Herm Card is the City Eagle's roving street reporter and photographer as well as the Eagle's Poetry Editor.
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He is an English teacher, poet, educational consultant, and motivational speaker. He has been a college baseball player and coach, military officer, tournament squash player and NCAA baseball umpire. He is also a Museum Educator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and co-editor of the academic journal, "The English Record."
I realize that picking a favorite poem can border on the impossible. But, it allows us to search through our memories as we might search through the boxes we discover as we clean the attic – letting each old letter or photo or dried flower reenter our consciousness and make us happy or sad, or perhaps young again or strong. These memories, these poems, remind us who we are, where we’ve been and maybe provide a glimpse of where we’re going.
Or, maybe a poem is just a poem, and maybe that’s enough.
Thanks to everyone who has shared the poems in their pockets.
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“My grandfather was a stern, pretty forbidding man – he’s German, it comes with the territory - although a really great grandfather. My cousin found this poem in a book at my grandfather’s bedside and read it at his memorial service. To think that he had these words tucked away is so incongruous and yet so encouraging. People who hide their emotions always seem a bit disappointed when us mere mortals actually shed a tear – that poem was like permission to have feelings instead of tamping them down into the little box inside.”
Ilyssa Wesche
‘Keep a Poem in Your Pocket’
Keep a poem in your pocket
And a picture in your head
And you’ll never feel lonely
At night when you’re in bed.
Beatrice Schenk de Regniers
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“Peggy Manring calligraphied this poem for my mother (her best friend) about 30 years ago, and it has always had a special place in my heart. Mary Oliver came to the Gifford series last year to speak, and my sister and I went to represent my mother, and how much she loved this nature and animal friend-inspired poet.”
Rebecca Dalton
‘In Blackwater Woods’
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Mary Oliver
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“This was one of my early favorite poems, when I was in high school near Chicago. The muscular, rough, common man imagery of Carl Sandburg appealed to me, as many of the settings were in the city during earlier times. However, this is more like a haiku than his character-sketch or scenario poems. It is a great example of personification.”
Jane Leahy Rauen
‘Fog’
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Carl Sandburg
“Fog” is also the favorite poem of Barb Maxian, my 9th grade English teacher at Endwell Junior High, who says “I love it for its imagery and simplicity.” She taught me the poem and more important, the joy of teaching.
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“In a world filled with hype about super models and false images of one type of beauty, this poem expresses how true beauty in woman is so much more than a certain size, look, or personality. Instead, what truly makes a woman beautiful are the traits that are unique to her. If only we could hear more of Maya Angelou and less mass marketing .”
Stephanie Miner
From: ‘Phenomenal Woman’
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Maya Angelou
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“Right now, here is the best I've got. Tom Peyer and I compiled this, while studying the poetry of American pundits.”
Hart Seely
‘Stay Tuned’
Brand new!
Very disturbing,
And it's about
Chris Brown and Rihanna--
Punching, biting,
Blood everywhere.
It is really horrible.
That's next!
Greta Van Susteren
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“I'm attaching a poem my daughter wrote. I love it because she remembers details of her childhood with a strong connection to the earth that I didn't know she paid attention to. Her expression of the inevitability of growing up makes me sad.”
Fran Lawlor
‘Original Dirt’
Under a tire swing
that no longer hangs
under a maple
that no longer stands
near a rotting stump
infested with lilac.
Between small fingers,
the smooth intrigue of
worm castings, pebbles
in the child‐carved basin.
When I see the word soil
when I smell wet leaves
after rain, or vapor rising
from August baked earth
into humid air,
when a dog jumps up
and smears his filthy paws
down my blue jean thighs,
I see toes digging
in the damp ground,
as ignorant as potatoes
of their inevitable uprooting.
Julia Kleinberg
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“You know my story. starving artist; defiant, and ready to fight for a cause. But
I like money too. So I'm in LA now and old tunes I loved out here return to me.
It's like they find their way out of cheap Hollywood hotels, and out of unknown
administrative offices,in subway stations.
And today I started a new job, and it's a damn compromise. So here it goe”:
Alejandro Betancourt
Song: ‘Asking For It’
Every time I sell myself to you
I feel a little bit cheaper than I need to...
Why: Because selling out hurts.
Artist: Hole
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“It's a snapshot meditation, a prayer, a Western haiku of the highest spiritual order.”
Paul Kocak
‘Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors’
What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass.
William Butler Yeats
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“The summer that I was ten was a great transition of moving from Buffalo (pop 500,000) to Candor, NY, a rural village of 750 souls: Small Town In Mass Society (Princeton Press 1958). Is it possible that so may childhood memories can be encapsulated in such a short period of time as one summer?”
Doug Morris
‘The Centaur’
The summer that I was ten --
Can it be there was only one
summer that I was ten?
It must have been a long one then –
May Swenson
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“I first came across this poem in a high school English class more than 40 years ago in England. I don't think i fully comprehended it back then, but loved the rhythms and the counterpoint in the verse. Now that I am older, its meaning is much clearer to me, and I think of it every year when I see the leaves start to fall.”
Adrienne Short .
‘Spring and Fall: To a Young Child’
Márgarét, are you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
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“Why do I love this? The sound of children laughing is better than the best piece of music written and every time I read this to my students their laughter would serenade me!”
Barbara Hillman
‘Too Many Kids in this Tub’
There are too many kids in this tub
There are too many elbows to scrub
I just washed a behind
That I'm sure wasn't mine...
There are too many kids in this tub.
Shel Silversteen
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“Stewart produced this poem during a workshop I conducted at Aurburn Prison, which led to us producing BORN INTO A FELONY, the first national anthology of contemporary American prison writing.”
Walt Shepperd
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The Artist
funny (or not so)
how a man
in prison
thinks of all
the things he should have
done
the things
he meant to
say.
he writes
letters
but a letter
cannot
warm a bed
kiss a child.
so
at night
in a
double edged
cubicle
sleep
makes him an
artist
& he paints
the
water color world
he remembers.
but
in the morning
he must
take the easle out
to dry.
& it is raining
in the prison yard.
Stewart Brisby
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I don't know who wrote this....It's meaningful to me because it was sent to me by a friend after my brother died. I think it speaks of those you have passed, but are still with us and watching over us....
Eileen Heagerty
Like a Wave Crest
Escaped and Frozen,
One White Egret
Guards the Harbor Mouth
(Japanese Emperor Uda, circa 9th century)
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“On another day I might send you other choices, but, a single line from Wallace Stevens' ‘Sunday Morning’ will do:”
Children picking up our bones will never know that we were once as quick as foxes on the hill.
“Of course mortality has been on my mind, but also what poetry & all that implies are really supposed to serve.”
Nancy Keefe Rhodes
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“My favorite poem from childhood continues to be such a short and sweet one from Robert Louis Stevenson. It just makes me feel good and it's easy to remember and recite.”
Jody Brown
"The world is so full of a number of things
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."
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“I have always loved the fact that a man would refer to his love being a secret. I feel that sometimes it is more romantic to love someone on a truly personal level without necessarily shouting it from the roof tops (however, there is also something romantic about a man writing a poem about his special love)”
Corrie Jae Sorin
From: ‘ i carry your heart with me’
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
e.e cummings
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“The following are lines from my favorite poet, Mary Oliver from her poem ‘When Death Comes.’ My husband Michael and I used it for our wedding program, but I hope that I apply it in my day to day living.”
Moe Harrington
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
Mary Oliver
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“A short poem which I actually have been carrying around in my pocket
for a couple months. but I think I've got it memorized now.”
Russ Tarby
‘The Bottle Preferred’
As great as a monarch
These moments I pass.
The bottle's my globe,
My scepter's my glass.
The table's my throne,
The tavern's my court.
The barkeep's my subject,
And drinking's my sport.
Allan Ramsay
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“I was able to reconnect with some poets from my past - this guy is one of my favorites who read when I was at Pastabilities. How about this - but then it is out of context - yet I love Milagros.”
Ellen Leahy
From: ‘Mickey Mantle Sees Isabel Allende Holding the Head of Hermann Hesse as he Dreams of Mother Eve’
Everyday I look for a milagro,
little medals made of tin or silver or gold—
wax or wood or bone.
If you have a headache,
the milagro will be in the shape of a head.
If your heart is hurt,
it will be in the shape of a heart.
You pin them on a saint
and everything is made better.
Patrick Lawler
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“These lines are excerpted from Bob Dylan’s ‘Every Grain of Sand’ and remind me of the fragility of our existence and how thankful I am for those who have kept me on the right track, sharing their love and strength with me.”
Herm Card
I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand.
I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other time it's only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.
Bob Dylan
