Best Famous Beaches Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Beaches poems. This is a select list of the best famous Beaches poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Beaches poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of beaches poems.

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• All Famous Beaches Poems

Written by Charlotte Bronte | Life I leave the office, take the stairs, in time to mail a letter before 3 in the afternoon--the last dispatch. The red, white and blue air mail falls past the slot for foreign mail and hits bottom with a sound that tells me my letter is alone. They will have to bring in a plane from a place of coastline and beaches, from a climate of fresh figs and apricot, to cradle my one letter. Up in the air it will leave behind some of its ugly nuance, its unpleasant habit of humanity which wants to smear itself over others: the spot in which it wasn't clear, perhaps, how to take my words, which were suggestive, the paragraph in which the names of flowers, ostensibly to indicate travel, make a bed for lovers, the parts that contain spit and phlegm, the words only a wet tongue can manage, hissing sounds and letters of the alphabet which can only be formed by biting down on the bottom lip. In the next-to-last paragraph, some hair came off in the comb. Then clothes were gathered from everywhere in the room in one sentence, and the sun rose while a door closed with sincerity. No doubt such sincerity will be judged, but first the investigation of the postmark. Am I where I was expected? Did I have at hand the right denominations of stamps, or did I make a childish quilt of ones and sevens? Ah yes, they will have to cancel me twice. Once to make my words worthless. Once more to stop me from writing.

Written by Billy Collins | Child Development As sure as prehistoric fish grew legs and sauntered off the beaches into forests working up some irregular verbs for their first conversation, so three-year-old children enter the phase of name-calling. Every day a new one arrives and is added to the repertoire. You Dumb Goopyhead, You Big Sewerface, You Poop-on-the-Floor (a kind of Navaho ring to that one) they yell from knee level, their little mugs flushed with challenge. Nothing Samuel Johnson would bother tossing out in a pub, but then the toddlers are not trying to devastate some fatuous Enlightenment hack. They are just tormenting their fellow squirts or going after the attention of the giants way up there with their cocktails and bad breath talking baritone nonsense to other giants, waiting to call them names after thanking them for the lovely party and hearing the door close. The mature save their hothead invective for things: an errant hammer, tire chains, or receding trains missed by seconds, though they know in their adult hearts, even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed for his appalling behavior, that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids, their wives are Dopey Dopeheads and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants.

Written by Allen Ginsberg | Who Runs America? Oil brown smog over Denver Oil red dung colored smoke level to level across the horizon blue tainted sky above Oil car smog gasoline hazing red Denver's day December bare trees sticking up from housetop streets Plane lands rumbling, planes rise over radar wheels, black smoke drifts from tailfins Oil millions of cars speeding the cracked plains Oil from Texas, Bahrein, Venezuela Mexico Oil that turns General Motors revs up Ford lights up General Electric, oil that crackles thru International Business Machine computers, charges dynamos for ITT sparks Western Electric runs thru Amer Telephone & Telegraph wires Oil that flows thru Exxon New Jersey hoses, rings in Mobil gas tank cranks, rumbles Chrysler engines shoots thru Texaco pipelines blackens ocean from broken Gulf tankers spills onto Santa Barbara beaches from Standard of California derricks offshore.

Written by Sylvia Plath | Tale Of A Tub The photographic chamber of the eye records bare painted walls, while an electric light lays the chromium nerves of plumbing raw; such poverty assaults the ego; caught naked in the merely actual room, the stranger in the lavatory mirror puts on a public grin, repeats our name but scrupulously reflects the usual terror. Just how guilty are we when the ceiling reveals no cracks that can be decoded? when washbowl maintains it has no more holy calling than physical ablution, and the towel dryly disclaims that fierce troll faces lurk in its explicit folds? or when the window, blind with steam, will not admit the dark which shrouds our prospects in ambiguous shadow? Twenty years ago, the familiar tub bred an ample batch of omens; but now water faucets spawn no danger; each crab and octopus -- scrabbling just beyond the view, waiting for some accidental break in ritual, to strike -- is definitely gone; the authentic sea denies them and will pluck fantastic flesh down to the honest bone. We take the plunge; under water our limbs waver, faintly green, shuddering away from the genuine color of skin; can our dreams ever blur the intransigent lines which draw the shape that shuts us in? absolute fact intrudes even when the revolted eye is closed; the tub exists behind our back; its glittering surfaces are blank and true. Yet always the ridiculous nude flanks urge the fabrication of some cloth to cover such starkness; accuracy must not stalk at large: each day demands we create our whole world over, disguising the constant horror in a coat of many-colored fictions; we mask our past in the green of Eden, pretend future's shining fruit can sprout from the navel of this present waste. In this particular tub, two knees jut up like icebergs, while minute brown hairs rise on arms and legs in a fringe of kelp; green soap navigates the tidal slosh of seas breaking on legendary beaches; in faith we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.

Written by Marge Piercy | My Mothers Body 1. The dark socket of the year the pit, the cave where the sun lies down and threatens never to rise, when despair descends softly as the snow covering all paths and choking roads: then hawkfaced pain seized you threw you so you fell with a sharp cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk. My father heard the crash but paid no mind, napping after lunch yet fifteen hundred miles north I heard and dropped a dish. Your pain sunk talons in my skull and crouched there cawing, heavy as a great vessel filled with water, oil or blood, till suddenly next day the weight lifted and I knew your mind had guttered out like the Chanukah candles that burn so fast, weeping veils of wax down the chanukiya. Those candles were laid out, friends invited, ingredients bought for latkes and apple pancakes, that holiday for liberation and the winter solstice when tops turn like little planets. Shall you have all or nothing take half or pass by untouched? Nothing you got, Nun said the dreydl as the room stopped spinning. The angel folded you up like laundry your body thin as an empty dress. Your clothes were curtains hanging on the window of what had been your flesh and now was glass. Outside in Florida shopping plazas loudspeakers blared Christmas carols and palm trees were decked with blinking lights. Except by the tourist hotels, the beaches were empty. Pelicans with pregnant pouches flapped overhead like pterodactyls. In my mind I felt you die. First the pain lifted and then you flickered and went out. 2. I walk through the rooms of memory. Sometimes everything is shrouded in dropcloths, every chair ghostly and muted. Other times memory lights up from within bustling scenes acted just the other side of a scrim through which surely I could reach my fingers tearing at the flimsy curtain of time which is and isn't and will be the stuff of which we're made and unmade. In sleep the other night I met you, seventeen your first nasty marriage just annulled, thin from your abortion, clutching a book against your cheek and trying to look older, trying to took middle class, trying for a job at Wanamaker's, dressing for parties in cast off stage costumes of your sisters. Your eyes were hazy with dreams. You did not notice me waving as you wandered past and I saw your slip was showing. You stood still while I fixed your clothes, as if I were your mother. Remember me combing your springy black hair, ringlets that seemed metallic, glittering; remember me dressing you, my seventy year old mother who was my last dollbaby, giving you too late what your youth had wanted. 3. What is this mask of skin we wear, what is this dress of flesh, this coat of few colors and little hair? This voluptuous seething heap of desires and fears, squeaking mice turned up in a steaming haystack with their babies? This coat has been handed down, an heirloom this coat of black hair and ample flesh, this coat of pale slightly ruddy skin. This set of hips and thighs, these buttocks they provided cushioning for my grandmother Hannah, for my mother Bert and for me and we all sat on them in turn, those major muscles on which we walk and walk and walk over the earth in search of peace and plenty. My mother is my mirror and I am hers. What do we see? Our face grown young again, our breasts grown firm, legs lean and elegant. Our arms quivering with fat, eyes set in the bark of wrinkles, hands puffy, our belly seamed with childbearing, Give me your dress that I might try it on. Oh it will not fit you mother, you are too fat. I will not fit you mother. I will not be the bride you can dress, the obedient dutiful daughter you would chew, a dog's leather bone to sharpen your teeth. You strike me sometimes just to hear the sound. Loneliness turns your fingers into hooks barbed and drawing blood with their caress. My twin, my sister, my lost love, I carry you in me like an embryo as once you carried me. 4. What is it we turn from, what is it we fear? Did I truly think you could put me back inside? Did I think I would fall into you as into a molten furnace and be recast, that I would become you? What did you fear in me, the child who wore your hair, the woman who let that black hair grow long as a banner of darkness, when you a proper flapper wore yours cropped? You pushed and you pulled on my rubbery flesh, you kneaded me like a ball of dough. Rise, rise, and then you pounded me flat. Secretly the bones formed in the bread. I became willful, private as a cat. You never knew what alleys I had wandered. You called me bad and I posed like a gutter queen in a dress sewn of knives. All I feared was being stuck in a box with a lid. A good woman appeared to me indistinguishable from a dead one except that she worked all the time. Your payday never came. Your dreams ran with bright colors like Mexican cottons that bled onto the drab sheets of the day and would not bleach with scrubbing. My dear, what you said was one thing but what you sang was another, sweetly subversive and dark as blackberries and I became the daughter of your dream. This body is your body, ashes now and roses, but alive in my eyes, my breasts, my throat, my thighs. You run in me a tang of salt in the creek waters of my blood, you sing in my mind like wine. What you did not dare in your life you dare in mine.

Written by Elinor Wylie | Wild Peaches 1 When the world turns completely upside down You say we'll emigrate to the Eastern Shore Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, You'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold colour. Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown. The winter will be short, the summer long, The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot, Tasting of cider and of scuppernong; All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all. The squirrels in their silver fur will fall Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot. 2 The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass Like bloom on grapes of purple-brown and gold. The misted early mornings will be cold; The little puddles will be roofed with glass. The sun, which burns from copper into brass, Melts these at noon, and makes the boys unfold Their knitted mufflers; full as they can hold Fat pockets dribble chestnuts as they pass. Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover; A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year; The spring begins before the winter's over. By February you may find the skins Of garter snakes and water moccasins Dwindled and harsh, dead-white and cloudy-clear. 3 When April pours the colours of a shell Upon the hills, when every little creek Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell, When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak, We shall live well -- we shall live very well. The months between the cherries and the peaches Are brimming cornucopias which spill Fruits red and purple, sombre-bloomed and black; Then, down rich fields and frosty river beaches We'll trample bright persimmons, while you kill Bronze partridge, speckled quail, and canvasback. 4 Down to the Puritan marrow of my bones There's something in this richness that I hate. I love the look, austere, immaculate, Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones. There's something in my very blood that owns Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate, A thread of water, churned to milky spate Streaming through slanted pastures fenced with stones. I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray, Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meagre sheaves; That spring, briefer than apple-blossom's breath, Summer, so much too beautiful to stay, Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves, And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

Written by Czeslaw Milosz | A Poem For the End of the Century When everything was fine And the notion of sin had vanished And the earth was ready In universal peace To consume and rejoice Without creeds and utopias, I, for unknown reasons, Surrounded by the books Of prophets and theologians, Of philosophers, poets, Searched for an answer, Scowling, grimacing, Waking up at night, muttering at dawn. What oppressed me so much Was a bit shameful. Talking of it aloud Would show neither tact nor prudence. It might even seem an outrage Against the health of mankind. Alas, my memory Does not want to leave me And in it, live beings Each with its own pain, Each with its own dying, Its own trepidation. Why then innocence On paradisal beaches, An impeccable sky Over the church of hygiene? Is it because that Was long ago? To a saintly man --So goes an Arab tale-- God said somewhat maliciously: "Had I revealed to people How great a sinner you are, They could not praise you." "And I," answered the pious one, "Had I unveiled to them How merciful you are, They would not care for you." To whom should I turn With that affair so dark Of pain and also guilt In the structure of the world, If either here below Or over there on high No power can abolish The cause and the effect? Don't think, don't remember The death on the cross, Though everyday He dies, The only one, all-loving, Who without any need Consented and allowed To exist all that is, Including nails of torture. Totally enigmatic. Impossibly intricate. Better to stop speech here. This language is not for people. Blessed be jubilation. Vintages and harvests. Even if not everyone Is granted serenity.

Written by Rabindranath Tagore | The Astronomer I only said, "When in the evening the round full moon gets entangled among the beaches of that Dadam tree, couldn't somebody catch it?" But dada laughed at me and said, "Baby, you are the silliest child I have ever known. The moon is ever so far from us, how could anybody catch it?" I said, "Dada, how foolish you are! When mother looks out of her window and smiles down at us playing, would you call her far away?" Still dada said, "You are a stupid child! But, baby where could you find a net big enough to catch the moon with?" I said, "Surely you could catch it with your hands." But dada laughed and said, "You are the silliest child I have known. If it came nearer, you would see how big the moon is." I said, "Dada, what nonsense they teach at your school! When mother bends her face down to kiss us, does her face look very big?" But still dada says, "You are a stupid child."

Written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Hiawathas Fishing Forth upon the Gitche Gumee, On the shining Big-Sea-Water, With his fishing-line of cedar, Of the twisted bark of cedar, Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma, Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes, In his birch canoe exulting All alone went Hiawatha. Through the clear, transparent water He could see the fishes swimming Far down in the depths below him; See the yellow perch, the Sahwa, Like a sunbeam in the water, See the Shawgashee, the craw-fish, Like a spider on the bottom, On the white and sandy bottom. At the stern sat Hiawatha, With his fishing-line of cedar; In his plumes the breeze of morning Played as in the hemlock branches; On the bows, with tail erected, Sat the squirrel, Adjidaumo; In his fur the breeze of morning Played as in the prairie grasses. On the white sand of the bottom Lay the monster Mishe-Nahma, Lay the sturgeon, King of Fishes; Through his gills he breathed the water, With his fins he fanned and winnowed, With his tail he swept the sand-floor. There he lay in all his armor; On each side a shield to guard him, Plates of bone upon his forehead, Down his sides and back and shoulders Plates of bone with spines projecting Painted was he with his war-paints, Stripes of yellow, red, and azure, Spots of brown and spots of sable; And he lay there on the bottom, Fanning with his fins of purple, As above him Hiawatha In his birch canoe came sailing, With his fishing-line of cedar. "Take my bait," cried Hiawatha, Dawn into the depths beneath him, "Take my bait, O Sturgeon, Nahma! Come up from below the water, Let us see which is the stronger!" And he dropped his line of cedar Through the clear, transparent water, Waited vainly for an answer, Long sat waiting for an answer, And repeating loud and louder, "Take my bait, O King of Fishes!" Quiet lay the sturgeon, Nahma, Fanning slowly in the water, Looking up at Hiawatha, Listening to his call and clamor, His unnecessary tumult, Till he wearied of the shouting; And he said to the Kenozha, To the pike, the Maskenozha, "Take the bait of this rude fellow, Break the line of Hiawatha!" In his fingers Hiawatha Felt the loose line jerk and tighten, As he drew it in, it tugged so That the birch canoe stood endwise, Like a birch log in the water, With the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Perched and frisking on the summit. Full of scorn was Hiawatha When he saw the fish rise upward, Saw the pike, the Maskenozha, Coming nearer, nearer to him, And he shouted through the water, "Esa! esa! shame upon you! You are but the pike, Kenozha, You are not the fish I wanted, You are not the King of Fishes!" Reeling downward to the bottom Sank the pike in great confusion, And the mighty sturgeon, Nahma, Said to Ugudwash, the sun-fish, To the bream, with scales of crimson, "Take the bait of this great boaster, Break the line of Hiawatha!" Slowly upward, wavering, gleaming, Rose the Ugudwash, the sun-fish, Seized the line of Hiawatha, Swung with all his weight upon it, Made a whirlpool in the water, Whirled the birch canoe in circles, Round and round in gurgling eddies, Till the circles in the water Reached the far-off sandy beaches, Till the water-flags and rushes Nodded on the distant margins. But when Hiawatha saw him Slowly rising through the water, Lifting up his disk refulgent, Loud he shouted in derision, "Esa! esa! shame upon you! You are Ugudwash, the sun-fish, You are not the fish I wanted, You are not the King of Fishes!" Slowly downward, wavering, gleaming, Sank the Ugudwash, the sun-fish, And again the sturgeon, Nahma, Heard the shout of Hiawatha, Heard his challenge of defiance, The unnecessary tumult, Ringing far across the water. From the white sand of the bottom Up he rose with angry gesture, Quivering in each nerve and fibre, Clashing all his plates of armor, Gleaming bright with all his war-paint; In his wrath he darted upward, Flashing leaped into the sunshine, Opened his great jaws, and swallowed Both canoe and Hiawatha. Down into that darksome cavern Plunged the headlong Hiawatha, As a log on some black river Shoots and plunges down the rapids, Found himself in utter darkness, Groped about in helpless wonder, Till he felt a great heart beating, Throbbing in that utter darkness. And he smote it in his anger, With his fist, the heart of Nahma, Felt the mighty King of Fishes Shudder through each nerve and fibre, Heard the water gurgle round him As he leaped and staggered through it, Sick at heart, and faint and weary. Crosswise then did Hiawatha Drag his birch-canoe for safety, Lest from out the jaws of Nahma, In the turmoil and confusion, Forth he might be hurled and perish. And the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Frisked and chatted very gayly, Toiled and tugged with Hiawatha Till the labor was completed. Then said Hiawatha to him, "O my little friend, the squirrel, Bravely have you toiled to help me; Take the thanks of Hiawatha, And the name which now he gives you; For hereafter and forever Boys shall call you Adjidaumo, Tail-in-air the boys shall call you!" And again the sturgeon, Nahma, Gasped and quivered in the water, Then was still, and drifted landward Till he grated on the pebbles, Till the listening Hiawatha Heard him grate upon the margin, Felt him strand upon the pebbles, Knew that Nahma, King of Fishes, Lay there dead upon the margin. Then he heard a clang and flapping, As of many wings assembling, Heard a screaming and confusion, As of birds of prey contending, Saw a gleam of light above him, Shining through the ribs of Nahma, Saw the glittering eyes of sea-gulls, Of Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, peering, Gazing at him through the opening, Heard them saying to each other, "'T is our brother, Hiawatha!" And he shouted from below them, Cried exulting from the caverns: "O ye sea-gulls! O my brothers! I have slain the sturgeon, Nahma; Make the rifts a little larger, With your claws the openings widen, Set me free from this dark prison, And henceforward and forever Men shall speak of your achievements, Calling you Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, Yes, Kayoshk, the Noble Scratchers!" And the wild and clamorous sea-gulls Toiled with beak and claws together, Made the rifts and openings wider In the mighty ribs of Nahma, And from peril and from prison, From the body of the sturgeon, From the peril of the water, They released my Hiawatha. He was standing near his wigwam, On the margin of the water, And he called to old Nokomis, Called and beckoned to Nokomis, Pointed to the sturgeon, Nahma, Lying lifeless on the pebbles, With the sea-gulls feeding on him. "I have slain the Mishe-Nahma, Slain the King of Fishes!" said he' "Look! the sea-gulls feed upon him, Yes, my friends Kayoshk, the sea-gulls; Drive them not away, Nokomis, They have saved me from great peril In the body of the sturgeon, Wait until their meal is ended, Till their craws are full with feasting, Till they homeward fly, at sunset, To their nests among the marshes; Then bring all your pots and kettles, And make oil for us in Winter." And she waited till the sun set, Till the pallid moon, the Night-sun, Rose above the tranquil water, Till Kayoshk, the sated sea-gulls, From their banquet rose with clamor, And across the fiery sunset Winged their way to far-off islands, To their nests among the rushes. To his sleep went Hiawatha, And Nokomis to her labor, Toiling patient in the moonlight, Till the sun and moon changed places, Till the sky was red with sunrise, And Kayoshk, the hungry sea-gulls, Came back from the reedy islands, Clamorous for their morning banquet. Three whole days and nights alternate Old Nokomis and the sea-gulls Stripped the oily flesh of Nahma, Till the waves washed through the rib-bones, Till the sea-gulls came no longer, And upon the sands lay nothing But the skeleton of Nahma.

Written by Sara Teasdale | If Death Is Kind Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning, We will come back to earth some fragrant night, And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white. We will come down at night to these resounding beaches And the long gentle thunder of the sea, Here for a single hour in the wide starlight We shall be happy, for the dead are free.