A great idea, seen on A Burst of Light:

To commemorate the end of National Poetry Month, blog about your favorite poem and provide at least one link to other poems and/or a bio of the poet.

Okay, here goes! One of my all-time fave bards is Rod McKuen, because of the way he captured that enigmatic cinematic Gauloises-on-Stanyan-Street rumpled-sheets-on-a-rainy-day vibe...yeah. He also wrote the lyrics to "Seasons in the Sun" (made into that iconic cheeseball 70's anthem by Terry Jacks), which always made me cry as a kid.

The Storm / Fourteen
How can we be sure of anything
the tide changes.
The wind that made the grain wave gently yesterday
blows down the trees tomorrow.
And the sea sends sailors crashing on the rocks,
as easily as it guides them safely home.
I love the sea
but it doesn't make me less afraid of it.
I love you
but I'm not always sure of what you are
and how you feel.

I'd like to crawl behind your eyes
and see me the way you do
or climb through your mouth
and sit on every word that comes up through your throat.

Maybe I could be sure then
maybe I could know.
As it is I hide beneath your frowns
or worry when you laugh too loud.
Always sure a storm is rising.

-- Rod McKuen, Listen to the Warm (© 1967 Random House)

I like this poem because in its few lines it crystallizes the existential aloneness and unpredictability of human life, even in the intimate context of love. A very telling piece.

As for link to some other poetry - I can recommend some bloggers-cum-poets I really enjoy: Makura No Soshi - A Woman Who Loves Insects, Dragonflypurity at My Complex Simplicity, and Erika at Snazzykat.

And finally, from Digresso, the Writing Instructor's poem generator [via feministe],

concrete rhetoric

black adverb entombs social construction
it was troped and silently metonymized
waxing radioactive and still
the only burning rhetoric was the eye-
grey remembrance of themes past when wolf howls
concrete epistemology silently toward black identity
now, concrete chickens by the red wheelbarrow

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