CALIFORNIA POEMS

California Prodigal

FOR DAVID P?B

The eye follows, the land
Slips upward, creases down, forms
.....

Maya Angelou

The Sheets

We used to meet
on this corner
in the same wind.
It fought us up the hill
.....

Erica Jong

Little Fugue

The yew's black fingers wag:
Cold clouds go over.
So the deaf and dumb
Signal the blind, and are ignored.
.....

Sylvia Plath

We Ain't Got No Money, Honey, But We Got Rain

call it the greenhouse effect or whatever
but it just doesn't rain like it used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the
depression era.
.....

Charles Bukowski

California On The Passing Of Tennyson

All silent.... So, he lies in state....
Our redwoods drip and drip with rain....
Against our rock-locked Golden Gate
We hear the great, sad, sobbing main.
.....

Joaquin Miller

Address At The Opening Of The California Theatre, San Francisco, January 19, 1870

Brief words, when actions wait, are well:
The prompter's hand is on his bell;
The coming heroes, lovers, kings,
Are idly lounging at the wings;
.....

Bret Harte

Roan Stallion

The dog barked; then the woman stood in the doorway, and hearing
iron strike stone down the steep road
Covered her head with a black shawl and entered the light rain;
she stood at the turn of the road.
.....

Robinson Jeffers

Winter

The pungent smells of a California winter,
Grayness and rosiness, an almost transparent full moon.
I add logs to the fire, I drink and I ponder.

.....

Czeslaw Milosz

Poem (lana Turner Has Collapsed!)

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
.....

Frank O'hara

Old Counsel

Of The Young Master of a Wrecked California Clipper


Come out of the Golden Gate,
.....

Herman Melville

Poem Delivered On The Fourteenth Anniversary Of California's Admission Into The Union, Septemb

We meet in peace, though from our native East
The sun that sparkles on our birthday feast
Glanced as he rose on fields whose dews were red
With darker tints than those Aurora spread.
.....

Bret Harte

Sunny New South Wales

We often hear men boast about the land which gave them birth,
And each one thinks his native land the fairest spot on earth;
In beauty, riches, power, no land can his surpass;
To his, all other lands on earth cannot even hold a glass.
.....

Banjo Paterson

Dr.springer

Lines on presenting Dr. Springer with a diamond ring, when he
was bidding farewell to Ingersoll, and was about journeying
to California.

.....

James Mcintyre

George Mullen's Confession

For the sake of guilty conscience, and the heart that ticks the
time
Of the clockworks of my nature, I desire to say that I'm
A weak and sinful creature, as regards my daily walk
.....

James Whitcomb Riley

An Arctic Vision

Where the short-legged Esquimaux
Waddle in the ice and snow,
And the playful Polar bear
Nips the hunter unaware;
.....

Bret Harte

California

Why should he not have been allowed
To thread with peaceful feet the crowd
Which filled that Christian street?
The Decalogue he had observed,
.....

Ambrose Bierce

How We Kept The Day.

I.
The great procession came up the street,
With clatter of hoofs and tramp of feet;
There was General Jones to guide the van,
.....

Will Carleton

Two Items

STRONG rocks hold up the riksdag bridge ... always strong river waters shoving their shoulders against them ...
In the riksdag to-night three hundred men are talking to each other about more potatoes and bread for the Swedish people to eat this winter.
In a boat among calm waters next to the running waters a fisherman sits in the dark and I, leaning at a parapet, see him lift a net and let it down ... he waits ... the waters run ... the riksdag talks ... he lifts the net and lets it down ...
Stars lost in the sky ten days of drizzle spread over the sky saying yes-yes.
.....

Carl Sandburg

On Receiving An Eagle's Quill From Lake Superior

All day the darkness and the cold
Upon my heart have lain,
Like shadows on the winter sky,
Like frost upon the pane;
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

California Hills In August

I can imagine someone who found
these fields unbearable, who climbed
the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust,
cracking the brittle weeds underfoot,
.....

Dana Gioia

Corn And Catholics

"What! still those two infernal questions,
That with our meals our slumbers mix --
That spoil our tempers and digestions --
Eternal Corn and Catholics!
.....

Thomas Moore

The Golden Whales Of California

Part I.A Short Walk Along the Coast

Yes, I have walked in California,
And the rivers there are blue and white.
.....

Vachel Lindsay

Henry James At The Pacific

-- Coronado Beach, California, March, 1905

In a hotel room by the sea, the Master
Sits brooding on the continent he has crossed.
.....

Donald Justice

The Green Of Michigan

I'VE seen the Rockies in the west,
I've seen the canyons wild and grim,
I've seen the prairies golden dressed,
And California's hedges prim.
.....

Edgar Albert Guest

Impossible To Tell

to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert


Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
.....

Robert Pinsky

The Realms Of Gold

(Written after hearing a line of Keats repeated by a passing stranger
under the palms of Southern California.)


.....

Alfred Noyes

In California: Morning, Evening, Late January

Pale, then enkindled,
light
advancing,
emblazoning
.....

Denise Levertov

The Crisis

ACROSS the Stony Mountains, o'er the desert's drouth and sand,
The circles of our empire touch the western ocean's strand;
From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, wild and free,
Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to California's sea;
.....

John Greenleaf Whittier

John Robinson

AIR -- "The Drunkard"


Come listen, friends, and hear a song,
.....

Julia Ann Moore

Sing Of The Banner At Day-break

POET.

O A new song, a free song,
Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,
.....

Walt Whitman

The Return Of The Heroes

For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself,
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of autumn fields,
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart,
.....

Walt Whitman

Bound For California

With buoyant heart he left his home for that bright wondâ??rous land
Where gold ore gleams in countless mines, and gold dust strews the sand;
And youthâ??s dear ties were riven all, for as wild, as vain, a dream
As the meteor false that leads astray the traveller with its gleam.
.....

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

The Galilee Hitch-hiker

The Galilee Hitch-Hiker
Part 1

Baudelaire was
.....

Richard Brautigan

A Carol Of Harvest, For 1867

A song of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms--a song of the soil of fields.

.....

Walt Whitman

The Voice Of The California Dove

Come, listen O love, to the voice of the dove,
Come, hearken and hear him say,
"There are many Tomorrows, my love, my love,
There is only one Today."
.....

Joaquin Miller

The Traveller

Excerpt from "Gertrude Of Wyoming"


Apart there was a deep untrodden grot,
.....

Thomas Campbell

California's Greeting To Seward

We know him well: no need of praise
Or bonfire from the windy hill
To light to softer paths and ways
The world-worn man we honor still.
.....

Bret Harte (francis)

An Arctic Vision

Where the short-legged Esquimaux
Waddle in the ice and snow,
And the playful Polar bear
Nips the hunter unaware;
.....

Bret Harte (francis)

Concepcion De Arguello

I

Looking seaward, o'er the sand-hills stands the fortress, old and quaint,
By the San Francisco friars lifted to their patron saint,
.....

Bret Harte (francis)

Address - The Opening Of The California Theatre, San Francisco, January 19, 1870

Brief words, when actions wait, are well:
The prompter's hand is on his bell;
The coming heroes, lovers, kings,
Are idly lounging at the wings;
.....

Bret Harte (francis)

California Madrigal

Oh, come, my beloved, from thy winter abode,
From thy home on the Yuba, thy ranch overflowed;
For the waters have fallen, the winter has fled,
And the river once more has returned to its bed.
.....

Bret Harte (francis)

A Supermarket In California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
.....

Allen Ginsberg

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy

What are you thinking about?

I am thinking of an early summer.
I am thinking of wet hills in the rain
.....

Jack Spicer

Ho For California!

Rouse ye, Yankees, from your dreaming!
See that vessel, strong and bold,
On her banner proudly streaming,
California for gold!
.....

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Hoodoo Voodoo Lady

Yeah hoodoo voodoo lady cast up your voodoo vision
Let me know where did my baby go where did my lovin' baby go
Hoodoo voodoo lady shake your black cat tooth and your mojo bone
And bring my baby home bring my baby back home yeah
.....

Shel Silverstein

Winter Stars

My father once broke a man's hand
Over the exhaust pipe of a John Deere tractor. The man,
Ruben Vasquez, wanted to kill his own father
With a sharpened fruit knife, & he held
.....

Larry Levis

A Promise To California

A PROMISE to California,
Also to the great Pastoral Plains, and for Oregon:
Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain,
to teach robust American love;
.....

Walt Whitman

Song Of The Redwood-tree

A CALIFORNIA song!
A prophecy and indirection--a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air;
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing--or hamadryads departing;
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,
.....

Walt Whitman

Facing West From California's Shores

FACING west, from California's shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity, the
land of migrations, look afar,
.....

Walt Whitman

Judex Judicatus

Judge Armstrong, when the poor have sought your aid,
To be released from vows that they have made
In haste, and leisurely repented, you,
As stern as Rhadamanthus (Minos too,
.....

Ambrose Bierce