February Lines

1.

Tree at my window, window tree,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

Robert Frost, West-Running Brook (1928)/ Tree at My Window

2.

The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence
And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made

from Hymn to Life/James Schuyler

3.

Stare at ice so long, it becomes the same
as water. Stare at water so long, it is gone.
Stare at the mark made after.

Spell to Practice Patience/ Ann V. Devilbiss

4.

Silent, and soft, and slow
This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

Snow-flakes/ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

5.

The looked-at lives, the lives that are not lived,
The windowed ones within their window world

Windows/ Randall Jarrell

6.

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about…

Keeping Quiet/Pablo Neruda

7.

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me.

Instructions on Not Giving Up/ Ada Limoncellos

8.

it was telling me
in no uncertain terms
to bellow forth the tubas and sousaphones,
the whole rusty brass band of gratitude
not quite dormant in my belly—
it said so in a human voice,
“Bellow forth”—
and who among us could ignore such odd
and precise counsel?

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude/ Ross Gay

9.

Even the birds sing to-do lists.

To the New Journal/ Susan Rich

10.

Clear-cut and certain they rise, with summer past,
For all that trees can ever learn they know now, at last;

Winter Branches/ Margaret Widdemer

11.

when things in need of doing go undone
and things that can’t be undone come to call,
muttering recriminations at the door

February/ Bill Christophersen