Ladybug
By James Stein
Don't disturb the ladybug
Sleepin' by the spider's web
And if you see a butterfly
Don't try to catch it in your net
It's taken such a long long time
To make this very special place
Open up your soul and mind
To all it has to say...
Be still
Take it in awhile
Feel the sunshine
Warm upon your face
You'll feel
When it makes you smile
Like you're welcome
To the human race.
Wild Horse Nettle
By Amelie Troubetzkoy
IT is good to strive against wind and rain
In the keen, sweet weather that autumn brings.
The wild horse shakes not the drops from his mane,
The wild bird flicks not the wet from her wings,
In gladder fashion than I toss free
The mist-dulled gold of my bright hair�s flag,
What time the winds on their heel-wings lag,
And all the tempest is friends with me...
For wild am I as thy winds and rains�
Free to come and to go as they;
Love�s moon sways not the tides of my veins;
There is no voice that can bid me stay.
Out and away on the drenched, brown lea!
Out to the great, glad heart of the year!
Nothing to grieve for, nothing to fear,�
Fetterless, lawless, a maiden free!
Wild Potato
By Carl Sandburg
When the morning sun is on the trumpet-vine blossoms, sing at the kitchen pans: Shout All Over God�s Heaven.
When the rain slants on the potato hills and the sun plays a silver shaft on the last shower, sing to the bush at the backyard fence: Mighty Lak a Rose.
When the icy sleet pounds on the storm windows and the house lifts to a great breath, sing for the outside hills: The Ole Sheep Done Know the Road, the Young Lambs Must Find the Way.
Pink Evening Primrose
By Sydney Dobell
First came the primrose
On the bank high,
Like a maiden looking forth
From the window of a tower
When the battle rolls below,
So look'd she,
And saw the storms go by.
Sunflower
By Carl Sandburg
Once when I saw a cripple
Gasping slowly his last days with the white plague,
Looking from hollow eyes, calling for air,
Desperately gesturing with wasted hands
In the dark and dust of a house down in a slum,
I said to myself
I would rather have been a tall sunflower
Living in a country garden
Lifting a golden-brown face to the summer,
Rain-washed and dew-misted,
Mixed with the poppies and ranking hollyhocks,
And wonderingly watching night after night
The clear silent processionals of stars.
Morning Glories
By Walt Whitman
O I am wonderful!
I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish;
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again.
That I walk up my stoop! I pause to consider if it really be;
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.