Search Categories - Any -25 Lines or FewerCanadaPre 21st Century21st Century Grade levels - Any -Grades 7-9 / Sec. 1-3Grades 10-12 / Sec. 4 & 5 / CEGEP 1 Sort by RandomNewestMost popularA -> ZZ -> A Apply Anne Michaels From Correspondences Sometimes we are led through the doorway by a child, sometimes by a stranger, always a matter of grace changing Gerard Manley Hopkins Pied Beauty Glory be to God for dappled things — For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim… Ilya Kaminsky We Lived Happily during the War And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America William Blake The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow A little black thing among the snow, Crying “weep! ‘weep!” in notes of woe! “Where are thy father and mother? say?” Lucille Clifton forgiving my father it is friday. we have come to the paying of the bills. all week you have stood in my dreams like a ghost, asking for more time but today is payday, payday old man; my mother’s hand opens in her early grave Claudia Rankine from Citizen The rain this morning pours from the gutters and everywhere else it is lost in the trees. You need your glasses to single out what you know is there because Lorna Crozier Not the Music Not the music. It is this other thing I keep from all of them that matters, inviolable. I scratch in my journals, a mouse rummaging through cupboards, Joy Kogawa Where There’s a Wall Where there’s a wall there’s a way through a gate or door. There’s even Edgar Allan Poe To Helen Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicéan barks of yore, That gently, o’er a perfumed sea, Weyman Chan But I’m No One for M. Maylor Dear Anne Carson: My friend read me the poem where your mom said that the dead walk backwards. You thought this myth arose from poor translation. William Shakespeare Blow, blow, thou winter wind Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude; Molly CROSS-BLANCHARD First Time Smudge It takes eight matches, a burnt thumb, and a quick Google search to light the sweetgrass braid Mom scored for me from an elder at work. Always use matches, she said. Spirit likes matches. Ralph Waldo Emerson Experience The lords of life, the lords of life, — I saw them pass, In their own guise, A. M. Klein Heirloom My father bequeathed me no wide estates; No keys and ledgers were my heritage; Only some holy books with yahrzeit dates Emily Riddle Please Write a Poetry Book in Syllabics1 i want to complicate the term sacred, she told me to make holy sacerdotal: priestly sākris: to make a treaty Marjorie Pickthall The Wife Living, I had no might To make you hear, Now, in the inmost night, John Milton Sonnet XXIII: Methought I Saw my Late Espoused Saint Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave, Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave… Amy Lowell A Fixed Idea What torture lurks within a single thought When grown too constant, and however kind, However welcome still, the weary mind Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen Mama When the horse picked Mama up by the hair that time, was she scared? There is a photograph of her with this horse in the brown family album. She stands beside him, thin in the chilly wind Naomi Shihab Nye Famous The river is famous to the fish. The loud voice is famous to silence, which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so. The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds Elizabeth Barrett Browning Grief I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of despair, Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air William Shakespeare Sonnet XXIX: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, Thomas Campion Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow, Though thou be black as night And she made all of light, Spencer Reece At Thomas Merton’s Grave We can never be with loss too long. Behind the warped door that sticks, the wood thrush calls to the monks, Jen Sookfong Lee Community Garden There, the bolting black kale, taller than it has any right to be and not the twitter troll who asked if you were on your period. In the corner, a pile of dead zucchini leaves, spotted with rot Duncan Campbell Scott En Route The train has stopped for no apparent reason In the wilds; A frozen lake is level and fretted over Elinor Wylie Full Moon My bands of silk and miniver Momently grew heavier; The black gauze was beggarly thin; Layli Long Soldier From Whereas Whereas my eyes land on the shoreline of “the arrival of Europeans in North America opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples.” Because in others, I hate the act Tolu Oloruntoba Tinderbox We were a conflagration asking to be incarnated into the world. Mother, superstitious, kept us apart, two stones of the same igneous anger. Everyone saucered tears Raymond Knister Boy Remembers in the Field What if the sun comes out And the new furrows do not look smeared? This is April, and the sumach candles Queen Elizabeth I When I was Fair and Young When I was fair and young, then favor graced me. Of many was I sought their mistress for to be. But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore: George Herbert Love (III) Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack Dorothy Parker One Perfect Rose A single flow’r he sent me, since we met. All tenderly his messenger he chose; Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet— Jason Camlot Dear Death, Am I a praise poet or a blame poet? Today I am a blame poet. O Death, face it, existence doesn’t like you. You can’t sing. You can’t paint. Jack Gilbert Alone I never thought Michiko would come back after she died. But if she did, I knew it would be as a lady in a long white dress. It is strange that she has returned as somebody's dalmatian. I meet Ocean Vuong Deto(nation) There’s a joke that ends with — huh? It’s the bomb saying here is your father. Now here is your father inside your lungs. Look how lighter the earth is — afterward. Sarah Tolmie 39 Oliver Sacks is going to die, He tells us blithely in the New York Times. He’s 81. His liver’s shot. He’s blind in one eye Though when both worked fine Emma Healey Trust Fund Witches Gerard Manley Hopkins Spring Nothing is so beautiful as Spring — When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens,… Di Brandt my mother found herself my mother found herself one late summer afternoon lying in grass under the wild yellow plum tree jewelled with sunlight she was forgotten there in spring picking rhubarb for pie & the children home from Language English