Barn Swallows

Carl Brenders, "Migration Fever"

Barn Swallows

Here are all of the days in August
marked off in sharp strokes
on the power wire out to the barn.
Each year at this time they line up
for roll call, parents and young,
leaving their mud cups empty
under the eaves, on beams and rafters,
on the lintels of doors. In dark blue
iridescent ink they write
their thank-you note: Where once
we were few we now are many!
And the next day they're gone,
wiped from the sky by a rag of cloud
just as the first leaf falls.

Ted Kooser

It's that time of year again. I like Autumn, but I don't want Summer to end. Change, departure, goodbyes? Please, not just yet.

Fern Hill

James Bateman, "Haytime in the Cotswolds"

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
          Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
          Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
          Time let me play and be 
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
          And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
          And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
          Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
          The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
          On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
          I ran my heedless ways,
     My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
          Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dylan Thomas 

One of my most favorite poems ever. There is so much to say about it, I hesitate to say anything.

Doesn't it say it all?

Pastoral of the City Streets

Unknown, 1960's

Pastoral of the City Streets

1

Between distorted forests, clapped into geometry,
in meadows of macadam,
heat-fluff-a-host-of-dandelions dances on the air.
Everywhere glares the sun's glare,
the asphalt shows hooves.

In meadows of macadam
grazes the dray horse, nozzles his bag of pasture,
is peaceful. Now and then flicks through farmer straw
his ears, like pulpit-flowers, quivers
his hide; swishes his tempest tail
a black and sudden nightmare for the fly.
The sun shines, sun shines down
new harness on his withers, saddle and rump.

On curbrock and on stairstump the clustered kids
resting let slide some afternoon: then restless
hop to the game of the sprung haunches; skid
to the safe place; jump up: stir a wind in the heats:
laugh, puffed and sweat-streaked.

O for the crystal stream!

Comes a friend's father
with his pet of a hose,
and plays the sidewalk black
cavelike and cool.

O crisscross beneath the spray, those pelting petals and peas
those soft white whisks
brushing off heat!
O underneath these acrobatic fountains
among the crystal,
like raindrops a sunshower of youngsters dance:
small-nippled self-hugged boys
and girls with watersheer, going Ah and Ah.

2

And at twilight,
the sun like a strayed neighbourhood creature
having been chased
back to its cover,
the children count a last game, or talk, or rest,
beneath the bole of the tree of the single fruit of glass
now ripening,
a last game, talk, or rest,
until their mothers like evening birds call from the stoops.

A.M. Klein

Just because. It's been a hot summer here in the city. 

 

All in Green

Lucas Cranach the Elder, "The Stag Hunt of Elector Frederick the Wise"

All in Green Went My Love Riding

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.

Four red roebuck at a white water
the cruel bugle sang before.

Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.

Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.

Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrow sang before.

Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.

Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.

Four tall stags at the green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

Four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before.

e.e. cummings

If this poem scrapbook has had a theme recently, it would probably be the colour green. We've had the green delerium of Spring, that First Green of Eden, blood that sings green, a green amnesia, a green thought, strong, silent greens, climbing lime-green vines,  impossible greens...such greens! Green seems to be a symbol for everything young and growing, for hope and healing. And then there's this poem - green, gold, silver, red - what do the colours signify here? It's like youth and glory and eternity and that ominous red (which somehow always portends blood and violence) all rolled up into a heart-racing chase. People say this poem is about the Greek myth of Actaeon and Diana - A is out hunting with his hounds and accidentally surprises D having a bath in a stream, whereupon she is so angered that she turns him into a stag, and his hounds tear him to pieces. Not very nice at all. I'm sure the experts are right about the poem's subject, except that it seems more like someone who loves Actaeon watching him go out on that hunt and having an inkling, a premonition even, that he will not return. The violence hasn't occurred yet, but the sense of it already is with the one who loves him. The rhythm, the colours, the assonance, the tapestry-feel of it appeals to me, even if it is sad.




 

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm

Marcel Rieder

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Wallace Stevens

There are moments like this, when everything seems to flow together. When the book and the night and the house and reader are like one, joined and flowing together as if in one truth, one state of being, one current. It's rare, but I wonder if that's only because I haven't been aware. Maybe it's always there, deep down. Isn't there a deep inner harmony to all things? Perhaps this "truth in a calm world" is the place I need to live from.

 

Dark Pines Under Water

Esa Riippa

Dark Pines Under Water

This land like a mirror turns you inward
And you become a forest in a furtive lake;
The dark pines of your mind reach downward,
You dream in the green of your time,
Your memory is a row of sinking pines.

Explorer, you tell yourself, this is not what you came for
Although it is good here, and green;
You had meant to move with a kind of largeness,
You had planned a heavy grace, an anguished dream.

But the dark pines of your mind dip deeper
And you are sinking, sinking, sleeper
In an elementary world;
There is something down there and you want it told.

Gwendolyn MacEwan


Where do I start with this poem?! The image of trees reflected in the water is so strong. I read that first stanza over and over and every phrase makes an impression. "In the green of your time", is that where I am? I think so, actually. I feel green, strangely enough. Green as in flourishing. I feel as if I'm drawing on large resources. And I love that Gwendolyn calls us "Explorers". And it's true, this is not where we expected to be or what we expected to find - but the journey isn't finished either. There's more. And we want to know what it is.






 

Self Question

James Naughton, "Cloud Gap Light"

Self Question

Is this wide world not large enough to fill thee,

Nor Nature, not that deep man's Nature, Art?

Are they too thin, too weak and poor to still thee,

Thou little heart?

Dust thou art, and to dust again returnest,

A spark of fire within a beating clod.

Should that be infinite for which thou burnest?

Must it be God?

Mary Coleridge

It's not merely that poetry looks beneath the surface, but that it pulls up the questions hidden there.

 

A Hand

Henry Moore

A Hand

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb.

Nor is it palm and knuckles,

not ligaments or the fat’s yellow pillow,

not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins.

A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines

with their infinite dramas,

nor what it has written,

not on the page,

not on the ecstatic body.

Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping—

not sponge of rising yeast-bread,

not rotor pin’s smoothness,

not ink.

The maple’s green hands do not cup

the proliferant rain.

What empties itself falls into the place that is open.

A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question.

Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.

 Jane Hirshfield

The thing about poetry that keeps pulling me back in must be that need to look beyond the surface. It isn't just the thing, it's what it signifies, it's the levels of meaning within and around it. This poem is a perfect example of that.

 

Trees

John Constable, "Study of the Trunk of an Elm Tree"

Trees

To be a giant and keep quiet about it,
To stay in one's own place;
To stand for the constant presence of process
And always to seem the same;
To be steady as a rock and always trembling,
Having the hard appearance of death
With the soft, fluent nature of growth,
One's Being deceptively armored,
One's Becoming deceptively vulnerable;
To be so tough, and take the light so well,
Freely providing forbidden knowledge
Of so many things about heaven and earth
For which we should otherwise have no word -----

Poems or people are rarely so lovely,
And even when they have great qualities
They tend to tell you rather than exemplify
What they believe themselves to be about,
While from the moving silence of trees,
Whether in storm or calm, in leaf and naked,
Night and day, we draw conclusions of our own,
Sustaining and unnoticed as our breath
And perilous also--though there has never been
A critical tree---about the nature of things.

Howard Nemerov

The line that makes me smile the most - "and take the light so well" - no kidding! I am still amazed by the thought that each separate leaf is converting sunlight into a solid pillar of strength. "The moving silence of trees, whether in storm or calm", another thought-provoking line. Trees are clear visual, tactile reminders of what's important. I think of them - roots in the earth and in the sky, food from the earth and from the heavens - growing and standing. Shouldn't we be doing that too?