The Arabs used to say,
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he’s come from,
where he’s headed.
That way, he’ll have strength
enough to answer.
Or, by then you’ll be
such good friends
you don’t care.
Let’s go back to that.
Rice? Pine nuts?
Here, take the red brocade pillow.
My child will serve water
to your horse.
No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That’s the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.
I refuse to be claimed.
Your plate is waiting.
We will snip fresh mint
into your tea.

-Naomi Shihab Nye

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

-Robert Frost

Oh my friends!
A prouder man than I,
might expound,
he only needed nature's beauty.
But I must report,
that I miss my friends.
I am not so much,
a broken man without them,
as I was alway a broken man
but their presence
gave me much comfort.
I wish that at my table they
came, so I could feed them bread,
and wine, and hear them talk,
and celebrate their breath.
Because, I love my friends.
And, I miss their rhythm.
I miss their drums,
to war, or love,
or peace, or noise.
I miss my friends.

"Everything burning,
and this is fine. Everyone
runs on borrowed time."

(it's a haiku that popped to my mind a few weeks ago... looks like something I would've written when I was 16)

Here's a classic from Elizabeth Bishop:

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Fighter, fighter, move your feet.
Dance the dance, of the Science Sweet.
When you hear that sound of Bell,
Enter once more into Hell.
Every step that you will to be,
All of the rest of us watch and see.
Take one step, go one more round,
Until the next dulcet sound,
The bell that rings, rings for all,
We stand beside you, do not Fall.

There once was a fellow O'Doole
Who found little red spots on his tool
His Doctor a cynic
said Get out of me clinic,
And wipe off that lipstick you fool!

There once was a fellow McSweeny
Who spilled some gin on his weenie
Just to be couth
He added vermouth
Then slipped his girlfriend a martini

Another of my favourites, Paul Muldoon's extremely clever sonnet (particularly the unusual choice of rhymes, few of them are obvious).

Quoof

How often have I carried our family word
For the hot water bottle
To a strange bed,
As my father would juggle a red-hot half-brick
In an old sock
To his childhood settle.
I have taken it into so many lovely heads
Or laid it between us like a sword.

An hotel room in New York City
With a girl who spoke hardly any English,
My hand on her breast
Like the smouldering one-off spoor of the yeti
Or some other shy beast
That has yet to enter the language.