On a Boat

Barry Moser

On a Boat, Awake at Night

Faint wind rustles reeds and cattails;

I open the hatch, expecting rain -- moon floods the lake.

Boatmen and water birds dream the same dream;

a big fish splashes off like a frightened fox.

It's late -- men and creatures forget each other

while my shadow and I amuse ourselves alone.

Dark tides creep over the flats -- I pity the cold mud-worms;

the setting moon, caught in a willow, lights a dangling spider.

Life passes swiftly, hedged by sorrow;

how long before you've lost it -- a scene like this?

Cocks crow, bells ring, a hundred birds scatter;

drums pound from the bow, shout answers shout.

Su Tung-p'o (1037-1101) (translated by Burton Watson)

 

 

 

This scene, described in such specific detail, comes alive. I am there, seeing and hearing these things, thinking these thoughts. 

 

It's magic. 

 

And then I look at the dates! Really? 

 

1037-1101? 

 

It could be this minute! 

 

What is the name for this? Time travel + mind meld + the ability to repeat this experience every time we want?

 

If you know of a word for it, tell me please!

 

The Waggon-Maker

 

Carl Larsson

The Waggon-Maker

I have made tales in verse, but this man made

Waggons of elm to last a hundred years;

The blacksmith forged the rims and iron gears,

His was the magic that the wood obeyed.

Each deft device that country wisdom bade,

Or farmers' practice needed, he preserved.

He wrought the subtle contours, straight and curved

Only by eye, and instinct of the trade.

No weakness, no offense in any part,

It stood the strain in mired fields and roads

In all a century's struggle for its bread;

Bearing, perhaps, eight thousand heavy loads,

Beautiful always as a work of art,

Homing the bride, and harvest, and men dead.

John Masefield

A perfect poem. How every word fits snug in its place!  - I feel an intertwining of the writer and his subject. In his appreciation of the carpenter's craft, there is an equal echo in his own. 

The way he writes, "I have made tales in verse, but this man made..." and then describes the wisdom of the woodworker and blacksmith, how they use a knowledge passed down to them through time, and with this create something useful and beautiful to last a hundred years.

That sense of Time! And wisdom passed down! And that "only by eye" and instinct! This is an artist recognizing another's artistry.

It gives me chills. 

There is something gorgeous in the meeting of arts.

A recognition of the highest purposes? Beauty and Truth, or Beauty and Usefulness?

Together, they are a powerhouse, an explosion, a celebration.

I walk away from the poem wishing I had a part in that Beauty-work.

The Thrush's Nest

Bruno Liljefors

The Thrush's Nest

Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush
That overhung a molehill large and round,
I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush
Sing hymns to sunrise, and I drank the sound
With joy; and often, an intruding guest,
I watched her secret toil from day to day -
How true she warped the moss to form a nest,
And modelled it within with wood and clay;
And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew,
There lay her shining eggs, as bright as flowers,
Ink-spotted over shells of greeny blue;
And there I witnessed, in the sunny hours,
A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly,
Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky.

John Clare
from The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, ed. Phillis Levin

John Clare, bird enthusiast, bird poet.

"I drank the sound with joy."

And that's the impression I get - that Clare was a man who needed nature to bring him

out of himself, to lift him up. The birds fed his soul.  

 

I can relate. 

 

 

 

 

Forty Shades of Green

Susan Ogilvy

Forty Shades of Green

 
A Crown/Dulux/Farrow and Ball Poem


I

Tunsgate Green

Green Ground

Cooking Apple Green

Churlish Green

Saxon Green

Folly Green

Minster Green

Vert de Terre

Card Room Green

Breakfast Room Green


II

Teresa’s Green

Soft Fauna

Woodland Pearl

Jungle Fever

Peppermint Beach

Amazon Jungle

Soft Moss

Lime Zest

Kiwi Burst

Willow Creek


III

Grecian Garland

Forest Falls

Paradise Green

Grecian Spa

Minted Glory

Deep Ivy

Woodland Fern

Tarragon Glory

Apple Mist

Soft Lime


IV

Cool Aqua

Wind Chime

Olive Tropics

Lunch Date

Soft Khaki

Chartreuse Mix

Dragonfly

Bamboo Leaf

Soft Duck Egg

Emerald Delight

Frank Ormsby

 

 

Because its Spring!

The beginning of The Green. 

 

 

 

Taxman

Adriaen van Ostade

Taxman

Seven scythes leaned at the wall.

Beard upon golden beard

The last barley load

Swayed through the yard.

The girls uncorked the ale.

Fiddle and feet moved together.

Then between stubble and heather

A horseman rode.

George Mackay Brown 

 

I love the image this poem paints - after all the the hard work, the sweat of the season, the worry over the weather, finally, the harvest is in! 

It's done!

Everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and the sweet moment of completion inspires

dancing, drinking, feasting ----

 

 

until a familiar figure rises in the distance...

 

 

 

Funny/not funny, right?

 

 

 

Words

 

 

Agnelo Bronzino

Words

 

Always the arriving winds of words

Pour like Atlantic gales over these ears,

These reefs, these foils and fenders, these shrinking

And sea-scalded edges of the brainland.

Rebutted and rebounding, on they post

Past my remembrance, falling all unplanned.

But some day out of the darkness they'll come forth,

Arrowed and narrowed into my tongue's tip,

And speak for me -- their most astonished host.

 

W.R. Rodgers

The image of words as a wind, a storm, as waves hitting the "sea-scalded edges of the brainland" is so perfectly fitting.

Ceaseless, loud, battering - this is a familiar, daily experience.

The thought that some day this gale might turn, might come from me instead of at me,

I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

Top of the Stove

 

Hubert Shuptrine

 

Top of the Stove

And then she would lift her griddle
tool from the kindling bin, hooking one
end through a hole in the cast-iron disk
to pry it up with a turn of her wrist.

Our faces pinked over to watch coal
chunks churn and fizz. This was before
I had language to say so, the flatiron
hot all day by the kettle, fragrance

of coffee and coal smoke over
the kitchen in a mist. What did I know?
Now they've gone. Language remains.
I hear her voice like a lick of flame

to a bone-cold day. Careful, she says.
I hold my head close to see what she means.

David Baker

 

 

"This was before I had language..."

 

Here, a poem that fits me like an envelope.

I am grieving the deaths of my mother and father. 

They passed away last year, only days apart.

They raised us kids on a homestead in the Back of Nowhere.

So the sounds and smells surrounding a wood stove are the sounds and smells of my childhood.

 

The painting of the empty chair by the stove - it says it all.

 

 

"They've gone." 

 

But how blessed I was then, how blessed I am still, to have had them.