Ice melt, by Andif
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Let's talk about the pleasures and puzzles of the smaller mystery--mystery novels and other fiction--and the bigger one--life.
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About Me
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Quote for the week
. . .here is a smoke signal, unmistakable but unobtrusive--we are following what comes, going through the world, knowing each other, building our little fires.
William Stafford
William Stafford
15 comments:
I didn't get a chance to fully take in the poetry of the past two days, so I'm declaring this a poetry day, too. Cause I want to. And cause I can. Ah, power.
See you in the morning, on Saturday.
Maybe because it's the weekend we're celebrating my brother's birthday that this one came to mind? My dad used to recite it when we were growing up. The smithy would be doing well to be able to say he owed not any man in today's economy. Here's part of it.
The Village Blacksmith
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Under a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
That's a wonderful photo, Andi!
Sorry, I have no poetry to offer. :-(
Would you believe they're forecasting snow for Tuesday morning here? Grrr!
The sun rises a bit brighter today over tipton,
Half-measures will soon no longer
Apply.
Next of
Kin contracts are a legal concern, not a
Sin.
If i could do winter, i'd move to independence.
Or des moines or dubuque or
Wherever those good judges live.
American spirit, it ain't dead yet
!
Alas, no poetry from me today. I've got stiff neck, con activities and EEP! copy edits to turn around by Monday afternoon for BLOOD KIN.
My soul isn't quite singing...
Happy Saturday.
Possibly of snow and hard freeze here on Monday, Farf. I am very much hoping not to be taking any pictures of ice patterns on Tuesday.
Jen, it took me a second to get it but wonderful! High five to Iowa and thank you to those so very honest judges.
Happy weekend to all.
One of mine for today.
Third Generation
I am none of your rooted
nor will I be treed.
I have not been long standing
to get a good place
for the paraded past.
My past lives yet with me,
speaking
from such a softly ancient face
washing me in words
that flow from places
escaped from and to,
words that seem always true
even when I never learned
what they meant.
Thanks Andi. (Technically I think it was terrible work but sloppy gratitude has a unique beauty. :) )
I love yours today. Evocative and deep; feels like a lot unspoken was packed into the inbetween of the words you used.
I admit, Jen, my literary deconstruction may have been clouded a bit by the subject matter but I still think it was wonderful. :)
And thank you. That's an old poem, inspired by my bubbe (my dad's mother) who could own any space just by standing in it.
Happy Saturday, everyone! Poetry in the morning starts the day off right. I did the Art Walk last night, and filled my soul with beauty. Then I listened to live music and ate ice cream for dinner. Today it's the farmers' market, art market, and hoops semi-finals. Doing my best to revel in the good stuff.
Sorry about the snow and hail - egads! We're supposed to have a nice day today, then back to storms and cooler during the week. The end is in sight, promise...
Some songs are poems set to music, right? Dan Fogelberg wrote some beautiful ones.
Netherlands
High on this mountain
The clouds down below
I'm feeling so strong and alive
From this rocky perch
I'll continue to search
For the wind
And the snow
And the sky
I want a lover
I want some friends
And I want to live in the sun
And I want to do all the things that I never have done.
Sunny bright mornings
And pale moonlit nights
Keep me from feeling alone
Now, I'm learning to fly
And this freedom is like
Nothing that I've ever known
I've seen the bottom
And I've been on top
But mostly I've lived in between
And where do you go
When you get to the end of your dream?
Off in the nether lands
I heard a sound
Like the beating of heavenly wings
And deep in my brain
I can hear a refrain
Of my soul as she rises and sings
Anthems to glory and
Anthems to love and
Hymns filled with early delight
Like the songs that the darkness
Composes to worship the light.
Once in a vision
I came on some woods
And stood at a fork in the road
My choices were clear
Yet I froze with the fear
Of not knowing which way to go
One road was simple
Acceptance of life
The other road offered sweet peace
When I made my decision
My vision became my release.
The last two pictures by Andi have been poetry to me.
Jen, hooray for Iowa!
Since we're approaching opening day, a baseball poem seems in order. It is also one of the poems I use to show my reluctant poetry readers that poems can be about anything.
The Base Stealer
Poised between going on and back, pulled
Both ways taut like a tightrope walker,
Fingertips pointing the opposites,
Now bouncing tiptoe like a dropped ball
Or a kid skipping rope, come on, come on,
Running a scattering of steps sidewise,
How he teeters, skitters, tingles, teases,
Taunts them, hovers like an ecstatic bird,
He's only flirting, crowd him, crowd him,
Delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate-now!
--Robert Francis
Goody, more poetry. I especially like the original works andi and jen. And yes, Yay IOWA! Bono I have not read that Longfellow poem before. I'm a sucker for Longfellow, his poems always make me want to live in the 1800's when people would memorize poems and give dramatic readings. (Like in Anne of Green Gables.) Beth, love the Dan Fogelberg.
I'm in the mood for a poem by a writer's dog so I offer Anne LaMott's dog with a poem called Spoon River Sadie Louise (sorry blogger messes up the lines)
My girl got me two weeks after she saw
Silence of the Lambs. She wanted a guard dog,
but tells people I'm
a little like having
Dinah Shore
come live with you.
But secretly she knows that I would kill for her and the boy,
her boy so lovely
that people on the street stop us
when we take him for a walk.
She calls him My roommate, Cindy Crawford.
There is also a cat.
The cat has issues.
There are also two birds the girl got for her fortieth birthday.
The boy named them Haddis and Paddis.
Haddis was the boy.
Haddis passed.
There were no marks on him, but
as I say
the cat has issues.
My girl and our boy wept.
The widow Paddis drowned her sorrow in
birdseed, ostrich-like
after Haddis expired and could not be renewed.
The next day the girl went and bought her a new husband.
The boy named him Felipe. There was a Felipe who played
for the Giants long ago, one of the Alou brothers.
My girl loves baseball.
The boy loves me.
The boy does not say "L"s yet. He says yunch for lunch
yeaves for leaves
yove for love.
Foweepay for Felipe.
He says my name is Sadie Yawise Yamott.
He will be five
soon
So will I.
I was there when Felipe came to live here.
He and the widow Padis began singing
the second they saw each other.
My girl put him in the cage.
They sang hello,
had featherless sex,
sat together quietly
afterwards
having a smoke.
I was there when my girl's best friend
died last year.
The boy said She has gone to be with God and God's doctor.
The girl cried forever.
The boy says Drunks drink because they miss Jesus.
My girl used to drink. It shows: for instance. She takes me
almost
everywhere she goes
on foot or in our car.
Sometimes I am there in the backseat and she is
hurrying to get all our errands done before the boy
comes home; like he is the Last Emperor;
and she ends up forgetting me in the car
and only remembers me much, much later.
I always pretend not to mind,
because she is my girl, and
there are many moving parts to her life;
and God knows
she is doing the best she can,
but
sometimes I wonder,
should she really be driving?
She misses her friend.
She lives for the boy.
Sometimes he falls asleep on the floor with me as a pillow
and then the kitty
of all people
falls asleep with us too.
The bird sings. My girl sighs, then thinks to look up, and smiles.
Breakage
by Mary Oliver
I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
It's like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
full of moonlight.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.
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