Poet Jane Hirshfield said "... the feeling I have about poem-writing (is) that it is always an exploration, of discovering something I didn't already know. Who I am shifts from moment to moment, year to year. What I can perceive does as well. A new poem peers into mystery, into whatever lies just beyond the edge of knowable ground."
I bring a different poem to the writing classes each week, not only to inspire but to introduce new poets to the group members.
The Fifties by Barbara Crooker
We spent those stifling endless summer afternoons on hot front porches, cutting paper dolls from Sears catalogs, making up our own ideal families complete with large appliances and an all-occasion wardrobe with fold-down paper tabs. Sometimes we left crayons on the cement landing, just to watch them melt. We followed the shade around the house. Time was a jarful of pennies, too hot to spend, stretching long and sticky, a brick of Bonomo's Turkish Taffy. Tomorrow'd be more of the same, ending with softball or kickball, then hide and seek in the mosquitoey dark. Fireflies, like connect-the-dots or find-the-hidden- words, rose and glowed, winked on and off, their cool fires coded signals of longing and love that we would one day learn to speak. ~from Radiance (Word Press, 2005)