1 A Girl by Ezra Pound The tree has entered my hands, The sap has ascended my arms, The tree

has grown in my breastDownward, The branches grow out of me, like arms. Tree you are, Moss you are, You are violets with wind above them. A child - so high - you are, And all this is folly to the world.

2 Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the peppermint wind. Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black And the dark street winds and bends. Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And watch where the chalk-white arrows go To the place where the sidewalk ends. Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go, For the children, they mark, and the children, they know The place where the sidewalk ends. 3

The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks

Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get, The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair, The singers and workers that never handled the air. You will never neglect or beat Them, or silence or buy with a sweet. You will never wind up the sucking-thumb Or scuttle off ghosts that come. You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,

Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye. I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children. I have contracted. I have eased My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck. I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized Your luck And your lives from your unfinished reach, If I stole your births and your names, Your straight baby tears and your games, Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths, If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths, Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate. Though why should I whine, Whine that the crime was other than mine?-Since anyhow you are dead. Or rather, or instead, You were never made. But that too, I am afraid, Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said? You were born, you had body, you died. It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried. Believe me, I loved you all. Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you All.

Dads Face by Raymond A. Foss

I saw Dads Face In your face Last weekend In your yard I at the ready To lend a hand To be his helper again Through you, my brother To be close to Him and you Working together Seeing me In your son Brings it full circle The boy I was

And the man I am Smiles at the symmetry Gods Design Played out in us Visible if we will just see

Star Teachers by George William Russell

EVEN as a bird sprays many-coloured fires, The plumes of paradise, the dying light Rays through the fevered air in misty spires That vanish in the heights.

These myriad eyes that look on me are mine; Wandering beneath them I have found again The ancient ample moment, the divine, The God-root within men.

For this, for this the lights innumerable As symbols shine that we the true light win: For every star and every deep they fill Are stars and deeps within.

blows black

ed and slow,

ed and slow,

dren, they know

of my dim killed

arriages, aches,

deliberate.

ed, I loved you