A boat, beneath a sunny sky,

Lingering onward dreamily

In an evening of July -

Children three that nestle near,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Pleased a simple tale to hear -

Long has paled that sunny sky:

Echoes fade and memories die:

Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

Alice moving under skies

Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet,the tale to hear,

Eager eye and willing ear,

Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,

Dreaming as the days go by,

Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting  down the stream  -

Lingering in the golden gleam -

Life, what is but a dream?

Alice's Adventures  in  Wonderland/Lewis Carroll

Tis moonlight, summer moonlight,

All soft and still and fair;

The solemn hour of midnight

Breathes sweet thoughts everywhere,

But most where trees are sending

Their breezy boughs on high

Or stooping low are lending

A shelter from the sky

And there in those wild bowers

A lovely form is laid;

Green grass and dew-steeped flowers 

Wave gently round her head.

Emily Bronte

 

November 7

Today lovely low clouds with soft
grey underbellies, the grey almost

matching the blue of the sky.

Like Vermeer's View of Delft,

patches of sunlight moving slowly

across the city. There is such stillness

one notices time itself; some

would say "time stood still",

like the women in Vermeer's painting

who stand near the water  talking

though they are too far to hear.

There is less sunlight than

shade today; one sees it it seems

as in the painting

always on distant rooftops

and trees. A good day

for reading at a window

or beneath a tree, the light

shining at the edges of the clouds

and from the small open areas of sky.

Prentiss Moore

Some Glad Morning

One day, something very old

happened again. The green

came back to the branches,

settling like leafy birds

on the highest twigs;

the ground broke open

as dark as coffee beans.

The clouds took up their

positions in the deep stadium

of the sky, gloving the

bright orb of the sun

before they pitched it

over the horizon.

It was as good as ever:

the air was filled

with the scent of lilacs

and cherry blossoms

sounded their long

whistle down the track

It was some glad morning.

Joyce Sutphen

The Planting of the Apple-Tree

Come, let us plant the apple-tree.
Cleave the tough greensward with the spade;
Wide let its hollow bed be made;
There gently lay the roots, and there
Sift the dark mould with kindly care,
And press it o’er them tenderly,
As, round the sleeping infant’s feet,
We softly fold the cradle sheet;
So plant we the apple-tree.

What plant we in this apple-tree?
Buds, which the breath of summer days
Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;
Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast,
Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest;
We plant, upon the sunny lea,
A shadow for the noontide hour,
A shelter from the summer shower,
When we plant the apple-tree.

What plant we in this apple-tree?
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs
To load the May-wind’s restless wings,
When, from the orchard row, he pours
Its fragrance through our open doors;
A world of blossoms for the bee,
Flowers for the sick girl’s silent room,
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
We plant with the apple-tree.

What plant we in this apple-tree!
Fruits that shall swell in sunny June,
And redden in the August noon,
And drop, when gentle airs come by,
That fan the blue September sky,
While children come, with cries of glee,
And seek them where the fragrant grass
Betrays their bed to those who pass,
At the foot of the apple-tree.

And when, above this apple-tree,
The winter stars are quivering bright,
And winds go howling through the night,
Girls, whose young eyes o’erflow with mirth,
Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth,
And guests in prouder homes shall see,
Heaped with the grape of Cintra’s vine
And golden orange of the line,
The fruit of the apple-tree.

The fruitage of this apple-tree
Winds and our flag of stripe and star
Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,
Where men shall wonder at the view,
And ask in what fair groves they grew;
And sojourners beyond the sea
Shall think of childhood’s careless day
And long, long hours of summer play,
In the shade of the apple-tree.

...............

“Who planted this old apple-tree?”
The children of that distant day
Thus to some aged man shall say;
And, gazing on its mossy stem,
The gray-haired man shall answer them:
“A poet of the land was he,
Born in the rude but good old times;
‘T is said he made some quaint old rhymes
On planting the apple-tree.”

William Cullen Bryant 

Ode to Enchanted Light

Under the trees light

has dropped from the top of the sky,

light

like a green

latticework of branches,

shining

on every leaf,

drifting down like clean

white sand.

A cicada sends

its sawing song

high into the empty air.

The world is

a glass overflowing

with water.

Pablo Neruda

Easter - Joyce Kilmer

The air is like a butterfly

With frail blue wings.

The happy earth looks at the sky

And sings.

Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, 

which have no weightier thought than 

the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, 

or the stretching of their many stiff fingers 

into the cold sky of the passing winter. 

Fernando Pessoa

Note on Kitchen Table

I will be back soon to bake some bread,

But now I'm picking wild berries instead,

Out in the meadows, under the sun.

I know I'm leaving my work undone,

But the wind was soft on summer grass;

The trees stood up tall for me to pass;

And the blue sky smiled and bent down low.

So what could I do but laugh and go?

Mary Martin Palma