From "The Flowers of Evil"

The water, molten and opaque,
Looks fit to lie down on.

From the bridge I can see
Two figures to the side of the landscape Doing something on the foreshore, in waders.

An urban river, cliffed in
With square-shouldered buildings
And rusting machinery. Trees on the towpath
Festooned with rubbish from high tide.

The water looks resilient.
I think you could lie down on it.

Some men are working on the parapet.
'Come on duck,' one calls,
'Don't do it today. We fished two out yesterday
And it's not in our contract.'

He throws down a stone
And the water swallows it neatly.

I hurry on. It looks like rain.

I am a 6th grade teacher and we are going to begin reading the graphic memoir When Stars are Scattered soon which is about the author Omar Mohammed's experience growing up in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. He and the characters in the book are from Somalia, where they say again and again, it is a land of poets and poetry. Therefore, I want to include poetry as secondary material to accompany our reading of the book.

I am trying to research some ideas for poems that might be appropriate for my 6th grade (11/12 year old) students. I am hoping some poems might also inspire some copy-change or thematic writing for students. I have found some poems that are good and actually was reminded of the song Wavin' Flag by K'naan as a good example.

I have been so impressed by some of the beautiful poems people find here on reddit so I'm hoping y'all can help me - Google has turned out to be terrible and is literally giving me hallucinated slop. Real human help and real poems by real humans would be appreciated!

Now, I really like this poem. Lovely emotional dynamism but then the punctuations! I mean i understood after the first reading that i have to omit full stops. Although I also see that each break is actually having it's own brilliant emotion and then if i remove the full stop, it is another powerful line!! Is there any other way to read it??

​Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast—
World, you are beautifully drest.

​The wonderful air is over me,
And the wonderful wind is shaking the tree,
It walks on the water, and whirls the mills,
And talks to itself on the tops of the hills.

​You friendly Earth! how far do you go,
With the wheat-fields that nod and the rivers that flow,
With cities and gardens, and cliffs and isles,
And people upon you for thousands of miles?

​Ah, you are so great and I am so small,
I tremble to think of you, World, at all;
And yet, when I said my prayers to-day,
A whisper inside me seemed to say,
'You are more than the Earth, though you are such a dot:
You can love and think, and the Earth cannot!'

This poem is displayed on the side of my city's central library, which was reopened recently after about 10 years of renovations. Every time I walk past, I read this poem in its entirety. It's just so bloody beautiful, and having it displayed in this way is awesome. I love NZ poetry, it often feels as if it is in an entirely different realm.

Some background on the poem and its author J.C. Sturm (b. Te Kare Papuni) can be found here.

There was a poem that I read as a teenager, and dedicated it to a friend who lived far away from me.

I can't recall exact words but I know I'd remember if I read it. The poem is about a hopeful long distance love, and the author talks about how the air around them connects them because the air is basically touching both of them. Or, they're hugging the air or something because technically it's the same air their loved one occupies somewhere else.

Or something like that. It's been bothering me for days.

I gave him everything:
rush lights, a pillow of herbs,
dreams like seed packets
and massage with scented oils.

He gave me a red-beaked bird,
a stone with a golden vein,
his poste restante address: and a child
so that I could bear him in mind.

I frankly know nothing about Lord Byron, but I found this in my local library and am so curious if anyone knows what this person is talking about?