LOTSA A CAPPELLA
POETRY MONTH

You can't know how happy I am that we met;
I'm strangely attracted to you.
There's someone I'm trying so hard to forget -
Don't you want to forget someone, too?

It's the wrong game, with the wrong chips;
Though your lips are tempting they're the wrong lips.
They're not his lips but they're such tempting lips
That if some night you're free,
Well it's all right,
Yes it's all right,
With me.

~ words & music by Cole Porter

God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in mine eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at mine end, and at my departing.

~ words from the Sarum Primer, 1558; music by Carolee Coombs-Stacy

To Daffodils

Fair daffodils, we weep to see
     You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
     Has not attain’d his noon.
         Stay, stay
     Until the hasting day
        Has run
     But to the evensong;
And, having pray’d together, we
     Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
         We die
     As your hours do, and dry
         Away
     Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
     Ne’er to be found again.

     ~ Robert Herrick

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose-petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

~ Don Marquis

When April scatters charms of primrose gold
Among the copper leaves in thickets old,
And singing skylarks from the meadows rise,
To twinkle like black stars in sunny skies;

When I can hear the small woodpecker ring
Time on a tree for all the birds that sing;
And hear the pleasant cuckoo, loud and long --
The simple bird that thinks two notes a song.

~ William Henry Davies, April's Charms

The ocean doesn't want me today
But I'll be back tomorrow to play
And the strangles will take me
Down deep in their brine
The mischievous braingels
Down into the endless blue wine...

~ words & music by Tom Waits

in Just-

in Just-
spring       when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman whistles
     far     and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far      and     wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
       the
             goat-footed
balloonMan         whistles
far
and
wee

     ~ e.e. cummings

To An Early Daffodil

Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!
   Thou herald of rich Summer’s myriad flowers!
   The climbing sun with new recovered powers
Does warm thee into being, through the ring
Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling
   Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers
   Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers,
Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing
   To make all nature glad, thou art so gay;
To fill the lonely with a joy untold;
   Nodding at every gust of wind to-day,
To-morrow jewelled with raindrops. Always bold
   To stand erect, full in the dazzling play
Of April’s sun, for thou hast caught his gold.

     ~ Amy Lowell