Poems of 2026

 My New Year's resolution for 2026 is to read a poem a day. 

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1/6 (this counts!)

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i am running into a new year

and the old years blow back

like a wind

that i catch in my hair

like strong fingers like

all my old promises and

it will be hard to let go

of what i said to myself

about myself

when i was sixteen and

twentysix and thirtysix

even thirtysix but

i am running into a new year

and i beg what i love and

i leave to forgive me

—Lucille Clifton, Good Woman: Poems and A Memoir 1969-1980

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"May the sun bring you new energy by day,
May the moon softly restore you by night,
May the rain wash away your worries,
May the breeze blow new strength into your being,
May you walk gently through the world and kn ow it's beauty all the days of your life."
-- Apache Blessing

"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night." - Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

"The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order." Toni Morrison, Beloved

"Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering." - Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." - Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

"Dear God,' she prayed, 'let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.'" - Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.


Pablo Neruda

"There is nothing like the razor sharp tongue of a good friend to cut through the lies we tell ourselves."    Laura Moncur

"There are risks and costs to a program of action.  But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."  JFK

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."  Anais Nin

"Love isn't a decision.  It's a feeling.  If we could decide who we loved, it would be much simpler, but much less magical."  Chef - South Park

"Love is not blind - it sees more, not less.  But because it sees more, it is willing to see less."  Rabbi Julius Gordon

"To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return.  To just give.  That takes courage, because we don't want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt." Madonna

"When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade.  Each wins all."  Lois McMaster Bujold

"Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself."  Jean Anouilh

"Love is everything it's cracked up to be...It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for."  Erica Jong

"One's first love is always perfect until one meets one's second love."  Elizabeth Aston

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contract of two chemical substances:  if there is any reaction, both are transformed."  Carl Jung

"Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command." Alan Watts