favourite poems

Little by little, and also in great leaps,

Life happened to me,

and how significant this business is.

These veins carried my blood, which I scarcely ever saw.

I breathed the air of so many places

without keeping a sample of any.

In the end, everyone is aware of this:

nobody keeps any of what he has,

and life is a borrowing of bones.

Poetry 180 is the idea that one poem should be shared, at school, for every 180 days of the school year.

I can't resist ee cummings.  For anyone unfamiliar with his streamy, playful prose, i encourage you to google this guy. He writes of love and nature, with refreshing wit and satire. his poems, like dickinson's, are titled by first line... so this one is called, in just-

Eyesight

It was May before my
attention came
to spring and

my word I said
to the southern slopes
I've

missed it, it
came and went before
I got right to see:

don't worry, said the mountain,
try the later northern slopes
or if

you can climb, climb
into spring: but
said the mountain

it's not that way
with all things, some
that go are gone

--A. R. Ammons, The Selected Poems, 1951-1977, W.W. Norton, 1977