Whalesong – Sophie Stephenson-Wright
I boom-mumble   I bass-blow             I gulf-cross   I listen-talk
I hull-heavy   I big/slow                        I moon-map   I wave-walk
I boat-bump   I limpet-skin                  I tail-turn   I time-keep
I soft-sink   I sky-swim                            I ship-wreck   I song-seek
I sea-search   I salt-swallow                 I blue-blood   I grumble-sing
I bone-backed I fluke-follow    I fish-heart   I dream-king

IV

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Click here for a beautiful reading of the poem by Longfellow himself!

With snow-white veil and garments as of flame,

She stands before thee, who so long ago

Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe

From which thy song and all its splendors came;

And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name,

The ice about thy heart melts as the snow

On mountain heights, and in swift overflow

Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame.

Thou makest full confession; and a gleam,

As of the dawn on some dark forest cast,

Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase;

Lethe and Eunoc--the remembered dream

And the forgotten sorrow--bring at last

That perfect pardon which is perfect peace.

photo by: Allie Crafton

Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

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photo by: Julie Parker

SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.    If this be error and upon me proved,    I never writ, nor no man ever loved. -- William Shakespeare
Steve Sara Sausalito Artist
in just-
in Just-

spring       when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles       far       and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far       and       wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

     the

             goat-footed

balloonMan       whistles

far

and

wee

e.e. cummings

Sunrise clouds above Lac Blanc, Aiguilles Rouges, Chamonix, France

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.