A Gathering of Poetry: February 2026

It’s the third Thursday of the month, which means it’s time for A Gathering of Poetry - welcome!

I found this photo on an external hard drive a while ago, but I have no idea who took it or where. But I did have a moment of serendipity when I came across a poem that seems to go with it. 

For the Bird Singing Before Dawn

by Kim Stafford  

Some people presume to be hopeful
when there is no evidence for hope,
to be happy when there is no cause.
Let me say now, I’m with them.

In deep darkness on a cold twig
in a dangerous world, one first
little fluff lets out a peep, a warble,
a song—and in a little while, behold:

the first glimmer comes, then a glow
filters through the misty trees,
then the bold sun rises, then
everyone starts bustling about.

And that first crazy optimist, can we
forgive her for thinking, dawn by dawn,
“Hey, I made that happen!
And oh, life is so fine.”

======

Stafford, Kim. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 27, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets. 

You can read more about Kim Stafford here and here, too.  

======

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are

more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your

favorite poems. The more the merrier! 

 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Gathering of Poetry: January 2026

It’s the third Thursday of the month, which means it’s time for A Gathering of Poetry - welcome!

HUBBLE’S TOP 100 • #3 • Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage 

A friend is having knee replacement surgery at the end of this month and I just met up with her for lunch. I loaned her my copies of Winter Morning Walks and Braided Creek as I thought they might make good post-surgery reading, but I had to look through them first. These poems come from Braided Creek, a collection of poems sent back and forth between Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison that began when Kooser was hospitalized. Both poets continued their exchange for ages, making it clear that if the conversation were ever to be published, which it was, any notion of individual authorship should remain a mystery. The book, then, is written by two poets, both at once. Every word is a word written by two hands. 

Reading poetry late at night
to try to come back to life.
Almost but not quite.

The hay in the loft
misses the night sky,
so the old roof
leaks a few stars.

Rain clouds gone,
and muddy paw prints
on the moon.

I've never learned from experience.
What else is there? you ask.
How about ninety billion galaxies.

What is it the wind has lost
that she keeps looking for
under each leaf?

You told me you couldn't see
a better day coming,
so I gave you my eyes.

At the end, just a pinch of the world

is all we have to hold onto,

the hem of a sheet.  

==== 

Harrison, Jim, and Ted Kooser. Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry. Copper Canyon Press, 2023.

 

You can read more about Jim Harrison here. 

 

You can read more about Ted Kooser here.

 

==== 

 

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are

more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your

favorite poems. The more the merrier! 

 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Gathering of Poetry: December 2025

It’s the third Thursday of the month, which means it’s time for A Gathering of Poetry - welcome!

I just came across this poem and it evoked such a lovely picture in my mind that I thought it was one worth sharing.

Christmas Mail

by Ted Kooser  

Cards in each mailbox,
angel, manger, star and lamb,
as the rural carrier,
driving the snowy roads,
hears from her bundles
the plaintive bleating of sheep,
the shuffle of sandals,
the clopping of camels.
At stop after stop,
she opens the little tin door
and places deep in the shadows
the shepherds and wise men,
the donkeys lank and weary,
the cow who chews and muses.
And from her Styrofoam cup,
white as a star and perched
on the dashboard, leading her
ever into the distance,
there is a hint of hazelnut,
and then a touch of myrrh. 

====

Kooser, Ted. "Christmas Mail". Together, Brooding Heron Press, 2012. 

 

You can read more about Ted Kooser here.

==== 

 

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are

more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your

favorite poems. The more the merrier! 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Gathering of Poetry: November 2025

It’s the third Thursday of the month, which means it’s time for A Gathering of Poetry - welcome!

Last month I posted a poem by Barbara Crooker. She was a new poet to me then, but in the month since, I've been reading more of her poetry and I continue to be impressed. The poem I chose this month spoke so clearly of the landscape, what I've been seeing outdoors, and how I've been feeling that I had to choose Barbara Crooker again this month.  

 

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself

by Barbara Crooker

 

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry.  And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings.  Look at the trees.  They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer.  And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May.  The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise.  Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again. 

 

====

Crooker, Barbara. "Sometimes, I Am Startled Outside of Myself." Radiance. Word Press, 2005.

 

You can read more about the poet here. 

==== 

 

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are

more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your

favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Gathering of Poetry: October 2025

It’s the third Thursday of the month, which means it’s time for A Gathering of Poetry - welcome!

There are plenty of mornings when I open the New York Times, NPR, or the BBC online, glance at the headlines, and think, I wish we didn’t live in such unprecedented times. I’ll admit that back when there wasn’t a new crisis every ten minutes, I took things for granted. I assumed the world was humming along about as smoothly as it could, and I could focus on my family and the small stuff of everyday life.

These days, I take very little for granted and often find myself longing for an ordinary day, just a calm, uneventful, ordinary day. This poem captures that feeling beautifully for me, and maybe it will for you, too. 

 

Ordinary Life

by Barbara Crooker  

This was a day when nothing happened,
the children went off to school
remembering their books, lunches, gloves.
All morning, the baby and I built block stacks
in the squares of light on the floor.
And lunch blended into naptime,
I cleaned out kitchen cupboards,
one of those jobs that never gets done,
then sat in a circle of sunlight
and drank ginger tea,
watched the birds at the feeder
jostle over lunch's little scraps.
A pheasant strutted from the hedgerow,
preened and flashed his jeweled head.
Now a chicken roasts in the pan,
and the children return,
the murmur of their stories dappling the air.
I peel carrots and potatoes without paring my thumb.
We listen together for your wheels on the drive.
Grace before bread.
And at the table, actual conversation,
no bickering or pokes.
And then, the drift into homework.
The baby goes to his cars, drives them
along the sofa's ridges and hills.
Leaning by the counter, we steal a long slow kiss,
tasting of coffee and cream.
The chicken's diminished to skin & skeleton,
the moon to a comma, a sliver of white,
but this has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard cold knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.

==== 

Crooker, Barbara. "Ordinary Life". Selected Poems. FutureCycle Press, 2015. 

 

You can read more about the poet here. 

 

==== 

 

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are

more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your

favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Gathering of Poetry: September 2025

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry. Poetry has become even more important to me recently, so I've been reading a poem a day from several volumes. This seems to be just about enough to maintain a minimum of mental health, and I came across this one. It spoke to me and I hope it says something to you, too. 

The Orange

by Wendy Cope 

 

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange –

The size of it made is all laugh. 

I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave –

They got quarters and I had a half.

 

And that orange, it made me so happy,

As ordinary things often do

Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.

This is peace and contentment. It's new. 

 

The rest of the day was quite easy.

I did all the jobs on my list

And enjoyed them and had some time over.

I love you. I'm glad I exist.*

 

 

*And what else is there? 

 

====

 

Cope, Wendy. "The Orange". Set Me On Fire: A Poem for Every Feeling. edited by Ella Risbridger, Doubleday, 2019. 

 

You can read more about the poet here.  

 

==== 

 

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are

more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your

favorite poems. The more the merrier!

  

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Gathering of Poetry: August 2025

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry. I know I just shared a Billy Collins poem with you last month, but I've got another one that's just too good not to share now, as summer camp season is ending. A friend and I were talking about making lanyards (we actually remembered how!) and this poem just miraculously showed up. I did make several of these for my mother, although never out of boredom, and I was convinced they were beautifully crafted and infinitely useful.

(I'll try to choose a different poet for September!)

The Lanyard

by Billy Collins 

 

The other day I was ricocheting slowly

off the blue walls of this room,

moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,

from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,

when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary

where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist

could send one into the past more suddenly—

a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp

by a deep Adirondack lake

learning how to braid long thin plastic strips

into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard

or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,

but that did not keep me from crossing

strand over strand again and again

until I had made a boxy

red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,

and I gave her a lanyard.

She nursed me in many a sick room,

lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,

laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,

and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,

and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

Here are thousands of meals, she said,

and here is clothing and a good education.

And here is your lanyard, I replied,

which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,

strong legs, bones and teeth,

and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,

and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.

And here, I wish to say to her now,

is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,

but the rueful admission that when she took

the two-tone lanyard from my hand,

I was as sure as a boy could be

that this useless, worthless thing I wove

out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

====

Collins, Billy, “The Lanyard”, The Trouble With Poetry: and Other Poems, 2005.

You can read more about Billy Collins here.

====

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are

more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your

favorite poems. The more the merrier!

 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Gathering of Poetry: July 2025

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry. I had glimmers of this poem in my memory, but what I mainly recalled was tables and chairs abandoned by a pond. It took me a while to find it, but I knew it as soon as I read it, and was glad to see that chairs, tables, and a lake were actually mentioned. 

 

The Chairs That No One Sits In

by Billy Collins 

 

You see them on porches and on lawns

down by the lakeside,

usually arranged in pairs implying a couple

who might sit there and look out

at the water or the big shade trees.

The trouble is you never see anyone

sitting in these forlorn chairs

though at one time it must have seemed   

a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.

Sometimes there is a little table

between the chairs where no one   

is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.

It might be none of my business,

but it might be a good idea one day

for everyone who placed those vacant chairs

on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them

for the sake of remembering

whatever it was they thought deserved

to be viewed from two chairs   

side by side with a table in between.

The clouds are high and massive that day.

The woman looks up from her book.

The man takes a sip of his drink.

Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking,

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird

then another, cries of joy or warning—

it passes the time to wonder which. 

====

Collins, Billy. "The Chairs That No One Sits In". Poetry, November 2008. 

You can read more about Billy Collins here.  

====

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are

more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your

favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Gathering of Poetry: June 2025

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry. Today I made sure I didn't forget about A Gathering of Poetry like I did last month, and this month Billy Collins came to my rescue. 

I had a lime tree that died and I recently bought a new one. It's outside and growing well and I recently caught myself thinking, "I just love this little lime tree." A few days ago I was washing my hands with a bar of Ivory soap and found myself thinking, "I really love the smell of this soap." Thankfully, Billy Collins had already written a poem about these moments.  

Aimless Love
by Billy Collins

This morning as I walked along the lake shore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door—
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor—
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

 

====

"Aimless Love". Collins, Billy. Nine Horses: Pan Macmillan and Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003.

You can read more about the poet here and here. 

====  

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are

more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your

favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Gathering of Poetry for National Poetry Month: April 2025

Today our focus is on Aging. We're all aging, even the youngest of us, so I think it's a good idea to face it with poetry. I chose this poem because it captures my dear Mother-in-law's last days so clearly when she was in the hospital after a fall (and I also love the title). She was using a wheeled walker and when one of the welds broke she fell and broke her pelvis. I wish she had made progress to take five steps, but it was not to be.

 

Jellyfish Olympics

by Cristina M. R. Norcross

There are wires and cords
that stretch out, 
hang dangling
from the hospital bed,
the transparent filigree 
of a floating jellyfish.
One leads to the phone
to order food. 
One leads to the TV, so we can stare at
cooking shows with delicacies not available here.
One leads to compression wraps
for your vulnerable legs.
Another leads to the IV ports 
in your bruised, crepe-skinned arm.

In between your long spells of sleeping
and my knitting, 
we enjoy the pretend competition
of the contestants cooking.
We marvel at how quickly 
they move about the kitchen.
I marvel even more at your careful movements
and the miracle of progress after your fall.
We count the steps you take
as if you are skipping stones—
any number makes you a winner. 
You fight for everyday markers of strength,
your efforts a perfect ten.
This is the Olympics of rehabilitation.

Cotton gown diamond patterns 
become your fashion.
We look out the window as day becomes night.
Another day passes 
in the goldfish bowl of recovery,
a blue ribbon day of taking five steps 
just to turn around
and walk back to the bed.

====

Norcross, Cristina M.R. "Jellyfish Olympics". Poem-a-Day on November 8, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets. 

You can read more about the poet here.  

====

Be sure to check in with Kym, Kat, Sarah, and Vera (there is a linkup below) for more poetry today, and join us next Thursday for more poems in celebration of National Poetry Month. (And remember that any time is good for poetry, not just Thursdays in April!) 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Gathering of Poetry: March 2025

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry. I don't know where I found this poem, but I love the word "swobtoggle", so I've been saving it until flowers and grass were beginning to get "high on the expensive chemistry of their mitochondrial explosion."

Happy Little Grass Cells (actually vascular bundles, xylem and phloem) as seen under magnification.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please Don't

by Tony Hoagland 

tell the flowers—they think

the sun loves them.

The grass is under the same

simple-minded impression

about the rain, the fog, the dew.

And when the wind blows,

it feels so good

they lose control of themselves

and swobtoggle wildly

around, bumping accidentally into their

slender neighbors.

Forgetful little lotus-eaters,

solar-powered

hydroholics, drawing nourishment up

through stems into their

thin green skin,

high on the expensive

chemistry of mitochondrial explosion,

believing that the dirt

loves them, the night, the stars—

reaching down a little deeper

with their pale albino roots,

all Dizzy

Gillespie with the utter

sufficiency of everything.

They don't imagine lawn

mowers, the four stomachs

of the cow, or human beings with boots

who stop to marvel

at their exsquisite

flexibility and color.

They persist in their soft-headed

hallucination of happiness.

But please don't mention it.

Not yet. Tell me

what would you possibly gain

from being right?

 

====

 

Tony Hoagland, "Please Don’t" from Application for Release from the Dream. Copyright © 2015 by Tony Hoagland.

You can read more about the poet here.

 

====

 

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are

more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your

favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Gathering of Poetry: February 2025

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry. This poem was inspired by the winds blowing fiercely and the freezing rain pelting me as I took the recycling bin out one evening. Once I read through it, it seemed almost as if Ada Limón had been standing across the street watching me. I wish that was the case as I think she would be a fascinating person to talk with, but until that happens, we've got her poetry. 

Dead Stars

by Ada Limón

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
                 Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.

We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
       the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
       recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
       Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
       of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—

to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
       what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.
       We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
     No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
                 if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,

rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?

====

From The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018) by Ada Limón. Copyright © 2018 by Ada Limón.

You can read more about Ada Limón here. 

====

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Gathering of Poetry: January 2025

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry.

I finished reading this book once, but I've kept Ted Kooser's Winter Morning Walks nearby so I can choose a poem and read it whenever I feel like a bit of poetry. This one may be my favorite (and Kooser has dated it January 16th) so I'm sharing it with you today. 

 

The January Thaw

by Ted Kooser

A flock of several hundred small brown birds,

all of one mind, crazily chases its tail

across a muddy field and into a grove of trees.

They are full of joy, like a wheel that break loose

from a truck and bounds down the road

ahead of the driver, then eventually slows,

and falls behind, wobbling onto a spot

on the shoulder, rocking around on its rim,

then settling with a ringing cry.

====

Kooser, Ted. "The January Thaw." Winter Morning Walks. 2000: Carnegie Mellon Press, pg. 66.

You can read more about Ted Kooser here.  

====

Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter