The Wump-Wump Zoo,
by Martha Webster

Jimmy Joe John Jacob Jackson Boo
who had just turned four-- plus two,
was wondering aloud what a man was supposed to do.
Sheesh, he muttered. All he needed was just another minute or two.
Didn’t people know it wasn‘t easy being caretaker of
The Wump-Wump Zoo? He had to feed the addles and the ordles.
He had to walk the wiggers and the wodders,

The Kalamazoo Mall
by Martha Webster

With a hearty -- ho, ho, ho! -- and a -- Merry Christmas to you! --
that jolly ol’ soul dressed all in red and looking like you know who,
waved to that next kid in line and said, “come on up here, and I’ll see what I can do! I‘ve always wanted to meet the infamous Jimmy Joe John Jacob Jackson Boo! And don’t ask me how I knew,” said that man dressed all in red and looking like you know who. “It‘s just one of the many things -- ho, ho, ho! -- jolly ol’ Saint Nick’s paid to do. And bring that list with ya, Jimmy Joe,” he said, cuz my job you know -- ho, ho, ho! -- is making the hopes and wishes of little boys come true.”

A Bird came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw –
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw

And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass –
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass-

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all around –
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought –
He stirred his Velvet head

Like one in danger, Cautious

by Elizabeth Coatsworth

Swift things are beautiful:
Swallows and deer
And lightning that falls
Bright-veined and clear,
Rivers and meteors,
Wind in the wheat,
The strong-withered horse,
The runner's sure feet.

And slow things are beautiful:
The closing of day,
The pause of the wave
That curves downward to spray,
The ember that crumbles,
The opening flower,
And the ox that moves on

by A. A. Milne

I've got shoes with grown up laces,
I've got knickers and a pair of braces,
I'm all ready to run some races.
Who's coming out with me?

I've got a nice new pair of braces,
I've got shoes with new brown laces,
I know wonderful paddly places.
Who's coming out with me?

Every morning my new grace is,
"Thank you God, for my nice braces:
I can tie my new brown laces."

When my mother died I was very young;
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep.
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Darce, who cried when his head
That curl'd like a lambs back, was shav'd, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.

And so he was quiet, & that very night,

by Langston Hughes

In time of silver rain
The earth
Puts forth new life again,
Green grasses grow
And flowers lift their heads,
And over all the plain
The wonder spreads
Of life,
Of life,
Of life!

In time of silver rain
The butterflies
Lift silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry,
And trees put forth
New leaves to sing
In joy beneath the sky
As down the roadway
Passing boys and girls

The Second Person

You are the second person.

You look around for someone else to be the second person. But there is no one else. Even if there were someone else there they could not be you. You try to shelter in imagining that you are plural. It is a dream which the whole of the waking world is trying to remember. It is the orphan's mother who never lived but is longed for and has been accorded a pronoun that is an echo of your own, since she has no name. Her temple is an arrangement of mirrors. But nothing stays in it. Think how you keep your thoughts to yourself, on your rare visits there. And how quickly you leave.

by Ron Rash

Ours was an easy courage.
Noneof us college prep,
we did time in Crest High's
vocational wing.

learning nothing
that would save us
from trailer parks and mill work,
or even a winding down war.

So we ran against time,
lived for stolen seconds,
finding or measure
brassed in trophy cases.

Tight as the baton,
we gripped our certain knowledge:
that running in circles meant

by Francis Webb

This runner on his final lap
Sucks wildly for elusive air;
Space is a vortex, time's a gap,
Seconds are shells that hiss and flare
Between red mist and cool white day
Four hundred throttling yards away.

Each spike shaped muscle, yelping nerve,
Worries, snaps at his stumbling weight;
He goes wide on his floating curve,
Cursing with crazy hammering hate
A rival glued to inside ground

Runner
by W. H. Auden

All visible visibly
Moving things
Spin or swing,
One of the two,
Move, as the limbs
Of a runner do,
To and fro,
Forward and back,
Or, as they swiftly
Carry him,
In orbit go
Round an endless track:
So, everywhere, every
Creature disporting
Itself according
To the law of its making,
In the rivals' dance
Of a balanced pair,
Or the ring-dance
Round a common centre,

by Langston Hughes

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor-
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps

Sonnet 33
by William Shakespeare

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy,
Anon, permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:
Even so my sun one early morn did shine

Sonnet
by Elizabeth Bishop

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

by Emily Dickinson

Feather

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird