Index of First Lines from Pope to Brooke

I am his Highness' Dog at Kew 117 

I am the family face

I am: yet what I am no one cares or knows 

I give you the end of the golden string

I have desired to go 

I have eaten 

I have no name 

I have seen flowers come to stony places 

I hear a sudden cry of pain!

I imagine this midnight's moment's forest 

I know what the caged bird feels, alas! 

i like my body when it is with your body 

I lost the love of heaven above 

I met a traveller from an antique land 

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky 

I never saw a wild thing 

I remember, I remember 22 

I said to Heart, "How goes it?" Heart replies 70 

I said to my companion, this is walking 

I saw a stable low and very bare 

I strove for none, for none was worth my strife

I took my life and threw it on the skip 62

i wandered lonely as a cloud 

I went down to the river 

I went to the hazel wood 

I will arise and go now 

I wish I loved the Human Race 

If any question why we died 103 

If I should die, think only this of me 

“Index” from BEST LOVED POEMS: edited by Neil Philip.
Published by Little, Brown and Company 2000.
Copyright © 2000 by individual poems as noted specifically in the acknowledgments p.223-4

All rights reserved.

The squirrels of remembering

Saturn is spinning with rings of rosy grey brown there beneath the maple tree 

     as a scurry of squirrels 

dashing circling 

     tag-your-it

at twelve-after-seven on a April morning in Nebraska  

the squirrels they ring

robins 

wrens 

bluejays 

        sing

Greeting ---- 

This Spring Sun 

rising rising against the constellation of tulips-stars & greenness green 

nothing is ever wasted 

matter never vanishes 

movement's ancient dance to seasons transformation 

where are the cranes now? 

where are the bison? 

who are we to bear witness to such glory? 

--Hello day-- 

     How lucky we are 

less than a lily ....

it never quite fit 

(unless a sobriquet)  

too noble too tight 

Susan got so in my way 

too live up to 

to live down 

to be Suze or Suki 

      I preferred to that proper noun 

                who should be adorned in long flowing gowns of white and polished sky-blue 

barefoot thru gardens & forests of yew 

reading Dickens Wolfe Faulkner & Dr. Who 

songs by Scott 

Taylor 

and Cohen she knew creating a self portrait of this muse felt 

fucking taboo 

better 

to be reduced to a diminutive self-proclaimed Susie by everyelse .... 

Susan means lily 

   while Susie 

            means 

                   perhaps a little less a lily 

transformed upon a branch in April

To 

fall 

beyond the ground

of what is before me 

chair dog sofa tv window red bud 

tree 

      with sparrow alighting what 

as if an afterthought on its way to nest oh! look there! my heart rises rises 

alighting  

so beside those

feathers 

becoming crystalline to yesterday's despair 

by 

reason 

of 

love 

upon returning to the line

Initially--

with arms full 

heaped with the welted kind

navigating 

four steps to greet the bird full sun full yard 

1 2 3 4 

she tosses & places & drapes the bedding the wool 

across the high-green-line 

with precision pointed with intent 

clothespins circumvent 

what will be a stronger wind---

--later-- 

when the sun trims past noon 

she smells the day weaved into every aired piece 

moving in reverse 

take down 

unbound 

from the high-green-line 

gathered against the buffeting 

to place where 

it belongs 

ordinary things become birdsong 

well done 

 

growing up near a river

1

Stripping off the night 

across cornfields 

flying to welcome 

sun 

and sky 

2

Fully there 

she is the River 

narrow channels 

encompassing all that is 

life 

3 

Coolness setting against skin 

warm it is 

wakened--alive--here 

we roll along touching sun 

wishing for channels of wonder 

The poets light but lamps

The Poets light but Lamps 

BY EMILY DICKINSON

The Poets light but Lamps —

Themselves — go out —

The Wicks they stimulate

If vital Light

Inhere as do the Suns —

Each Age a Lens

Disseminating their

Circumference —

Poets 

are 

but themselves vital Sun 

their wick 

a circumference of age 

A lens 

colliding light 

disseminating 

time 

abiding