Best River Poems

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
...

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
...

The sun has burst the sky
Because I love you
And the river its banks.
...

All those men were there inside,
when she came in totally naked.
They had been drinking: they began to spit.
Newly come from the river, she knew nothing.
...

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
...

At six o'clock we were waiting for coffee,
waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb
that was going to be served from a certain balcony
- like kings of old, or like a miracle.
...

Broad sun-stoned beaches.

White heat.
A green river.
...

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
...

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
...

Then Almitra spoke, saying, 'We would ask now of Death.'

And he said:
...

There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses - he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
...

if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon if
...

At gauzy dusk, thin haze like cigarette smoke
ribbons past Chrysler Building's silver fins
tapering delicately needletopped, Empire State's
taller antenna filmed milky lit amid blocks
...

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half crazy
...

What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
...

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
That I can see farther into paintings.
...

born from a spring
from mother earth's womb

an adventurous child hood and teen
...

I reason death in its glorious beauty
Like golden evening cloud
On a bright sunny day
...

Your hair is lost in the forest,
your feet touching mine.
Asleep you are bigger than the night,
but your dream fits within this room.
...

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?
...

Then Almitra spoke, saying, 'We would ask now of Death.'
And he said:
You would know the secret of death.
...

Bangladesh - An Acrostic Verse
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░
B angladesh, a delta plain country on the Bay of Bengal is geographically,
...

There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction they are going!
There's no knowing where they're rowing,
...

DOWN by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
...

In Köhln, a town of monks and bones,
And pavements fang'd with murderous stones
And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches;
I counted two and seventy stenches,
...

The sight of the hills is a beauty
The bright moon is the sign of purity
The flow of the river is a murmuring music
The act of the sun is so philanthropic.
...

In my first sleep
I came to the river
And looked down
Through the clear water -
...

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
...

A river of the will,
Plays in my mind.
I call her to come out,
But she stays behind.
...

I got to leave this town.
It’s a lonesome place.
Got to leave this town cause
It’s a lonesome place.
...

This wild night, gathering the washing as if it were flowers
          animal vines twisting over the line and
          slapping my face lightly, soundless merriment
          in the gesticulations of shirtsleeves,
...

A LINE in long array, where they wind betwixt green islands;
They take a serpentine course--their arms flash in the sun--Hark to
the musical clank;
...

.
The river deep and dark
~~~flowing through the night
carrying flotsam and jetsam
...

Up into the cherry tree
Who should climb but little me?
I held the trunk with both my hands
And looked abroad in foreign lands.
...

Love is a river
In our life it flows
A small seed that grows
A flower without beauty
...

River water
washes
everything
clean
...

Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
...

It is a willow when summer is over,
a willow by the river
from which no leaf has fallen nor
bitten by the sun
...

Ever, ever
Stir and shiver
The reeds and rushes
By the river:
...

The river tumbles onwards to the sea,
And rushes, racing over rocks and stones,
And boulders, branches, pebbles, sand and scree,
Singing so many melodies to me,
...

Koening knew now there was no one on the river.
Entering its brown mouth choking with lilies
and curtained with midges, Koenig poled the shallop
past the abandoned ferry and the ferry piles
...

There is a great river this side of Stygia
Before one comes to the first black cataracts
And trees that lack the intelligence of trees.
...

A wanderer is man from his birth.
He was born in a ship
On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming with wonder and joy
...

In the willows along the river at Pleasure Bay
A catbird singing, never the same phrase twice.
Here under the pines a little off the road
In 1927 the Chief of Police
...

Sunlight streams on the river stones.
From high above, the river steadily plunges--

three thousand feet of sparkling water--
...

If you have eagerness in your heart, it means you are alive,
If your eyes are filled with dreams, it means you are alive
Learn to be free like the wind,
Learn to flow freely like the river,
...

How nice to swim in sea, river, lake and pond!
Floating body, pressing water, moving forward
How nice to enjoy spattering, splashing sound!
Gesturing body, flapping wing, clapping hand,
...

She is near to my heart as the meadow-flower to the earth; she is
sweet to me as sleep is to tired limbs. My love for her is my life
flowing in its fullness, like a river in autumn flood, running with
serene abandonment. My songs are one with my love, like the murmur
...

Dark brown is the river,
Golden is the sand.
It flows along for ever,
With trees on either hand.
...

I took leave of you, old friend, at the
Yellow Crane Pavilion;
In the mist and bloom of March, you went
down to Yang-chou:
...

And Jesus takes you down to that place by the Big River
Where sinners gather with the Salvation Army chatter
And you know you wanna believe
Even though you cannot hear Him
...

Blue mountains to the north of the walls,
White river winding about them;
Here we must make separation
And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass.
...

.
I'm a mountain rising mysterious on the distant horizon
I'm a valley mist rising mystic above the quiet river
I'm a waterfall falling in tumbles deep and tumultuous
...

My restless blood now lies a-quiver,
Knowing that always, exquisitely,
This April twilight on the river
Stirs anguish in the heart of me.
...

They have watered the street,
It shines in the glare of lamps,
Cold, white lamps,
And lies
...

My scholar friend keeps his late Grandma's diary
And a certain page was highlighted in the color of yellow.
My old ferryman you never realized that how I deeply loved you?
Since in the cradle the word 'depth' I heard several occasions from my parents.
...

dance the river is there to rise
dance touch me and close your eyes
dance the winds will touch your feet
just dance and dance feel the beat
...

My sleeping children are still flying dreams
in their goose-down heads.
The lush of the river singing morning songs
Fish watch their ceilings turn sun-white.
...

There's sun on the river and sun on the hill . . .
You can hear the sea if you stand quite still!
There's eight new puppies at Roundabout Farm-
And I saw an old sailor with only one arm!
...

So I took her to the river
believing she was a maiden,
but she already had a husband.
It was on St. James night
...

THERE are times when a dream delicious
Steals into a musing hour,
Like a face with love capricious
That peeps from a woodland bower;
...

"Oh, dear, now the kingly monsoon is onset with its clouds containing raindrops, as its ruttish elephants in its convoy, and with skyey flashes of lighting as its pennants and buntings, and with the thunders of thunderbolts as its percussive drumbeats, thus this rainy season has come to pass, radiately shining forth like a king, for the delight of voluptuous people...

"By far, the vault of heaven is overly impregnated with massive clouds, that are similar to the gleam of blackish petals of black-costuses... somewhere they are similar to the glitter of the heaps of well-kneaded blackish mascara... and elsewhere they glisten like the blackened nipples of bosoms of pregnant women, ready to rain the elixir of life on the lips of her offspring, when that offspring is actualised...
...

"Give me of your bark, O Birch-tree!
Of your yellow bark, O Birch-tree!
Growing by the rushing river,
...

When you see water in a stream
you say: oh, this is stream
water;
When you see water in the river
...

The river below us:
nitrogen, phosphorous, petrochemicals,
dioxin from the paper mills,
a rich buffet of metals digested
...

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.
...

The Yangtze flows east
Washing away
A thousand ages of great men
West of the ramparts --
...

One time more, my love, the net of light extinguishes
work, wheels, flames, boredoms and farewells,
and we surrender the swaying wheat to night,
the wheat that noon stole from earth and light.
...

Is it your face
that adorns the garden?
...

I know a little country place
Where still my heart doth linger,
And o'er its fields is every grace
...

Sullen clouds are gathering fast over the black fringe of the
forest.
O child, do not go out!
The palm trees in a row by the lake are smiting their heads
...

I have been watching the war map slammed up for advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons—red and yellow buttons—blue and black buttons—are shoved back and forth across the map.

A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
...

I came here a wanderer
thinking of home,
remembering my far away Ch'ang-an.
And then, from deep in Yellow Crane Pavillion,
...

In long breaths expectations lead me to die
I want to take loan some times to omit sigh
Your love is one color in the coat of colorful life
The wings of heron flying on the village of blue sky
...

I shall gladly suffer the pride of culture to die out in my house,
if only in some happy future I am born a herd-boy in the Brinda
forest.
The herd-boy who grazes his cattle sitting under the banyan
...

The day was warm and bright
The sky and the horizon
Were brilliant blue
I took my two dogs
...

Prehistoric


Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew--
...

'The great ambition of women is to inspire love'
- Moliere
....................................
...

A wind, bringing willow-cotton, sweetens the shop,
And a girl from Wu, pouring wine, urges me to share it.
With my comrades of the city who are here to see me off;
And as each of them drains his cup, I say to him in parting,
...

Macchu’s devastation

Machhu is name and I am river
Now also people are scared and get fever
...

There's a place beside a river
That you might know as well.
On the banks we call contentment
Near the place where lovers dwell.
...

Clouds rumbling in the sky; teeming rain.
I sit on the river bank, sad and alone.
The sheaves lie gathered, harvest has ended,
The river is swollen and fierce in its flow.
...

I shall never forget you, Broadway
Your golden and calling lights.

I’ll remember you long,
...

It can't be the passing of time that casts
That white shadow across the waters
Just offshore.
I shiver a little, with the evening.
...

You ask how I spend my time--
I nestle against a treetrunk
and listen to autumn winds
in the pines all night and day.
...

SKIRTING the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
...

I will grieve alone,
As I strolled alone, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
...

The little river twittering in the twilght,
The wan, wandering look of the pale sky.
This is almost bliss.
...

We climbed Yoyang Tower with
all the scene around coming
into vision; looking up the
Great River seeing boats turn
...

One evening I saw my dreams flying like a bird ~
On the bank of a river, trying to go beyond the clouds.

One evening I saw my dreams flying like a butterfly,
...

Early summer rain--
houses facing the river,
two of them.
...

Above the tower -- a lone, twice-sized moon.
On the cold river passing night-filled homes,
It scatters restless gold across the waves.
On mats, it shines richer than silken gauze.
...

CALL it to mind, O my love.
Dear were your eyes as the day,
Bright as the day and the sky;
Like the stream of gold and the sky above,
...

In dreams you walked through vast fields of wildflowers,
While river insects sang their autumn Psalms.
Time like a painted lady butterfly,
At last brought new life to your work worn frame.
...

'I live in fear of the snow,' said the bear.
'Whenever it's here, be sure I'll be there.
Oh, the pain and the cold,
when one's bearish and old.
...

WHEN I go alone at night to my love-tryst, birds do not sing, the wind does not stir, the houses on both sides of the street stand silent.
...

With tearful eyes I said my goodbyes
To Aunt and Uncle, many years ago.
Their home was Jackson Tennessee
Where Pearl River waters floweth free.
...

dipped in vividness
emotions flow as river
to the sea of love
...

The meadow and the mountain with desire
Gazed on each other, till a fierce unrest
Surged ‘neath the meadow’s seemingly calm breast,
And all the mountain’s fissures ran with fire.
...

Here is a river with a little boat
moored beside its bank. The boat's the colour
of oranges in the south of Greece, all bloody
and ripe with sweetness, while the bank's the colour
...