Time Poems | Poemist

Popular Time Poems

Vanitas Vanitatum

by John Webster

All the flowers of the spring
Meet to perfume our burying;
These have but their growing prime,
And man does flourish but his time:
Survey our progress from our birth;
We are set, we grow, we turn to earth.
Courts adieu, and all delights,
All bewitching appetites!
Sweetest breath and clearest eye,
Like perfumes, go out and die;

......

Time

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality,
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?

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Sestina

by Elizabeth Bishop

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,

......

Dining-Room Tea

by Rupert Brooke

When you were there, and you, and you,
Happiness crowned the night; I too,
Laughing and looking, one of all,
I watched the quivering lamplight fall
On plate and flowers and pouring tea
And cup and cloth; and they and we
Flung all the dancing moments by
With jest and glitter. Lip and eye
Flashed on the glory, shone and cried,
Improvident, unmemoried;

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The Albatross

by Charles Baudelaire

Often to pass the time on board, the crew
will catch an albatross, one of those big birds
which nonchalently chaperone a ship
across the bitter fathoms of the sea.

Tied to the deck, this sovereign of space,
as if embarrassed by its clumsiness,
pitiably lets its great white wings
drag at its sides like a pair of unshipped oars.

......

Recent Time Poems

A Naturally Beautiful Outlook

by Evelyn Judy Buehler

An island sunset, when mango moon is calling,
Lush palm fronds sway, when the day is stalling.
Ivory tailed comet, comes but once in a lifetime,
Sitting in tropical sunset, at just the right time.

Gemmed hummingbird sparkle. Destiny dreams.
Pink sun is roving. Glossy crows' feathers gleam.
What was left behind, is often recalled to mind;
Yet, plum fate isn't unkind, as love again you find.

100. Raindrops file like veins down the driver's side window

by Kea Campbell

     Raindrops file like veins down the driver’s side window. Thunder booms like a bass drum that rattles lightning from the gloomy clouds. Sirens echo around my head like a song stuck in the back of your mind.
The pavement in front of me is as visible as knowing what tomorrow holds. Hazard lights in every direction, like a Christmas tree set to a rhythmic strobe. A pair of beating reds in front and behind, and I can almost make out the double yellow and white lines. Where am I even going?
     Mirrors ripple, leveling the dips in the road, and suddenly, I'm hydroplaning. 65 miles an hour and I'm hydroplaning. The back wheels get tired of being caboose, the front agrees and my car has turned into a hand of a clock, counterclockwise.
Thoughts flood my head, a brainstorm. I wish they taught us this in driver's school. Stupid drivers school. I surf my files of memories as if they hadn’t just sit us in a classroom, daydreaming of their next paycheck.
     I blink, and nothing has changed. The air like a maze of droplets, like a skewed version of Dots and Boxes. My car in the same place, sitting sideways. I reach for the door and it's locked. I panic and unlock the car. Silly me. The raindrops hitting my body from all sides except up. Trailing, a me-size hole in the rainfall. I can see everything clearly, like peering through the protective mesh behind your bedroom window.
     I blink, and my car glides away, 65 miles an hour, sideways. I glance down at my body, hands open like a landing pad for the downpour; palm-up like and fingers sprawled out like I had just received a pair of my own. I hear a car horn barreling toward me until it becomes one with me.
   I blink once more, and I see pitch black. I'm dry. The rain continues and thunder booms a half-second worth of daytime into the sky, into my room. And I'm staring at the ceiling above my bed, in my room.

......

for a fatherless daughter

by Ella Sophia

you will be conscious of an absence , precisely
like a flower that blooms during autumn
a flower which perishes , soil even rotten
near the family home’s porch
a tree — cypress tree bordering a lakeside — with
its branches thinning ; and a cloudless sky cuddling
such tempestuous weather
it is all within illusion , an utter lack of attention
to make pancakes with butter and strawberry shake
standing alone in the middle of my mother’s green-tiled kitchen

......

weird girl vs orange cat in the wild

by Ella Sophia

dear diary . i am turning twenty . there is nothing that i want , but to go back home .
to the village i grew up in , playing with friends , socks pasted with dirty sand . i am
not in despair , i spend my time thrifting clothes , jewelry that fits the color of my skin ,
footprints that i follow as i walk outside . i am full of sliver , tattooed on my skin , left
arm filled with bruise . i feel bad as i look at myself — how i ended up looking like a fool .
cigarettes tasting good as it never did like before , cherry wine ; i swallow it , like a glass
of water that i consume when i was seven . i see, an orange cat in the wild . i want to be
free just like it . running , feeling the breeze , sun being paired with my pale skin . i do not
know what to do . i do not want to turn twenty . i am scared . take me back to being a kid ,
simply enjoying the life that i never knew i had of me .

......

Through the Woods

by Evelyn Judy Buehler

Strawberry red skies
when home beckons through sage woods
Pink love's going down
as dewdrops on purple rose
prior to the velvet close

Flowers follow me
their fantasy fragrances
recalling burnt gold
Beauty's dying once again

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