Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash The thing about choosing poems for my Thursday posts is that once I discover a poet I like I end up with many of their poems that I want to feature. I have a list of poems by Mary Oliver because once I discovered her I just kept reading. The same is true this week for Billy Collins. I had read several of his poems before, including the one I am using today, but now I have so many more I would love to share. Don’t be too surprised if Mary Oliver and Billy Collins pop up again on a Thursday sometime very soon. Billy Collins was…

Photo by Jongsun Lee on Unsplash Leonora Speyer was a poet and violinist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for one of her poetry collections. She said about her poetry “Having played the violin since my early youth it seemed but another expression, perhaps a more subtle one, of the same art to find myself writing, studying, deep in the metrics of musical words.” I love the way swallows swoop and soar through the sky. Her poem captures that perfectly. They dip their wings in the sunset, They dash against the air As if to break themselves upon its stillness:  In every movement, too swift to count, Is a revelry of indecision, A furtive delight…

Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash I first came across today’s poem because it is used on a blog I read. Carolann, at Finding Ithaka, loves the poem so much she included it in her blog name. I hadn’t read it before but it is beautiful. The words have such a lovely rhythm and flow to them. C. P. Cavafy was a Greek poet, journalist, and civil servant. His poetry wasn’t formally published in his lifetime. He preferred to have it appear in local newspapers and magazines or to self-publish it in pamphlets he gave away to anyone who expressed interest. He became much more well-known after his death and is now considered…