Poetry Friday: One of My Favorite Poetry Sites

Do you have someone in your life who not only shares poems with you and who never EVER shares one that isn't absolutely brilliant? How they do it, I'm not sure. But I'm lucky enough to have poet laureate Ted Kooser to do just that for me.

Now, Ted and I aren't friends per se. But I do have an RSS subscription to his site, American Life in Poetry. So we're practically BFFs. And Mr. Kooser is one of those kinds of friends...every poem he shares (one per week) is pure gold. I highly recommend subscribing to his site.

Here's some evidence to support my opinion:

The Word That Is a Prayer 

By Ellery Akers

One thing you know when you say it:

all over the earth people are saying it with you;

a child blurting it out as the seizures take her,

a woman reciting it on a cot in a hospital.

What if you take a cab through the Tenderloin:

at a street light, a man in a wool cap,

yarn unraveling across his face, knocks at the window;

he says, Please.

By the time you hear what he’s saying,

the light changes, the cab pulls away,

and you don’t go back, though you know

someone just prayed to you the way you pray.

Please: a word so short

it could get lost in the air

Read the rest here.

You MUST also read this one, which I featured here previously.

Night Dive 

By Peggy Shumaker

Plankton rise toward the full moon

spread thin on Wakaya’s surface.

Manta rays’ great curls of jaw

scoop backward somersaults of ocean

in through painted caves of their mouths, out

through sliced gills. Red sea fans

pulse. The leopard shark

lounges on a smooth ramp of sand,

skin jeweled with small hangers-on.

Pyramid fish point the way to the surface.

Read the rest of this poem here.

And be sure to check out the Poetry Friday roundup, hosted today at Write. Sketch. Repeat.