April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

Last day of April. Poetry though will remain with us.

Ukiah Library's Poem of the Day for National Poetry Month
April 30,2009

Water by Philip Larkin
If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.



Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day – April 30, 2009

Last day of poetry month – As Loreena McKennitt says,
“Let’s leave the last word to Shakespeare”


Sonnet 115

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
Yet then my judgement knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning Time, whose millioned accidents
Creep in ‘twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things –
Alas, why, fearing of Time’s tyranny,
Might I not then say, ‘Now I love you best’,
When I was certain o’er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow.