Poetry Friday: A month of Sundays

Actually, a month of Fridays in one post, since next Friday we're off to visit my parents for a few weeks, and a) I'm quickly running out of time (the weather isn't helping -- more wicked wind, blowing snow, impassable roads, and frigid temps) and b) I won't have my favorite poetry books at hand.

Speaking of winter, today's gaggle of groundhogs are nothing but a bunch of liars. We spent two hours this morning doing chores, setting out bales of hay (cattle need more feed when it's cold to keep warm) and straw (they need warm and dry bedding, too), and clearing snow with the tractor. We have quite the snow walls all around the farm, now beginning to resemble a winter fortress.

For this week, something about groundhogs that reminds me of Lewis Carroll (Will you, wo'n't you, will you, wo'n't you, will you join the dance?)

To the Ground Hog
by Kay Winter

Will you
Won't you
See your shadow?

Will it
Won't it
Really matter?

Do you
Don't you
Grin to see

People
Take you
Seriously?

For next Friday, February 9th, departure day:

I'd Leave
by Andrew Lang

I'd leave all the hurry,
the noise and the fray
For a house full of books
and a garden full of flowers.


For the Friday after, February 16:

Lincoln Monument: Washington
by Langston Hughes

Let's go see old Abe
Sitting in the marble and the moonlight,
Sitting lonely in the marble and the moonlight,
Quiet for ten thousand centuries, old Abe.
Quiet for a million, million years.

Quiet --

And yet a voice forever
Against the
Timeless walls
Of time --
Old Abe.

For the Friday after that, February 23:

There Isn't Time
by Eleanor Farjeon

There isn't time, there isn't time
To do the things I want to do,
With all the mountain-tops to climb,
And all the woods to wander through,
And all the seas to sail upon,
And everywhere there is to go,
And all the people, every one
Who lives upon the earth, to know.
There's only time, there's only time
To kmow a few, and do a few,
And then sit down and make a rhyme
About the rest I want to do.


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