I had a lot of things I wanted to write about this week and yet, somehow the week has gotten away from me and here we are on a Thursday again. Some weeks are like that. It seemed to be a good week for a Billy Collins poem. But then, most weeks are good weeks for Billy Collins. His poetry always speaks the words I didn’t know I wanted to say. Maybe that is the thing about most poetry. It puts into words the emotions that are universal. You are turning me like someone turning a globe in her hand, and yes, I have another side like a China no…

Jack Ridl is an American poet and a retired professor of English. The website, Brilliant Books, describes his poetry this way. Jack Ridl shares lines of well-earned wisdom in the face of a constantly changing world. The familiar comforts of life–a warm fire in winter, a lush garden in summer–become the settings for transcendent and universal truths in these poems, as moments of grief, sadness, and melancholy trigger a deeper appreciation for small but important joys. Assume it's in the kitchen, under the couch, high in the pine tree out back, behind the paint cans in the garage. Don't try proving your love is bigger than the Grand Canyon, the…

I have featured Jane Kenyon’s poetry before. You can see those posts here and here. I enjoy her acceptance of the ordinariness of everyday life tied with the awe of the natural world. Let the light of late afternoon shine through the chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn. Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let…