Two boys play on a pile of sand
Leftover after the concrete had
Been mixed and poured.
A third child in a stroller gurgles
As a tired father stands
Wiping a bead of sweat before
It trickles to his eye

This has been
A good day made.

Every time the masons snapped
Their yellow strings, we heard a twang
Like music singing perfect lines
And between each layer of block
Mindfully laid with loving hands
The bubbles in their wooden levels
Stayed between the thin black hairs

Just as they should
On a good day made.

Three children will grow up
In this house built on a rock
And when the sand is long since gone
Except for some stray grains
Embedded deep in rock and dirt
They will know their world
As one where there are no strangers

As it should be
In a good day made.
                                Brett Axel
                            From the Satellite Tribune

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

                         Sergeant Joyce Kilmer
           From The New Spirit Anthology of Christian Poems

     To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning's minion, King-
 dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
 Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
 As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
 Rebuffed the big wind.  My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, -- the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume here
 Buckle!  AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
 Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

 No wonder of it: Sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
 Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

                                   Gerard Manley Hopkins
                                From Norton's Modern Poems