#todayspoem — Public Fediverse posts

Introducing a fantastic poet-Shontay Luna! Poetry about life and love!

https://www.diamantelavendar.com/blog/2026/5/16/introducing-shontay-luna-a-fantastic-poet

#poetry #poem #writing #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity #poemaday #todayspoem #blogging #blog #blogpost #literature #LovePoems #poetrylovers #supporthumanartists #bookstodon #love #life #blogfeature #indie

"Younger, still, I chose to leave. It was years

before I realized I'd never left."

#TodaysPoem #poetry
Estuary by Michael Prior from Shadow Under the Trees (2026 Knife|Fork|Book) https://asterismbooks.com/product/shadows-under-the-trees

"The Fifties" by Monica Ferrell

They were such innocents
They took straight razors to clean faces
Smoked and drank milk at the same time
Crammed whole junk yards with steel

Nearly never touched plastic
Whatever they touched was real
The TV was a box of shadows
In the living room

And if you wanted really to go crazy
There was always the bomb shelter
They were babies, comparatively
They woke each day completely new

They never had to worry about memories
Swelling and following them like algal blooms
Through the internet’s tides of forever—
I don’t even know what starch is

And have never used Brylcreem
Or testified, sweating liberally,
Before the Un-American Committee
I’ll bet back then was crummy too

1/2

#TodaysPoem #Poetry #MonicaFerrell

"The Fifties" by Monica Ferrell

They were such innocents
They took straight razors to clean faces
Smoked and drank milk at the same time
Crammed whole junk yards with steel

Nearly never touched plastic
Whatever they touched was real
The TV was a box of shadows
In the living room

And if you wanted really to go crazy
There was always the bomb shelter
They were babies, comparatively
They woke each day completely new

They never had to worry about memories
Swelling and following them like algal blooms
Through the internet’s tides of forever—
I don’t even know what starch is

And have never used Brylcreem
Or testified, sweating liberally,
Before the Un-American Committee
I’ll bet back then was crummy too

1/2

#TodaysPoem #Poetry #MonicaFerrell

"I’m only trying to help you, let me help you,
he said, something like that, unbuckling; they sailed for hours;
the water that day was as close to perfect as perfect gets here."

#TodaysPoem #poetry
This is the Light by Carl Phillips (@cphillipspoet.bsky.social) (2021 @postroadmag.bsky.social) https://www.postroadmag.com/2021/04/11/38-carl-phillips-this-is-the-light/

Lily pads ripple in summer breeze,
as if they bloomed for me,
revelation-white clouds float
through a divine blue sky.
No human voices break
the stillness of this hilltop pond
where I come to forget
the foolishness of homo sapiens—
where a trout leaps from the lake,
splashes shining down,
opening a glimpse into
the world below the surface.
My dog, wet from her swim
between the visible and the hidden,
shakes dots of sparkling light
from her dark coat,
forming a watery aura.
What sunlight does to water,
stillness does to us.
~~ 'What Stillness' by Laura Foley from 'The Wonder of Small Things'

#ThursdayPoem #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

Does this count as a type of #TodaysPoem ...?

Forgetfulness is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless,--
A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.

Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest,-- or a child.
Forgetfulness is white,-- white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.

I can remember much forgetfulness.

-- Hart Crane, "Forgetfulness" (1918)

#HartCrane #Poetry #TodaysPoem

Forgetfulness is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless,--
A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.

Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest,-- or a child.
Forgetfulness is white,-- white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.

I can remember much forgetfulness.

-- Hart Crane, "Forgetfulness" (1918)

#HartCrane #Poetry #TodaysPoem

"The robin makes a laughing sound.
I stop. I always look around."

#TodaysPoem #poetry
The Robin Makes a Laughing Sound by Sallie Wolf (2010) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/91101/the-robin-makes-a-laughing-sound

"I saw those cards in the books' back pockets as
the library's way of tracking the dispersed collection,

but now I think of them as
books remembering their readers."

#SundaySentence (and bonus #TodaysPoem)
Circulation Desk by Richard Harrison from My Mother Joins the Resistance (2026 Wolsak and Wynn) https://alllitup.ca/poets-resist-richard-harrison-my-mother-joins-the-resistance/

*Ad libitum*

I sing this body ad libitum, Europe scraped raw between my teeth until, presto, “Ave Maria” floats to the surface from a Tituba tributary of “Swanee.” Until I’m a legato darkling whole note, my voice shimmering up from the Atlantic’s hold; until I’m a coda of sail song whipped in salted wind; until my chorus swells like a lynched tongue; until the nocturnes boiling beneath the roof of my mouth extinguish each burning cross. I sing this life in testimony to tempo rubato, to time stolen body by body by body by body from one passage to another; I sing tremolo to the opus of loss. I sing this story staccato and stretto, a fugue of blackface and blued-up arias. I sing with one hand smoldering in the steely canon, the other lento, slow, languorous: lingered in the fields of “Babylon’s Falling” ...

-- "Sissieretta Jones" by Tyehimba Jess

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58786/sissieretta-jones

#TyehimbaJess #Poetry #TodaysPoem

"a voice asks is it time for you to go
but she doesn’t know and so she remains
but she opts for iridescent
shimmer, gossamer web
watching from afar"

#TodaysPoem #poetry #NationalPoetryMonth
after the bloodwork and the shattering of glass by @AmandaEarl (aka @KikiFolle ) the-shattering

"A mile or two away, on the frozen-cloud surface
of the real arena,
a winter sport is superimposed on spring.
Third period
of overtime, and young men battle back and forth,
trying to collapse
wave on wave of possibility to a point
of dense rubber
observed at last in one net or another."

#TodaysPoem #poetry #NationalPoetryMonth
I never thought I’d write a hockey poem by Alice Major (2006) https://www.annapoetry.com/alice-majors-sports-poems/

"Like a drive through hillside country.
Up and down, like blood pressure,
like the small leaves on the bird cherry

out back at whose foot a treasure
of beloved dog bones are buried."

#TodaysPoem #poetry #NationalPoetryMonth
Up and Down by George Murray (@bookninja) (2026) https://substack.com/home/post/p-195746281

A cold spring:
the violet was flawed on the lawn.
For two weeks or more the trees hesitated;
the little leaves waited,
carefully indicating their characteristics.
Finally a grave green dust
settled over your big and aimless hills.
One day, in a chill white blast of sunshine,
on the side of one a calf was born.
The mother stopped lowing
and took a long time eating the after-birth,
a wretched flag,
but the calf got up promptly
and seemed inclined to feel gay.

-- Excerpt from Elizabeth Bishop, "A Cold Spring"

Full poem available here: https://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/bishope/ColdSpring.html

#ElizabethBishop #TodaysPoem #Poetry

"who are you, whiff of calendula,

which otherwise is such clear honey"

#TodaysPoem #poetry #NationalPoetryMonth @poetry
with plenteous shedding by Danielle Carter (2026 NewPoetry) https://newpoetry.ca/2026/04/27/with-plenteous-shedding/

"I spent some night or day watching a video over & over. It was not the one of a dog hugging another dog or the one of frogs gathering to watch a video of worms, or the one of a goat head-butting a mirror."

#TodaysPoem #poetry #NationalPoetryMonth @poetry
The slight difference in frequency generates a beat by Tess Liem from OBITS. (2018 Coach House Books) https://chbooks.com/Books/O/Obits

"He’s a long time dead but comfortable with the living, like a benign headmaster or a low church vicar welcoming the knitting circle."

#TodaysPoem #poetry #NationalPoetryMonth @poetry
Welcoming Bone by Oz Hardwick (2022 Inverse Journal) https://www.inversejournal.com/poetry/youll-never-recognise-yourself-again-four-prose-poems-by-oz-hardwick

"but the heart, the heart makes its own light
deep in its cavern, wanting to read the love written on the walls
of the body, looking for clues to access this brief world."

#TodaysPoem #poetry #NationalPoetryMonth @poetry
Praise by Chris Banks (2026) https://www.facebook.com/chris.banks.3990/posts/pfbid02vVDKvxq6Rn6iBZAiffpaJtQzkzUDZKB5rQ1aPJzqvtpY2pcaWERYf3HqucvH9AVFl

"Nothing to do
but ascend two stories, effortless upon

emptying myself of all I once had, combed
my glitching interior for an idea with teeth."

#TodaysPoem #poetry #NationalPoetryMonth @poetry
by Jaime Forsythe from Yield (2026 Wolsak and Wynn) https://bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/products/yield

"Now, experts disagree.
Were we unhappy or sublime?
We’ll have to wait until the next time
an angel comes rapping at the door
to rejoice docently."

#TodaysPoem #poetry #NationalPoetryMonth @poetry
Honestly, by John Ashbery (2015 Academy of American Poets) https://poets.org/poem/honestly

"i saw some dandelions outside the window of the library
and it wasn’t their beauty

but the way they crouched
fertile, bunched
into a crowd among the grass like whispering
girls, heads blonded to sun"

#TodaysPoem #poetry #NationalPoetryMonth @poetry
hotel lyric by Sandra Huber (2026 NewPoetry) https://newpoetry.ca/2026/04/20/hotel-lyric/

"Zamboni has come! Rejoice!
That which is old shall be made new –
and right before your eyes, to boot –
in scalding water, a spinning brush
and a Celtic love knot’s route
around the rink at a pace that says, There is no rush."

#TodaysPoem #poetry #NationalPoetryMonth @poetry
Zamboni by Richard Harrison from 25: Hockey Poems, New & Revised (2019 Wolsak & Wynn) https://bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/products/25-hockey-poems-new-and-revised & https://open-book.ca/News/Read-an-Excerpt-from-Richard-Harrison-s-25-Hockey-Poems-New-and-Revised

"The rain will be a stranger
and will speak to itself through you and me."

#SundaySentence (and bonus #TodaysPoem) A Stranger by Russell Thornton from Two Songs - Selected Poems 2000-2025 (2026 @Harbour_Publish) https://the-wood-lot.ca/2026/02/09/under-the-spell-of-the-rain-russell-thorntons-two-songs-selected-poems-2000-2025/

"That door has been banging
all our lives against its frame, in wind
so hard and soft at times it echoes
our first birth, that furious push

only need or love can deliver."

#TodaysPoem #poetry #NationalPoetryMonth @poetry
Poem at the Closing of a Door by Lisa Martin from Nighthawks (2026 University of Alberta Press) https://ualbertapress.ca/9781772128550/nighthawks/

As we lie down to sleep the world turns half away
through ninety dark degrees;
the bureau lies on the wall
and thoughts that were recumbent in the day
rise as the others fall,
stand up and make a forest of thick-set trees.

The armored cars of dreams, contrived to let us do
so many a dangerous thing,
are chugging at its edge
all camouflaged, and ready to go through
the swiftest streams, or up a ledge
of crumbling shale, while plates and trappings ring.

-- Elizabeth Bishop, "Sleeping Standing Up"

(Remainder of poem in next toot)

#TodaysPoem #Poetry #ElizabethBishop

You're the kind who looks at a painting
and wonders what's happening beyond

the stretched canvas, where it wraps
around the wood frame, as if
it were a detail from a larger work

or, like a photograph, one small scene
inside a wider one, curated by the eye.

You wonder what's beyond
the bowl of fruit, beyond the gray sea
with its meal of wrecked ships,

beyond the mother holding her burning,
red-cheeked child. You're the kind

who thinks there must be more
than this, more than what you see.
The kitchen might be filling with bees,

drawn buzzing to the bowl of red
and yellow apples. And the waves,

the waves might be ruffling white
and folding over on themselves--
breaking, breaking like a fever.

---
-- Maggie Smith, "Detail" from her new volume, *A Suit or a Suitcase*

#TodaysPoem #MaggieSmith #Poetry

"The late sun burning close and slow waves coming in -
the sea's mysterious lit wine of touch
on the sand, slipping away glittering
in scattered glasslike grains for an instant,
and returning again; if we belong
to each other, we belong to that touch."

#SundaySentence (and bonus #TodaysPoem)
The Beginnings of Stars by Russell Thornton from Two Songs (2026 Harbour Publishing) https://harbourpublishing.com/collections/russell-thornton/products/9781998526574

The way you say the world is what you get.
What's more, you haven't time to change or choose.
The words swim out to pin you in their net

Before you guess you're in the TV set,
Lit up and sizzling in unfriendly news.
The mind's machine--and you invented it--

Grinds out the formulae you have to fit,
The ritual syllables you need to use
To charm the world and not be crushed by it.

This cluttered motorway, that screaming jet,
Those crouching skeletons whose eyes accuse;
O see and say them, make yourself forget

The world is vaster than the alphabet,
And profligate, and meaner than the muse.
A bauble in the universe? Or shit?

Whichever way, you say the world you get.
Though what there is is always there to lose.
No crimson name redeems the poisoned rose.
The absolute's irrelevant. And yet . . .

-- Anne Stevenson, "Saying the World"

#TodaysPoem #Poetry #AnneStevenson

Grandma’s rosebush
reminiscent of a Vice Lord’s do-rag.
the unfamiliar bloom in Mrs. Bradley’s yard
banging a Gangster Disciple style blue.
the dandelions all over the park putting on
Latin King gold like the Chicano cats
over east before they turn into a puff
of smoke like all us colored boys.

picking dandelions will ruin your hands,
turn their smell into a bitter cologne.

--- Opening excerpt from Nate Marshall, "picking flowers"

Full poem is here: https://poets.org/poem/picking-flowers

#TodaysPoem #Poetry #NateMarshall

"Doin' the Louvre"

Paris, December 1991
For Patricia Zamora

You're a junkie just like I am.

After we dump your husband in the Louvre's cafe
to sip the steaming tea and chew on his poetry,
we're off like schoolgirls, screeching in duet,
dazzled by the bright eternal gasp of ancient things.

We've got no business here, homegirl and compañera,
we've got no business working our mouths around
this sharp, exquisite language, or savoring the sweet
tongue-squeeze of pastries, glossy cakes and shaved chocolate.

We're of simpler stock--city and country dust,
collard greens, hopscotch, moonpies, bullet holes
and basement slow dances. We are shamelessly American,
rough street girls with rusty knees, the flip side of cocky
Parisian wisps in slim cashmere coats the color of tobacco.

Girlfriend, you and I are *too* much scream for this place,
but you're a junkie just like I am.

-- Excerpt from "Doin' the Louvre" by Patricia Smith

#TodaysPoem #Poetry #PatriciaSmith

Wendell Berry brought chills down my spine with his poem "Questionnaire," courtesy of Maria Popova, @themarginalian. https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/08/14/wendell-berry-questionnaire-amanda-palmer/

An excerpt:
"5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill."

#poetry #poem #poems #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #WendellBerry #TheMarginalian

An excerpt from "Evidence" by Mary Oliver:

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in
singing, especially when singing is not necessarily
prescribed.

https://yearsrisingmaryoliver.blogspot.com/2011/02/evidence.html

#poetry #poem #poems #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #MaryOliver #PoetryOfPresence

I want to be doused
in cheese

& fried. I want
to wander

the aisles, my heart's
supermarket stocked high

as cholesterol. I want to die
wearing a sweatsuit—

I want to live
forever in a Christmas sweater,

a teddy bear nursing
off the front. I want to write

a check in the express lane.
I want to scrape

my driveway clean

myself, early, before
anyone's awake—

---
-- Excerpt from "Ode to the Midwest" by Kevin Young

Full poem is here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49647/ode-to-the-midwest

#Poetry #TodaysPoem #KevinYoung

You may need one or more of these poems today https://biketoworkbarb.blogspot.com/2023/08/we-are-ones-weve-been-waiting-for-poems.html.

#poetry #poem #poems #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #activism #advocacy #AdvocacyMatters #WordsMatter

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay, "God's World"

#TodaysPoem #EdnaStVincentMillay #Poetry

Why not make this #TodaysPoem.

Here's "Figs" by Henri Cole:

Overnight the figs got moldy and look like little brains—
or Ids without structure—that say something dark
about our species not really laying down a garden
but living out the violent myths.
An insect chorus, almost diaphanous
in a neighbor’s yard, says something, too:
_America began in tall ships that glowed from within,_
_but, for the wretched, it still wretchedeth every day._
As the bright day goes around the sun,
why do our days grow
more aggressive and difficult?
Why do the world’s shadows
come so close
as its wonders beckon?

---
Listen to this episode of the New Yorker Poetry Podcast to hear Henri Cole read this poem, along with a beautiful poem by Louise Glück, "Vita Nova."

#HenriCole #Poetry

The hand erasing writes the real thing.
—Henri Cole

The disappearance within a painting of a woman
on a swing under a mango tree

altered by the artist to disguise her identity
just two villages away
or perhaps
their change of heart
possibly even the newer alternatives of ink

Now there is only a tree, its branches,
not even the colour of her arms

where she floats in her own gale of stillness,
just ink, watercolour, opaque paper
Kangra, India 1850

~~ 'A Disappearance' by Michael Ondaatje from 'A Year of Last Things'

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poetry @poetry

Oh, stormy stormy world,
The days you were not swirled
Around with mist and cloud,
Or wrapped as in a shroud,
And the sun's brilliant ball
Was not in part or all
Obscured from mortal view--
Were days so very few
I can but wonder whence
I get the lasting sense
Of so much warmth and light.
If my mistrust is right
It may be altogether
From one day's perfect weather,
When starting clear at dawn,
The day swept clearly on
To finish clear at eve.
I verily believe
My fair impression may
Be all from that one day
No shadow crossed but ours
As through its blazing flowers
We went from house to wood
For change of solitude.

-- Robert Frost, "Happiness Makes Up in Height for What It Lacks in Length"

#TodaysPoem #Poetry #RobertFrost

Thanks + Giving: A poetry collection I rounded up last year and some thoughts about Native American Heritage Day https://biketoworkbarb.blogspot.com/2024/11/thanks-giving.html. Hat tip to Rebecca Solnit for the fabulous graphic, which she posted on BlueSky last year.

#poetry #poem #poems #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #Thanksgiving #Indigenous #nativeamericanHeritageMonth #gratitude #giving

I leave you to your ceremony of grieving
Which is also of celebration
Given when an honored humble one
Leaves behind a trail of happiness
In the dark of human tribulation.
None of us is above the other
In this story of forever.
Though we follow that red road home,
one behind another.
There is a light breaking through the storm
And it is buffalo hunting weather.
There you can see your mother.
She is busy as she was ever—
She holds up a new jingle dress, for her youngest beloved daughter.
And for her special son, a set of finely beaded gear.
All for that welcome home dance,
The most favorite of all—
when everyone finds their way back together
to dance, eat and celebrate.
And tell story after story
of how they fought and played
in the story wheel
and how no one
was ever really lost at all.
~~ 'The Story Wheel' by Joy Harjo from 'An American Sunrise'

#VerseThursday #TodaysPoem #poem @poetry

I come back to this post every so often. We can't win with poetry alone, but without poetry what world are we hoping for? https://biketoworkbarb.blogspot.com/2023/08/we-are-ones-weve-been-waiting-for-poems.html

#poetry #poem #poems #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #PoetryOfPresence #PoetryOfPolitics #activism #AdvocacyMatters #advocacy

If you've never read Mary Oliver's poem "Of the Empire" you should. It's a heartbreaker.

https://yearsrisingmaryoliver.blogspot.com/2010/11/of-empire-november-14-2010.html

#poetry #poem #poems #TodaysPoem #MaryOliver #mpire #colonialism #PoetryOfPolitics

My days were a thing for me to live,
For others to deplore;
I took of life all it could give:
Rind, inner fruit, and core.

-- Countee Cullen, For One Who Gayly Sowed His Oats

https://poets.org/poem/one-who-gayly-sowed-his-oats

---
If I hadn't already known this one, I might have thought it was Dorothy Parker!

#TodaysPoem #Poetry #CounteeCullen

Break your heart with "The Animals Are Leaving" by Charles Harper https://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/columns/detail/203.

#poetry #poem #poems #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #conservation #animals #extinction #Nature #biodiversity #BiodiversityDecline

Break your heart with "The Animals Are Leaving" by Charles Harper https://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/columns/detail/203.

#poetry #poem #poems #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #conservation #animals #extinction #Nature #biodiversity #BiodiversityDecline

Break your heart with "The Animals Are Leaving" by Charles Harper https://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/columns/detail/203.

#poetry #poem #poems #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #conservation #animals #extinction #Nature #biodiversity #BiodiversityDecline

Break your heart with "The Animals Are Leaving" by Charles Harper https://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/columns/detail/203.

#poetry #poem #poems #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #conservation #animals #extinction #Nature #biodiversity #BiodiversityDecline

Break your heart with "The Animals Are Leaving" by Charles Harper https://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/columns/detail/203.

#poetry #poem #poems #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #conservation #animals #extinction #Nature #biodiversity #BiodiversityDecline