Earth Day Poems for Every Day


Photo graphic created wit a program. Foreground, a hand holding the bottom half of the globe, a large green tree growing out of it. Top text "Go green before green goes". Bottom text "World Earth Day". Background soft focus earth and grass.


Every day really is Earth Day. What else could it be? Knowing that, how will you choose to live?

As with all my collections of poetry I've chosen a few lines to excerpt, not necessarily the first lines in the poem. Follow the links to read the full work.

"Earth Day" by Jane Yolen

As long as life,
As dear, as free,
I am the Earth
And the Earth is me. 

"Make the Earth Your Companion" by J. Patrick Lewis

Make the Earth your companion.
Walk lightly on it, as other creatures do.

"Gravity" by Donna Hilbert

This is why we call the earth Mother,
why all rising is a miracle.

"Treat Each Bear" by Gary Lawless

Treat each bear as the last bear.
Each wolf the last, each caribou.
Each track the last track.

"School Prayer" by Diane Ackerman

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,

"For All" by Gary Snyder

I pledge allegiance to the soil
            of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
             one ecosystem
             in diversity
             under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.

"Love in a Time of Climate Change" by Craig Santos Perez

I love you as one loves the most vulnerable
species: urgently, between the habitat and its loss.

"Beginners" by Denise Levertov

-- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

"Untitled [Earth teach me stillness]" by Nancy Wood

Earth teach me caring
    as the mother who secures her young.
Earth teach me courage
    as the tree which stands all alone.

"When the Animals" by Gary Lawless

When the plants speak to us
     in their delicate, beautiful language,
     will we be able to answer them?

"2007, VI [It is hard to have hope]" by Wendell Berry

Because we have not made our lives to fit
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
the streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of what it is that no other place is, and by
your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
place that you belong to though it is not yours,
for it was from the beginning and will be to the end.

"Map" by Linda Hogan

This is the map of the forsaken world.
This is the world without end
where forests have been cut away from their trees.
These are the lines wolf could not pass over.

"Anthropocene: A Dictionary" by Jake Skeets

diyóół        : wind (

                         wind (more of it) more wind as in (to come up)
                         plastic bags driftwood the fence line 

"Makers" by Pamela Alexander 

We dried rivers or dammed them, made
music, treaties, money, promises.
Made more and more of our kind,
which made the cars and the wars
necessary, the droughts and hurricanes.

"Nimbawaadaan Akiing / I Dream a World" by Margaret Noodin

Nimbawaadaan akiing
I dream a world

atemagag biinaagami
of clean water

gete-mitigoog
ancient trees

gaye gwekaanimad
and changing winds.

"Dead Stars" by Ada Limón

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
     No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
                 if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

"Mending Mittens" by Larry Schug

Blessed be those who have laced together
the splits at the seams of this world,
repaired its threads of twisted waters.
Blessed be those who stitch together
the animals and the land,
repair the rends in the fabric
of wolf and forest,
of whale and ocean,
of condor and sky.
Blessed be those who are forever fixing
the tear between people and the rest of life

"Testimony" by Rebecca Baggett

I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
"a great and common tenderness,"
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it.
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Reruns: April Posts Worth Revisiting

I'll note that since April is the month people try to complete 30 Days of Biking, I've written a lot of posts in this particular month—in 2014 I committed to a format of 30 rides, 30 words, 30 pictures. I've included examples from 2019 as well as 2014 that wrap up the month and link to all the posts that month; regular blogging to hold myself accountable keeps me on track. Many of them are specific to a time and place so they're not quite as evergreen as the ones I'm sharing here.

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Celebrate National Poetry Month

Photo of a page in a book with text of a poem and author's name. Galway Kinnell' "Prayer": Whatever happens. Whatever *what is* is is what I want. Only that. But that.

As I developed my poetry-reading habit I learned April is National Poetry Month, established in 1996. If you're talking about poetry in social media this month use #NationalPoetryMonth. 

Celebrate April 18 as Poem in Your Pocket Day and spread poetry online, in person, in whatever way strikes your fancy. Maybe one of the poems from my posts here and on my Bike Style blog has become a favorite and you're going to print out copies and give them to people, put them in a Little Free Library, leave one on the table at your favorite coffee shop. 

Or perhaps you're simply going to read some poems. You may end up memorizing one and putting it in your mental pocket to keep, as I have with Galway Kinnell's gem, "Prayer" (follow the link to get a video of the poet performing this):

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

Where I find poems

I have a good-sized and growing collection of books by favorite poets (Bookshop.org affiliate collection at the bottom of this post is by no means complete). In my online list of sites I keep adding one more tab to the browser set I keep available. I don't visit every one of these every day; some I do, some I spend time with on a rainy Saturday. Occasionally I go in search of a specific poem referred to in an article and find a whole new collection to work my way through, thanks to the magic of the internet. Some of these I read my way through a while back but they keep growing and I expect to revisit at some point. In addition to this list I sometimes go to the site of a poet who's new to me and read whatever they've made available online.

A Hundred Falling Veils: Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer posts a poem every day, which you can subscribe to receive via email as well as reading them on her site. I visit the site for that day's poem and occasionally search the archives on a specific term. I own several of her books, and she led me to the next site on my list.

A Year of Being Here: Curated by Phyllis Cole-Dai, this site offered a mindfulness poem every day for three straight years. I found it long after the project ended and have been reading my way through the site for going on three years myself, each day reading the poems posted on that date. This site led to the publication of Poetry of Presence, which I read during the early days of the pandemic, and Poetry of Presence II.

American Life in Poetry: I'm working my way back through the archives of this project, the result of a long-running project of publishing poems in daily newspapers.

Poetry Foundation: They publish a poem a day along with writing about poetry. I'll admit I far prefer reading poems to reading about poems, English lit college classes notwithstanding.

Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day: Another site with a poem served fresh every day. They often use older poetry that's in the public domain, which I find less appealing than new poetry.

Poetry Society of America: I truly had no idea there were so many nonprofits dedicated to poetry. Here the poems come bundled with essays that I sometimes read, sometimes skip.

Poetrying: An eclectic collection that isn't adding new poems, but holds plenty for me to work back through.

The Far Field: Washington state poet laureate Katherine Flenniken published poems by Washington poets 2012-2014; the archive continues to 2016.

Library of Congress Poetry 180: When Billy Collins served as the national poet laureate he created this set of poems high schools could use to share a poem every schoolday in a typical school calendar year.

Maya Stein 10-line Tuesday: Stein publishes (spoiler alert) a 10-line poem every Tuesday. You can subscribe to receive them via email or work your through them as she posts them online.

Anthony Wilson, Lifesaving Poems: British poet Anthony Wilson curated a list of poems he describes as "lifesaving," which he turned into a book of the same name. Describing his approach, he writes, "My criteria were extremely basic.  Was the poem one I could recall having had an immediate experience with from the first moment I read it? In short, did I feel the poem was one I could not do without?" He has other collections and his own work on the site.

Grateful.org: Another collection I think of as based in mindfulness and awareness.

Read a Little Poetry: Collection started in 2005 by poet T. De Los Reyes.

Inward Bound Poetry: Yet another poem collector.

And one I can no longer find, so if this rings a bell drop a link in the comments, please! For a while I was reading my way through a truly international collection of poems curated by an engineer from...India, maybe?... who wrote an essay with each poem talking about its context, the poet's biography, other features. I enjoyed the site and now can't find it in my Google history. Various search attempts bring me nothing but ads assuming I want to publish my own book of poetry and an intriguing set of links that have something to do with engineering poetry, or engineering being like poetry, or poems about engineers.... I'm off on another hunt.

My bike racks, ferry landings, and train stations full of poems

Poetry books on Bookshop.org

If you can afford to buy books I hope you support your local independent bookstore. If you can't, libraries are amazing! And putting in requests for titles supports authors in a way that lets others read their work too. If you want/need to shop online, the Bookshop links below are affiliate links. In the unlikely event I ever receive any commissions from book sales I'll donate those funds to organizations working to make streets and cities safer and more just.


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A Year of Poems: April

Yes, yes, courtesy of T.S. Eliot we know April is the cruelest month, but "The Wasteland" isn't really a poem about April. I think of April as the month with the "shoures soote" (sweet showers), courtesy of having to memorize the opening to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for an English class in college. I remember working carefully at the Middle English pronunciation: SHOW-res SOE-tuh, if I recall.

For those who enjoy official designations of days, weeks and months, this is National Poetry Month, established in 1996. If you're talking about poetry in social media this month use #NationalPoetryMonth. 

A note on format: Curated lists of poems usually list the first few lines as an excerpt. I choose specific lines that may be from some other part of the poem, ones that capture something about the poem that made me choose it.

"The General Prologue" by Geoffrey Chaucer

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;

"Just Before April Came" by Carl Sandburg

The snow piles in dark places are gone.
Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear.
The gravel of all shallow places shines.
A white pigeon reels and somersaults.

"April" by Janet Norris Bangs

It's that roustabout born of a fairy mother—
Playfellow month that never grew old,
Cradled in the moon with the wind to brother,
Fed on tempests and sun and cold.

"April 18, 2011" by Richard Katrovas

It is snowing in southwest Michigan.
Such weather is unusual so late.
The trees are squirting buds that advocate
For green profusions that yesterday began
To grunt and poke and strain toward full-blown spring.
Now fleeced, the trees are January stark.

"April 29th" by Alexander F. Bergman

It will be remembered that this day
was beautiful with usual skies,
with constant earth,
with sleep and work and love,
    It was a perfect day for flying kites.

"April Rain Song" by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby

"April Rise" by Laurie Lee

Blown bubble-film of blue, the sky wraps round
Weeds of warm light whose every root and rod
Splutters with soapy green, and all the world
Sweats with the bead of summer in its bud.

"April" by Sara Teasdale

The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.

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Reruns: March Posts Worth Revisiting

Over the years in March I've written quite a lot about biking and occasionally about a different topic or two. The month may come in like a lion, yet I've been able to ride year round no matter where I've lived, from snowy Spokane to soggy Seattle and now grey-ish and mild Olympia.

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A Year of Poems: March

March comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb, right? Or is that April? Depends on where you live and what climate change is doing to move your local weather patterns. Although Shakespeare made the ides of March famous in "Julius Caesar" every month has its ides; per Merriam-Webster the ides was the 15th of March, May, July, or October (the four original 31-day months) or the 13th day of any other month in the ancient Roman calendar

March is also the month in which you may celebrate World Poetry Day on March 21, established by UNESCO in 1999.

Many of the poems I found were from the 19th century. I prefer contemporary poetry so I'm not including the ones with the galloping beat and the occasional forced rhyme. 

This first poem is about a very particular March, one unlike any other before it in my lifetime and one I hope not to find echoed in a future month.

"Things That Are Changed—March 2020" by Kimiko Hahn

Empty jar: I think to grow beansprouts and look into ordering seeds. Back ordered until May 1.

"March 1st" by Larry Schug

A radio weather caster warns his listeners
that tonight will be winter’s coldest,
though spring lurks like a shy suitor,
paralyzed with uncertainty,
shivering on the steps
outside his loved one’s door.

"Dear March—Come in—(1320)" by Emily Dickinson

I got your Letter, and the Birds—
The Maples never knew that you were coming—
I declare - how Red their Faces grew—

"We Like March" by Emily Dickinson

We like March, his shoes are purple.
He is new and high;
Makes he mud for Dog and Peddler,
Makes he forests dry.

"Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself" by Wallace Stevens

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow . . .

"March Thought" by Hilda Conkling 
(this is the entire poem)

I am waiting for the flowers
To come back:
I am alone,
But I can wait for the birds.

"Mid-March" by Mary Ricketson

Surprise is the rule when spring makes promises
and promises are made to break.

"Snowbound, March" by Alice N. Persons

Tomorrow will bring the hard labor of plows,
of shoveling walks, snowblowing a path for the oil man,
the too-familiar weariness
of all that Sisyphean work

but for these few hours there is a kind of peace
in the mostly silent streets,

"March" by Linda Lee Konichek

A few bewildered blades of new grass
Poke through this wet cover, unsure
Of such a cold white-rain world. 

…still there is a softness in the morning air...

"Sprung" by Yash Seyedbagheri

now rich mud of March
pokes through
streams meandering with cheerful indolence
no need to slink straight through snow 

and charcoal nights are replaced
by the lush lavender
evening chill—but not coldness

"Revival" by Luci Shaw

March. I am beginning
to anticipate a thaw. Early mornings
the earth, old unbeliever, is still crusted with frost

"Late March" by Richard Schiffman

Again the trees remembered
to make leaves.
In the forest of their recollection
many birds returned
singing.

A Year of Poems

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Seeing and other Ways of Knowing

I've been thinking a lot about visual metaphors. A lot. When we use a term related to seeing we sometimes mean actual sight, the perception of something that comes in through the visual cortex. But more often we use it to mean so many other words: perceive, recognize, acknowledge, comprehend. 

Ever since reading a piece about how use of visual metaphors excludes people who are blind, I've sought to avoid using visual metaphors as a matter of equity and accessibility. I'm trying not to use terminology that isn't equally available to all. An example that comes up again and again in all kinds of documents: I change "See Appendix A" to "Refer to Appendix A." Whether you're reading print or Braille or listening to a screen reader, you can refer to an appendix.

English in and of itself is not equally available to all. So as I choose words, do I sort my way through all the layers that they bring and all that they stand for? When I do that, what will change in my writing and speech? I research* idioms and phrases I learned as a child to check on** whether they have a racist history I wasn't aware of (true more often than I ever would have guessed).

I came at this question first because of my work in traffic safety, a topic in which the physical world and the language used to describe transportation are so often automobility centered, or "motonormative," to use a term coined by Ian Walker. I give talks in which I tell people to be mode-neutral in order to be mode-inclusive. In other words, re-examine statements to uncover those hidden biases and -isms. 

What does this reexamination mean for everyday speech about things that aren't traffic? What is it that we center, decenter, acknowledge within a wider circle? How do we draw that circle larger and larger so that what we say has meaning for more and more people? 

I'm almost calling for us to translate our own works into other words. When I read poetry in the morning and they acknowledge that a poem was translated, I don't know what was lost through that. I also don't know what was gained.

If we translate our own words into new words we may lose a bit of something we're used to. The exercise of finding new ways to express ourselves in more inclusive ways provides so many gains. As we undertake this rethinking of how we express ourselves what will we notice, perceive, recognize, comprehend, acknowledge, process?

* For "research" I could have used "look up". I chose not to.
** For "check on" I could have used "see". I chose not to.

Edited to add: Shortly after publishing this I read a piece about Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize acceptance speech that adds so much more depth to a discussion of the power of language, with a story about blindness to illustrate the point.

"Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction." — Toni Morrison


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Reruns: February Posts Worth Revisiting

February is a short month even in a leap year like 2024, but some years it has been a fairly prolific blogging month (although nothing compared to January). 

I don't list every February post here; these are the ones I think hold up over time, or that provide a fun or funny trip down memory lane. I list the dates so you can decide just how interested you are in something I wrote 15 years ago. Wow, that went by fast. 

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A Year of Poems: February

February has an interesting history as a month (depending on how you define "interesting"). It's the month you have to stop and think about; does it have 28 days this year or 29? (Hint: This year is divisible by 4.)

The word februare means "to purify" in the dialect of the ancient Sabine tribe; February was the month used to honor the dead and perform ceremonies of purification. 

If you're someone who makes a lot of resolutions January 1, this is the month when those chickens of intention come home to roost. If one of them had to do with organizing a closet or a garage or the whole dang place and this strangely has not yet occurred, you might approach it as a ceremony of purification and tell people you planned to do it in February all along. You're right on schedule—although you'd better hustle since it's still shorter than all the other months.

This idea of purification also fits with the Celtic celebration of Imbolc February 1-2. As a celebration of the coming spring and rebirth, it honors the Celtic goddess Brigid. Flowers have already started to bloom where I live, so yes, spring is on its way.

"February 29" by Jane Hirschfield

An extra day—

Accidental, surely:
the made calendar stumbling over the real

"Aquarium, February" by Liz Ahl

When ice outside makes daggers of the grass,
I come to where the tides of life still flow.
The water here still moves behind the glass.

"February Evening in New York" by Denise Levertov

 Prospect of sky
    wedged into avenues, left at the ends of streets,   
    west sky, east sky: more life tonight! A range   
    of open time at winter's outskirts.

"February" by Margaret Atwood

February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.

"February" by Bill Christopherson

when things in need of doing go undone
and things that can't be undone come to call,
muttering recriminations at the door,
and buried ambitions rise up through the floor

"February" by Michael Field

Learn more about the collaboration of two women writing under the pseudonym "Michael Field." This one is short; presented in its entirety.

Gay lucidity,
Not yet sunshine, in the air;
Tingling secrets hidden everywhere,
Each at watch for each;
Sap within the hillside beech,
Not a leaf to see.

"The Brook in February" by Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

A snowy path for squirrel and fox,
It winds between the wintry firs.
Snow-muffled are its iron rocks,
And o'er its stillness nothing stirs.

"Late February" by Ted Kooser

But such a spring is brief;
by five o’clock
the chill of sundown,
darkness, the blue TVs
flashing like storms
in the picture windows,
the yards gone gray,

"February" by Jill Osier

I curse this month, all it wants 

to be. Its lot is the same
each time, unthawed. 

Yet it taunts.
Dreamer month!

"February" by Tamiko Beyer

Now, a ball of twine in the grey sky. The sun rolls low on the horizon. Hangs. Then dips back down again, wind howling us into night.

Inside the erratic rhythm of this wavering flame, I conjure the potent sky of the longest day. Seeds with a whole galaxy inside them. Cicadas vibrating in the alders.

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Reruns: January Posts Worth Revisiting

Just as I close out a calendar year with a review of the past 12 months, some Januarys I begin with a scan of what lies ahead. I don't make formal resolutions, necessarily, but I might set an intention. 

The word "intention" has its roots in "tendere", to stretch, with the prefix "in" to mean toward. A stretching toward—intention as something active, not passive. I learned the Sanskrit word sankalpa from a yoga nidra practice I use on those rare nights when I find it hard to fall asleep. San means “to become one with” and kalpa means “time” and “subconscious mind.” 

Not all of my January posts involve stretching toward something or becoming one with time and my subconscious mind, but a few do. Others involve me taking on someone else's idea of January as a good time to put out a listicle.

These are generally listed in reverse chronological order. Where I wrote more than one piece and they flow together logically, I've listed them here in the reading order you would have encountered if you subscribed to posts here or on my Bike Style blog.

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Slow Down

On grateful.org they pose a question a day in a community space. One that I thought about from multiple angles: "Where, or when, could I create a bit of space to truly slow down?"

Photo of yellow diamond-shaped traffic sign with text SLOW DOWN. Sign is against a clear blue sky.


"Truly slowing down" may or may not be a desirable goal. I can read this question multiple ways.

Slow down: Don't be so hard on yourself for not getting 5,247 things done every day. 

I've gotten much better at that with age. Even if I had an empty in-box when I stop working tonight, more would show up tomorrow. There is no "done", there is doing and being.

Slow down: Don't try to multitask. 

My brain works well when I have many plates spinning and I enjoy that feeling of being able to shift from one topic to the next to the next (which is what's really happening when people say they're multitasking; we're actually processing in serial, not parallel). Each serves to cross-fertilize with the others. But they need time for that fertilization process.

Slow down: Don't over-commit or sign up for things you don't really want to do. 

OK, yes, I could work on this a bit and say "enough" when my plate is as full as I want it to be. When I do that I feel both guilt and relief. I remind myself the answer isn't just "no" to this, it's "yes" to something else.

Slow down: Giving your best doesn't require giving your everything.

In my younger years I sometimes burned the candle at both ends and from the middle and loved the intensity even if it wore me out at times. As a result of that investment (and recognizing that I have privilege that contributed as well) I’ve been able to build a career that means I don’t have to run at quite the same pace but I still feel the intensity and commitment.

Slow down: Don't work all the time. 

I'm very good at having real weekends. I read, I go for a long walk with my sweet husband to downtown, we might decide to go out for lunch, I might do a big cooking extravaganza, which is one of my favorite activities. Ditto for real evenings; when I sign off at the end of the workday I'm off and I ask my staff to do the same.

Slow down: Pay attention. 

I've had mindfulness practices in one form or another for years now. All of them embed some form of "pay attention". I can take a brisk walk for the health benefits of active movement and pay attention to the shapes and colors of fall leaves, the flash of white on a dove's back as it takes flight to join the whole flock of them that likes to roost in a tall pine tree I can see out my kitchen window, the sound of the frog that croaks somewhere in a neighbor's yard, the colors of the flowers my neighbor at the corner carefully selects so we have beauty all season long, the two-tone whistle of a bird I have yet to identify.

I can talk with my sweetheart or my daughters and make sure I'm really paying attention, not listening with half an ear while I work on something else. 

I can savor and appreciate the flavors of foods I'm eating or the aroma of something I'm cooking.

Slow down: Remember to breathe.

On my desk I keep a rock I found on one of my walks. It has three sides visible when it sits on its flat bottom side. On each of these I've written one word: Inhale. Exhale. Breathe. Some days when I feel as if I haven't really done that, I pick it up and hold it for a couple of full, slow breaths.

Slow down: Make room for slow.

Related reading

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The Rocker, Refinished

I hauled my Grandma Humphrey's rocker around for years before finally doing something about its beyond shabby appearance. It was special to me so I didn't want to give up on it, and last year I vowed to reclaim it.

Fast forward to having our house undergo a major remodel that included new flooring. This meant everything had to come up off the floor and go into a pod parked in our driveway. Rather than stuff the rocker with its peeling paint into the depths of the pod for something like three months, I finally ran to ground a furniture refinisher who said she could do it.

Reagan needed a photo of the rocker to give me an estimate. The easiest way to send that was to send her the blog post I wrote about this rocking chair's history.

Photo of a wooden rocking chair with a reddish wood stain sitting on beige carpet in the glow of a small lamp. The back of the rocker has rounded spindles, with the one closest to the edge of the seat having more curves. A rocking chair collector described it as an army knuckle arm Windsor rocking chair with saddle joints where the legs meet the rockers.When we showed up at Mr. Oak Antiques and Refinishing to drop it off, she gently ran her hand down the arm of the rocker and said, "I like furniture that has a story. Sometimes people bring me something they just bought, and it's going to get its stories in the future." That told me she really loves furniture and what it represents that goes beyond the wood it's made of.

According to a rocking-chair collector who saw the picture I posted on Facebook in its former condition, Grandma's rocker is an Army knuckle arm Windsor rocking chair with saddle joints where the legs meet the rockers. I'll have to take their word for all of that. To me, it's Grandma's rocker.

About a week ago we picked up the restored rocker. Under all the paint it turned out to be oak. The remodeling project isn't done so it will be a few more weeks before it can rock gently on the new floor, gleaming in its new wood stain and acquiring more stories.

 


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A Year of Poems: January

My morning practice of reading poetry before I start the busier part of each day has resulted in quite a few thematic collections of poems. I collect them serendipitously and when I reach what feels like a decent number on a topic, I publish them here or over on Bike Style.

When a poem names a specific month—not just a season but the actual month in the Gregorian calendar full of dead Roman emperors and Roman gods—if I'm reading that poem in that actual month I get a little bump of happiness, or perhaps delight the way Ross Gay describes it in The Book of Delights.

So of course I started my collection of poems that directly name months, not knowing whether I would find one for each month or build a catalog big enough that each month would get its own list. Then I realized committing to a time-bound structure like this requires a different method: actual research. 

That doesn't mean I'll end up with a collection worth publishing every month. I don't yet know how much has been said about each month. It's too easy to take poetry about a holiday held in a particular month and count that as being about the month but it isn't; it's about the holiday. My criteria thus include truly being about that set of days and how they feel, primarily in the northern hemisphere since that's where I live.

It seems appropriate to be less than 100% certain about which way this is going to go. After all, this month is named for Janus, the Roman god with two faces who looked both backward and forward. The god's likeness was often carved above doorways, indicating that we can move either direction through a portal. 

For now I'm moving forward. My poetry posts began just over a year ago with my first collection of bike poems, and I'm listing all of those at the end so you can also travel back in time.

Not at all surprising that other people have also compiled lists of January poems, although they often include ones I would label "winter" because they don't actually name the month. Similarly, if a poem is named for the month or mentions it in passing but doesn't feel to me as if it's "about" the experience of living in or through this month I didn't include it.

I resisted the temptation to load it up with poems about making New Year's resolutions. I've had a variety of thoughts about making resolutions over the years, my primary one being, "Why wait for January 1 if it's worth doing at all?".

And now, on to the poetry. If you have a favorite January poem I've missed, please drop a link on the comments to share. 

"Runoff" by Sidney Burris

January’s drop-down menu
leaves everything to the imagination:

"Letter Written During a January Northeaster" by Anne Sexton

The snow has quietness in it; no songs,
no smells, no shouts nor traffic.
When I speak
my own voice shocks me.

"The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun;

"January" by Betty Adcock

Dusk and snow this hour
in argument have settled
nothing. Light persists,
and darkness

"In January" by Ted Kooser

Beyond the glass, the wintry city
creaks like an ancient wooden bridge.
A great wind rushes under all of us.
The bigger the window, the more it trembles.

"January" by John Updike

The days are short,
The sun a spark,
Hung thin between
The dark and dark.

"New Year's Day" by Kim Addonizio

Today I want   
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,   
and lift my face to it.

"The Sixth of January" by David Budbill

I can’t say the sun is going down.
We haven’t seen the sun for two months.
Who cares?

"In the Second Week of the New Year" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

It brings me real joy
to plant these seeds today
while outside the wind
and snow and cold
do their wintery work.

"To the New Year" by W.S. Merwin

here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are

Related reading: Poems on anything

Related reading: Transportation poems
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