at least 12 books of poetry and a number of essays. Her awards include the Dylan Thomas Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award (Poetry Society of America), the Bess Hokin Prize (Poetry Magazine), the 1986 Maurice English Poetry Award (for A Fraction of Darkness), the Charity Randall Citation of the International Poetry Forum, and the 2003 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Two of her collections of poems were nominated for the National Book Award and one for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. From 1991–1995 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland.

May You Always Be the Darling of Fortune, poem by Jane Miller

MAY YOU ALWAYS BE THE DARLING OF FORTUNE
by Jane Miller

March 10th and the snow flees like eloping brides
into rain. The imperceptible change begins
out of an old rage and glistens, chaste, with its new
craving, spring. May your desire always overcome

your need; your story that you have to tell,
enchanting, mutable, may it fill the world
you believe: a sunny view, flowers lunging
from the sill, the quilt, the chair, all things

fill with you and empty and fill. And hurry, because
now as I tire of my studied abandon, counting
the days, I’m sad. Yet I trust your absence, in everything
wholly evident: the rain in the white basin, and I

vigilant.

SOURCE:  “May You Always be the Darling of Fortune” appears in Jane Miller‘s collection Many Junipers, Heartbeats (Copper Beech Press. Copyright, 1980), available at Amazon.com.

PAINTING: “Queen Guinevere’s Maying” by John Collier (1900).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jane Miller is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including the National Poetry Series selection The Greater Leisures (1983), Memory at These Speeds: New and Selected Poems (1996), and the book-length poem A Palace of Pearls (2005). Her collaborations include the prose poetry collection Black Holes, Black Stockings (1985), with poet Olga Broumas, and Midnights (2008), in which Miller’s poetry and prose pair with the chalk and oil drawings of artist Beverly Pepper. Miller is also the author of Working Time: Essays on Poetry, Culture, and Travel (1992). Miller has received the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award and the Western States Book Award, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She has taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Goddard College, and the University of Arizona, where she has served as program director.

End of April, poem by Phillis Levin

END OF APRIL
by Phillis Levin

Under a cherry tree
I found a robin’s egg,
broken, but not shattered.

I had been thinking of you,
and was kneeling in the grass
among fallen blossoms

when I saw it: a blue scrap,
a delicate toy, as light
as confetti

It didn’t seem real,
but nature will do such things
from time to time.

I looked inside:
it was glistening, hollow,
a perfect shell

except for the missing crown,
which made it possible
to look inside.

What had been there
is gone now
and lives in my heart

where, periodically,
it opens up its wings,
tearing me apart.

SOURCE: “End of April” appears in Phillis Levin’s collection The Afterimage (Copper Beech Press, 1995), available at Amazon.com.

ILLUSTRATION: “Opus No. 122″ by Kazue Shima

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Phillis Levin is the author of four poetry collections, including May Day (Penguin, 2008), and editor of the Penguin Book of the Sonnet (Penguin, 2001). She teaches at Hofstra University.

Author photo by Sheila McKinnon

Loveliest of Trees, poem by A.E. Housman

LOVELIEST OF TREES
by A.E. Housman 

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Illustration: “Cherry Blossoms,” watercolor by Hailey E. Herrera, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alfred Edward Housman (1859–1936), an English classical scholar and poet, has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars who ever lived, and was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London and then at Cambridge. Housman published two volumes of poetry during his life: A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922). After A Shropshire Lad was turned down by several publishers, Housman published it at his own expense. Several composers created musical settings for Housman’s work, deepening his popularity. When Last Poems was published in 1922, it was an immediate success. A third volume, More Poems, was released posthumously in 1936, as was an edition of Housman’s Complete Poems (1939). Despite acclaim as a scholar and a poet in his lifetime, Housman lived as a recluse, rejecting honors and avoiding the public eye.