Supper Being Ended

Carl Holsøe

Supper Being Ended

In the quiet place
at close of day
he washes the feet of my mind
from the dust of its fret.

His infinite eyes
see the straining and wounds of the road,
his hands
bring smarting
and cleansing
and balm.

The grace of his health
restores my soul
her place in the circling stars of perpetual praise.

Then, taking again the seamless robe,
the Alpha-Omega,
Master and Lord,
we talk together,
friend with friend.

Joan A. Bidwell 

To be able to speak my worries, my tiredness, my concerns, and know that I can let them go, what a relief that is. To feel that someone who loves me knows and cares and understands - I raise my hands in thankfulness, and rest. 

 

Hour

Unknown

Hour

Love's time's beggar, but even a single hour,
bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich.
We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers
or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch.
For thousands of seconds we kiss; your hair
like treasure on the ground; the Midas light
turning your limbs to gold. Time slows, for here
we are millionaires, backhanding the night
so nothing dark will end our shining hour,
no jewel hold a candle to the cuckoo spit
hung from the blade of grass at your ear,
no chandelier or spotlight see you better lit
than here. Now. Time hates love, wants love poor,
but love spins gold, gold, gold from straw.

Carol Ann Duffy

This has been a golden summer so far. That sense of being blessed has been with me every day. This poem might be written about lovers, but for me it's the theme of riches, gold, treasure, jewels, and gold, gold, gold, that strikes an answering chord in me. The time to love is short, and yet in this poem even a single hour is of such richness that time seems to slow, to transform into something timeless and incorruptible. We are millionaires in the Midas light of summer. It's true. These moments we spend in love, for love, with love, they are forever.



 

This Is the Garden

Carl Larsson

This is the Garden

this is the garden: colours come and go,

frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing

strong silent greens serenely lingering,

absolute lights like baths of golden snow.

This is the garden: pursed lips do blow

upon cool flutes within wide glooms, and sing

(of harps celestial to the quivering string)

invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap

and on Death's blade lie many a flower curled,

in other lands where other songs be sung;

yet stand They here enraptured, as among

the slow deep trees perpetual of sleep

some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.

E.E. Cummings

One of my top 20, if I had such a thing. "Yet stand They here enraptured" - gets me every time. Even the repeated "This is the garden" pulls me in. "Night's outer wing" - as if Night were a dark bird with its wings outstretched. 'The slow deep trees perpetual of sleep" as if sleep were a forest. Oh I hold this poem close. Such beauty. These words we can speak into the silence, these images we can invoke - any moment we wish to - how wonderful is poetry? Not all the things labeled Poetry really are. But THIS, this is poetry. "Frail azures", "strong silent greens"? Mr. Cummings, thank you.




 

Arrhythmia

beccastadtlander

Arrhythmia

The heart of a bear is a cloud-shuttered

mountain. The heart of a mountain’s a kiln.

The white heart of a moth has nineteen white

chambers. The heart of a swan is a swan.

The heart of a wasp is a prick of plush.

The heart of a skunk is a mink. The heart

of an owl is part blood and part chalice.

The fey mouse heart rides a dawdy dust-cart.

The heart of a kestrel hides a house wren

at nest. The heart of lark is a czar.

The heart of a scorpion is swidden

and spark. The heart of a shark is a gear.

Listen and tell, thrums the grave heart of humans.

Listen well love, for it’s pitch dark down here.

Hailey Leithauser

I don't know. Don't ask me. Poems are puzzles, or mysteries, or something between. But they do unfold, if they're true, even if it's slowly, even if it happens over a lifetime. All I know about this poem is that the words and images are arresting -  they catch me up. After each line, I stop dead and envision it, taste it, and I don't know why it works. 

  

The Swallow

Kathleen Lindsley, "Lean-To Swallows"

The Swallow

Pretty swallow, once again
Come and pass me in the rain.
Pretty swallow, why so shy?
Pass again my window by.

The horsepond where he dips his wings,
The wet day prints it full of rings.
The raindrops on his [ ] track
Lodge like pearls upon his back.

Then again he dips his wing
In the wrinkles of the spring,
Then o'er the rushes flies again,
And pearls roll off his back like rain.

Pretty little swallow, fly
Village doors and windows by,
Whisking o'er the garden pales
Where the blackbird finds the snails;

Whewing by the lad'slove tree
For something only seen by thee;
Pearls that on the red rose hing
Fall off shaken by thy wing.

On that low thatched cottage stop,
In the sooty chimney pop,
Where thy wife and family
Every evening wait for thee.

John Clare 

Swallows are the most enjoyable birds to watch. Aeronautical acrobatics for the sheer thrill of it, tweezily twitterings from the most excitable of creatures - they make me happy to be alive.



 

Pax

Dorothy McEntee, "Tabby"

Pax

All that matters is to be at one with the living God
To be a creature in the house of the God of life,

Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of the master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.


D.H. Lawrence

A poem I need right now. Look away from the worries, away from the waves, to the Master of the waves, to the one who knows the future. Let it rest with him. "A deep calm in the heart/ a presence" - yes, not merely "at peace", but "in peace" as well. Home.



  

Reeds

Siemen Dijkstra, "Last Sunlight"

Reeds

The blades sway. They ride

Unbleached, tugged in their full sap

By the slow current. Hindering

From thought, they think us back

To that first green, which the mind

Tenderskinned, since grazed to the pain of sight,

Shrank at, lapping us in a half-green content

And, there, left us. By nature

Trenchant, blue double-whets them,

Burned through the water from a sky

That has long looked at it

Untempered by any mist. In this

There is of theme or apophthem

No more than meets the eye. The blades sway.

Charles Tomlinson

Trenchant =
vigorous or incisive in expression or style.
Apophthem = 

a short, pithy, instructive saying; a terse remark or aphorism. 

Okay, I love reeds, grasses, rushes, etc. If there's a poem about them, I will be adding it. This one mesmerizes. That bit about swaying in the current has me swaying too. Other than the image of the reeds, what grabs me most is the line "hindering us from thought, they think us back to that first green". That first green. Immediately I think Eden - the first garden, the place of pure innocence, the beginning of all. Is Tomlinson saying that the reeds recall to us that state, that place so deeply buried in us, that home we all long for? Or maybe he's saying that the reeds in their colour and motion evoke something elemental, even though they are not actually saying anything at all. I don't know, but for me, "that first green" is what I long for and where I want to be. That I know for sure.

 

Conversation Among the Ruins

William Heath Robinson

Conversation Among the Ruins

Through portico of my elegant house you stalk

With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit

And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the net

Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back.

Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak

Above the appealing ruin; in bleak light

Of your stormy eye, magic takes flight

Like a daunted witch, quitting castle when real days break.

Fractured pillars frame prospects of rock;

While you stand heroic in coat and tie, I sit

Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot,

Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic:

which such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate,

What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?

Sylvia Plath 

Things are not always good. I don't think anyone has ever written as well about marital clashes as Sylvia Plath has. How she describes her world as a beautifully arranged, fabulous place that has now come to utter ruin. Over-dramatic? Probably. But I can attest - that is exactly how it feels. 


 

poem

Ellen Hoverkamp

poem

what of radishes lettuce peas

lifting out of the hard ground!

and if you could hear the strain of labor

or even imagine the unimaginable pressure

on the backs of the bean!

all night soaking in sweat of dew

on the mother-bedded exhaling acres

stars pricking the future above them

while worms chew and grubs curl inward

roots spreading in stony underkeep.

and then the sun diffusing a bluish light

then wave on wave mounts and shoots

vociferous to their patient sheds of green

a blinding hallelujah of fire

and yes yes yes to possibility.

John Gill

It's a great question - how do those seed sprouts push themselves up through the dirt? These things we take for granted! All the mysteries surrounding us that we barely notice! I love Gill's description of what's happening "in stony underkeep". And what a victory it is when the sun sends them a "blinding hallelujah of fire". I say yes to possibility too. If tiny, seemingly lifeless seeds can break out and sprout up from their prisons into expanding, flourishing life - is there any good reason I can't?







 

The Calm after the Storm

Stanley Roy Badmin

The Calm after the Storm

The storm has passed away;
I hear the blackbirds rejoice, the barn-door hen,
Gone back into the lane,
Reiterate her call. Look, the clear sky
Breaks through there in the west, above the mountain;
The plains cast off their gloom;
And the bright stream appears down in the valley.
All hearts are glad once more; on every side
Begins the noise and stir
Of labor, as before.
The craftsman, with his work in hand, goes singing,
To view the rain-swept sky
Outside his door; a woman
Comes running out, to be the first to fill
Her pail with fresh rainwater;
The herb-seller again,
Going from lane to lane,
Takes up his daily cry.
Look now, the sun returns and smiles down
On hillsides and on houses. And now the household
Throws open windows, balconies and rooms;
And mark, upon the high-street, some way off,
Jingle of harness bells, the creaking cart,
As now the traveler renews his journey.

So every heart is glad.
And when, but now, is life
So gracious and so sweet?
When else with so much liking
Does man resume his labors,
Turn to his wonted work, or start some new one? 
And when is he less conscious of his ills? 
Pleasure is trouble's child;
And empty joy, the fruit 
Of terror overpast, makes even the man
Who learned to loathe his life
Tremble with fear at death;
And thus, in long-drawn torment,
Shudder and sweat, the while they see above,
Against them gathering round,
Lightning, and clouds, and wind.

O bounteous Nature, these
Are then your gifts, and this
The happiness you offer
Us mortal men! The issue out of pain
Is happiness enough;
And pains you scatter with a generous hand,
While sorrow springs even of its own accord;
And pleasure, which by some odd miracle
Is born from trouble, is great gain. O human kind,
Dear to the eternal powers, happy indeed
If granted pause for breath
After each grief; most blest
If even these are cured at last by death.

Giacomo Leopardi

Like the first poem by Leopardi I posted ("Saturday Evening in the Village"), we get this wonderful bird's-eye view of what's happening in the countryside. He moves us from creature to creature, thing to thing, person to person, before he settles in to make his point. And what a point! I don't think he meant it to, but it makes me laugh. I mean, is he happy or sad about suffering and grief? And that last line, "cured at last by death", I can't stop grinning. Okay, Mr. Happy Leopardi, I gotcha.

Sketch

Claude Monet - The Beach at Sainte-Adresse

Sketch

The shadows of the ships

Rock on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide.

A long brown bar at the dip of the sky
Puts an arm of sand in the span of salt.

The lucid and endless wrinkles
Draw in, lapse and withdraw.
Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles
Wash on the floor of the beach.

Rocking on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Are the shadows of the ships. 

Carl Sandburg

Sandburg is a magician. He makes it look easy. He makes it look like nothing much is happening. He puts his reader into a trance. "The shadows of the ships", there, he's started already - the way he uses repetition of lines, of vowel sounds - if I even begin looking for things that tie together, that push and pull the meaning from the form, I come up with so many. Aside from all that is the sheer beauty of the image he conjures up, the back and forth feel of the lines - just like waves washing up on the beach. This poem is a word dance, it looks light and effortless, but has taken years of practice to achieve. It has the feeling of a haiku, almost, but with a lot more words. (If that makes any sense.)



 

Time Reminded Me

George Seurat

Time Reminded Me

To remember is not always to go back to what was,

for memory holds seaweed dragging up

wonders,

alien objects that never floated.

A light racing through chasms

lights up earlier years I've never lived

which I recall like yesterday.

About 1900

I was strolling in a Paris park...it was

enveloped in fog.

My dress was the same color as the mist.

The light was the same as now

after seventy years.

Now the brief storm is over

and through the pane I see people walk by

near this window so near the clouds.

A time that is not mine

seems to rain inside my eyes.

Julia Uceda 

That line, "To remember is not always to go back to what was..." stops me in my thoughts. When I first copied this poem into my binder I did so because I enjoyed the misty/Paris/wonders aspect of it, but since then I've realized how true to life it is. How many of my memories are pure recollection? Memory has become self-storytelling. I remember certain facts, but seen in retrospect, I put things together in a narrative that did not exist in the moment. In short, remembering is partially a creative exercise. New things happen, wonders are dragged up, lives I never lived, and yes, "a time that is not mine seems to rain inside my eyes."