Poetry Thursday – Sarah Cleghorn
Post Series: Poetry Thursday
- 1.Poetry Thursday!
- 2.Poetry Thursday!
- 3.Poetry almost Thursday, Thanksgiving Edition
- 4.The first day of December, Poetry Thursday
- 5.Boy At the Window — Poetry Thursday
- 6.A Poem About Evolution — Poetry Thursday
- 7.Like Snow – Poetry Thursday
- 8.The Peace of Wild Things – Poetry Thursday
- 9.Rain – Poetry Thursday
- 10.The Real Work – Poetry Thursday
- 11.To The River – Poetry Thursday
- 12.A Beautiful Poem About Internal Darkness
- 13.Poetry Thursday – Genius
- 14.Poetry Thursday – Soon This Space Will Be Too Small
- 15.A Poem from Stephen Harrod Buhner
- 16.To Bless the Space Between Us – Poetry Thursday!
- 17.Poetry Thursday – A Quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- 18.Poetry Thursday – Sarah Cleghorn
- 19.On a Tree Fallen Across the Road by Robert Frost
- 20.A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walt Whitman
- 21.My Will by Lorna Goodison
- 22.Going Away – A Poem from the Quechua
- 23.Blessing by John O’Donohue
- 24.The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins
- 25.Wild Geese by Wendell Berry
- 26.Silence of the Fall by Louisa Paulin
- 27.Poetry Thursday – Karl Ove Knausgaard
- 28.Snow Day by Billy Collins – Poetry Thursday
- 29.Winter Solstice by Jodi Aliesan – Poetry Thursday
- 30.A Brief For The Defense by Jack Gilbert
- 31.Lost by David Wagoner
- 32.Fiddling with the Idiot by Hafiz
- 33.The Sixth of January by David Budbill
- 34.Two Tramps in Mud Time by Robert Frost
- 35.What We Need is Here by Wendell Berry
- 36.Keep Moving Forward by Mitchell Greenwood
- 37.When I am Among the Trees by Mary Oliver
- 38.Praying by Mary Oliver
- 39.Thirst by Mary Oliver
- 40.Blueberries by Mary Oliver
- 41.The Sycamore by Wendell Berry
- 42.Jealous Hearing Someone Laugh by Hafiz
- 43.Advice to Myself by Louise Erdrich
- 44.Egg by C.G. Hanzlicek
- 45.The Broken Gourd by Wendell Berry
- 46.Another Spring by Kenneth Rexroth
- 47.Poetry Thursday – the Visionary Paintings of Paul Laffoley
- 48.Two Poems by Mary Oliver
- 49.What If? A poem by Ganga White
- 50.See No Evil by Billy Collins
- 51.We Who Prayed and Wept by Wendell Berry
- 52.Holy Thursday by William Blake
- 53.Woman by Nikki Giovanni
- 54.Choices by Nikki Giovanni
- 55.A Quote from Hafiz
- 56.The First by Wendell Berry
- 57.Excerpt for an Improvised Speech by Robert F. Kennedy
- 58.Riding Lesson by Henry Taylor
- 59.Messenger by Mary Oliver
- 60.In Rain by Wendell Berry
- 61.A Poetry Thursday with Rumi
- 62.Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye
- 63.Sometimes by David Whyte
- 64.Having it Out with Melancholy by Jane Kenyon
- 65.After an Illness, Walking the Dog by Jane Kenyon
- 66.Admit Something by Hafiz
- 67.Turtle Mountain Reservation by Louise Erdrich
- 68.The Layers by Stanley Kunitz
- 69.Martian Rose by Stuart Atkinson
- 70.To The Unseeable Animal by Wendell Berry
- 71.Open the Door or Die by Hafiz
- 72.Paradox of Noise by Gunilla Norris
- 73.Out of the Mouth of a Thousand Birds by Hafiz
- 74.An Excerpt by William Shakespear
- 75.School Prayer by Diane Ackerman
- 76.The Lanyard by Billy Collins
- 77.In the Next Galaxy by Ruth Stone
- 78.The Apple Tree by Wendell Berry
- 79.At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border by William E. Stafford
- 80.Mighty Pawns by Major Jackson
- 81.Letter to Brooks: Spring Garden by Major Jackson
- 82.Again and Again by Rainer Maria Rilke
- 83.The New Colossus By Emma Lazarus
- 84.For Once, Then, Something by Robert Frost
- 85.My River Runs to Thee by Emily Dickinson
- 86.No Coward Soul is Mine by Emily Brontë
- 87.Someone Leans Near by Toni Morrison
- 88.Mayakovsky In New York: A Found Poem By Annie Dillard
At the Fourth of July parade in Richmond, VT, a man on stilts walked with the floats. He wore long, glittery red, white, and blue pants and a matching coat. And a tall stars and stripes top hat that finally stopped, because of the stilts, a good eleven feet in the air. He walked by himself, carrying a hand-painted sign that said ‘READ SARAH CLEGHORN’. The parade was slow, so I had a minute to wonder who the heck Sarah Cleghorn is before he passed and I was allowed to see the sign’s back.
‘LOOK HER UP’, it said. So I did. Seems as if Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn was a formidable turn of the century Vermonter who used her pen to combat what she saw as social ills—especially regarding child labor and other abuses of the wealthy class. Here are two of them. One for you and one for the tall guy in the parade.
The Incentive
I saw a sickly cellar plant
Droop on its feeble stem, for want
Of sun and wind and rain and dew —
Of freedom! — Then a man came through
The cellar, and I heard him say,
‘Poor, foolish plant, by all means stay
Contented here; for — know you not? —
This stagnant dampness, mold and rot
Are your incentive to grow tall
And reach that sunbeam on the wall.’
— Even as he spoke, the sun’s one spark
Withdrew, and left the dust more dark.
~Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn
The Golf Links
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
~Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn