lord what an intriguing poem!
yes alf the lights were a twinkling and slade was playing out in the woodland...shame about yourlack of run...:thunbdown: such is life eh?
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lord what an intriguing poem!
yes alf the lights were a twinkling and slade was playing out in the woodland...shame about yourlack of run...:thunbdown: such is life eh?
Guess what's been happening here today?! :-)
The Family Tree
Some are bought from the shops
Others kept in the loft
Some are real, pesky needles
Others fake from the box
Some appear before advent
And are greeted with cheer
Others pop out for Christmas
And are gone by New Year
Some are crafted by artists
And most tastefully done
Others dressed in a whirl
Of excitement and fun
Some are family journals
Stories on every branch
The bauble from granny
Brings a tearful glance
The kids see the colours
The lights and the bling
The dad sees the needles
Sticking in everything
The mum sees the tales
From fairy to floor
People that are here
Those not here anymore
It's taken me as long to read everything I;ve missed here as it did to write this. I'm ashamed that i simply don't keep up. I'd blame the baby but she's a sleeping machine so that won't wash. Ah yes, training, that's it. If only that were true! Anyway, I always feel for my wife when the tree goes up as she loves it, but gets a little sad as we have decorations handed down from now departed loved ones and it gets to her every time. This poem sort of reflects that, well it tries to anyway.
OOP
Great to see you back OneOff and with an original work too. Its a lovely piece. I think Christmas means so many different things to different people but I imagine most will relate to that element of looking back and remembering the people that aren't with us any more. The enjoyment mixed with a bit of sadness.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OneOffPoet
I loved my first outing to Simonside Alf, especially the dark woods with the fairy lights. Hope you get out and about for a run soon. This poem is a strange one! I'm going to have to read it a few times and digest it :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
It was the Guardian poem of the week about 3 weeks ago Hes so you can find a write up on it on the website. 3rd Lady :cool: Well done :thumbup:Quote:
Originally Posted by Hes
Quote:
Originally Posted by OneOffPoet
Good poem OOP. I know what you mean by the hand me down decorations as well.
That is just such an adorable poem OOP. Really well written, conjuring festive images in my mind with each well crafted line. Thank you.Quote:
Originally Posted by OneOffPoet
Thanks Alf! I had a good day on Sunday, felt strong and fit for the first time in months. Anyway, back to the poem...thanks for the tip off about the Guardian website. I thought the analysis was really interesting and has helped me to enjoy the poem all over again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
From Ruth Stone who died in November this year aged 96.
Curtains
Putting up new curtains,
other windows intrude.
As though it is that first winter in Cambridge
when you and I had just moved in.
Now cold borscht alone in a bare kitchen.
What does it mean if I say this years later?
Listen, last night
I am on a crying jag
with my landlord, Mr. Tempesta.
I sneaked in two cats.
He screams, "No pets! No pets!"
I become my Aunt Virginia,
proud but weak in the head.
I remember Anna Magnani.
I throw a few books. I shout.
He wipes his eyes and opens his hands.
OK OK keep the dirty animals
but no nails in the walls.
We cry together.
I am so nervous, he says.
I want to dig you up and say, look,
it's like the time, remember,
when I ran into our living room naked
to get rid of that fire inspector.
See what you miss by being dead?
Ruth Stone
Aw this is just lovely and made me feel even more festive although I can relate to the "pesky needles" line!Quote:
Originally Posted by OneOffPoet
lush to see original work back on here, nice one
absolutely beautiful evocation of loss and love, thanks alfQuote:
Originally Posted by Alf
That's a perfect example of how poetry can say so so much in just a few lines.:)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Thank you to those that liked this and commented, always lovely to read when you're a nervous poet! Great use of the word lush Freckle, makes me smile as my wife's a Geordie so it's lingua franca in this house :)Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
I must say, my basic rhyming couplets are all very well, but Ruth Stone's Curtains is a proper poem, absolutely brilliant. I'd say that what 96 years of practice brings, but I dare say there's some lifelong talent in there. Thanks very much for posting it.
I picked up a chillblain on one of my toes a few weeks back though it has healed now fortunately. I didn't expect it and have never had one before so this poem has some resonance with me.
Lets look after our tootsies out there! :D
Frostbite
Less a nip than gnaw,
the way a goat,
tethered, will ruminate
a rope; the way
each in extremis tip
of ear and nose
unbuds, or snail-
like toe, curled
dreamily, lets
go too fat a foot,
cinching filament
and tendril, pinch
by stony pinch
until the pulse exhausts
and flickers down
to drowse and numb,
the sleep so close,
so old, so mild
inside the placid
scald
and hissing of the snow.
Hailey Leithauser
Truely impressed by this thread. Lets have a race. See if you can get to 15,000 posts/500,000 views before QAH thread hits 30,000/1 million!
My words tread as light
as the pattering feet
of a timid bog-trotting runner
in shiny new walshes
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wheeze
It must take its own sweet time Wheeze......each poem to be tasted, rolled round the tongue...savoured and swallowed...like a good claret :D
Nice poem by the way :cool:Quote:
Originally Posted by Wheeze
My first attempt....ever! Is it anything like a Haiku? What are the rules for those?
No rules on this thread Wheeze, this is the home of free verse! I am sure our glorious leader freckle will confirm this :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Wheeze
Very nice indeed wheeze i like the imagery ...strictly speaking traditional haiku consist of three phrases with a syllable count of 5, 7 and 5 respectively...however I am not one for rules myself and it is apparent that the thread welcomes verse of any type! in fact we sometimes positively encourage the breaking of rules...:oQuote:
Originally Posted by Wheeze
Robert Frost returning from abroad finds things are not the same anymore especially when his girlfriend rejects his marriage proposal. He compares the end of the relationship with the end of the season and decides he should treat them both the same.
Reluctance
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
Robert Frost
OK, I'll go for the free form-whatever pops in to my head school.
Umm,
How about:
Buzzards call,
Bluff stone wall.
Lambs bleat,
Smell of peat.
Azure sky,
Yes, I can fly
Forever over these tumbling hills,
Soul free, heart light and full of life.
Its good to have a new voice on here Wheeze and I like both your offerings. Keep them coming. :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wheeze
Nice image there Alf and too true! I liked your frostbite poem by the way and its always good to have a bit of Frost on the thread (I like what you did there:) ).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
Problems with the Dictionary
Shouldn't the distance between impossible
and improbable be widened? Might miracle
deserve its own appendix: the ease with which night
becomes winter? There must be a word for it,
a term unique and apropos to star-pocked sky
and village roads blanketed by snow,
a good-natured—but stone drunk—schoolteacher
leaving a warm bar. It is improbable she will drive.
She does. North of town, wind uncovers ice-sheets.
A drift swarms ditch to ditch and the street
becomes impassible (see also impossible). She cannot
u-turn and begins walking home. She forgets
her headlights and roadside crops go miraculous:
snowed-in corn pastures awash in shadows
from her halogen bulbs. Another driver
would not see her. None come. The night is nothing more
than boot-prints in fresh powder, a wobbly path
tracking to back-patio where she frees the latch
and lets herself in. Her high-beams will burn
to sunrise. Her frozen steps will melt beyond definition.
Luke Johnson
a lovely melancholy offering from frost, i also enjoyed contributionsfrom hes and wheeze's orginal work...Quote:
Originally Posted by Alf
had a lovely wintry run today, no snow as yet but plenty of frost underfoot casting a twinkling spell over the woodland i was scampering through...looking forward to a snowy run soon hopefully...
Stars
Robert Frost
How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--
As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--
And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those stars like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.
Coral
This coral's shape ecohes the hand
It hollowed. Its
Immediate absence is heavy. As pumice,
As your breast in my cupped palm.
Sea-cold, its nipple rasps like sand,
Its pores, like yours, shone with salt sweat.
Bodies in absence displace their weight,
And your smooth body, like none other,
Creates an exact absence like this stone
Set on a table with a whitening rack
Of souvenirs. It dares my hand
To claim what lovers' hands have never known:
The nature of the body of another.
Derek Walcott
I know gluttony is a sin, but this extra one from Derek is just too superb not to be tasted as well.
‘Sixty Years After’
In my wheelchair in the Virgin lounge at Vieuxfort,
I saw, sitting in her own wheelchair,
her beauty
hunched like a crumpled flower,
the one whom I thought
as the fire of my young life would do her duty
to be golden and beautiful and young forever
even as I aged.
She was treble-chinned, old,
her devastating smile was netted in wrinkles,
but I felt the fever
briefly returning as we sat there, crippled, hating
time and the lie of general pleasantries.
Small waves still break against the small stone pier
where a boatman left me in the orange peace
of dusk, a half-century ago,
maybe happier being erect,
she like a deer in her shyness,
I stalking an impossible consummation;
those who knew us
knew we would never be together,
at least, not walking.
Now the silent knives from the intercom went through us.
by Derek Walcott
Ooo la la!...i remember when sunday nights had this theme regularly..or was it saturdays?....anyway, jolly good mossy!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
beautiful choice...very poignantQuote:
Originally Posted by Mossdog
Now Winter Nights Enlarge http://z.about.com/ Thomas Campion (1617) http://z.about.com/
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze,
And cups o’erflow with wine;
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love,
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep’s leaden spells remove.
This time doth well dispense
With lovers’ long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freckle
A Jacobean poem freckle :cool:. A well filled glass of wine/beer and a bit of poetry and some "nibbles". That's living alright :D
Must be time to give this John Clare Sonnet an airing again.
Emmonsail's Heath in Winter
I love to see the old heath's withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing,
An oddling crow in idle motion swing
On the half-rotten ash-tree's topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gypsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread;
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the haw round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels, twenty in a drove,
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again.
John Clare
Ode to Speedo
The radio the news that broke
- That made my blood run cold
With hushen tones the voice that spoke
- Recalling days of old
When mighty whites were on the move
- Accepting no defeat
The barmy army in the groove
- To Sergeant Wilko's beat
Macca, Strachan, Speedo, Batts
- The quartet pulling strings
Brains and brawn and class and brass
- Rampaging on the wings
Eric's collar then was white
- With Chapman striker ace
And Sterland steaming down the right
- Dorigo, poise and pace
Whyte and Fairclough tracking back
- Sinews strained to block
Wallace probing in attack
- Defences run amok
In steel city victory won
- The Blades put to the sword
And Man United lose again
- As Leeds and Anfield roared
The top gun in a top man top
- Eleven on his back
His runs from deep they couldn't stop
- Defence into attack
From box to box with strength and stealth
- Accomplished with both feet
"Go on Speed, get one yourself"
- The ball was struck so sweet
Dependable and debonair
- A broad grin cross his face
Soaring high into the air
- And heading home with pace
The radio the news decreed
- A sense of disbelief
The football world lost Gary Speed
- United in its grief
I liked that very much. A fitting ode.Quote:
Originally Posted by crowhill
Late Snow
An end. Or a beginning.
Snow had fallen again and covered
the old dredge and blackened mush
with a gleaming pelt; but high up there
in the sycamore top, Thaw
Thaw, the rooks cried,
sentinel by ruined nests.
Water was slacking into runnels
from drifts and pitted snowbacks
dripping from the gutter and ragged
icicle fringes. Snow paused
in the shining embrace of bushes
waiting in ledged curds and bluffs
to tumble into soft explosions.
And suddenly your absence
drove home its imperatives like frost,
and I ran to the high field
clumsily as a pregnant woman
to tread our names in blemished
brilliant drifts; because the time we have
is shrinking away like snow.
M.R. Peacocke
Nice one Crowhill
He'll always be fondly remembered around these parts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by crowhill
Scoured Sylvia's goodies for something vaguely festive!
Sylvia Plath - Balloons
Since Christmas they have lived with us,
Guileless and clear,
Oval soul-animals,
Taking up half the space,
Moving and rubbing on the silk
Invisible air drifts,
Giving a shriek and pop
When attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling.
Yellow cathead, blue fish ----
Such queer moons we live with
Instead of dead furniture!
Straw mats, white walls
And these traveling
Globes of thin air, red, green,
Delighting
The heart like wishes or free
Peacocks blessing
Old ground with a feather
Beaten in starry metals.
Your small
Brother is making
His balloon squeak like a cat.
Seeming to see
A funny pink world he might eat on the other side of it,
He bites,
Then sits
Back, fat jug
Contemplating a world clear as water.
A red
Shred in his little fist.
little tree
little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower
who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly
i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid
look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,
put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy
then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud
and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"
by: e.e. cummings
Merry Christmas everyone X
Next year's resolution? ;)
Let's Live Suddenly Without Thinking
let’s live suddenly without thinking
under honest trees,
a stream
does.the brain of cleverly-crinkling
-water pursues the angry dream
of the shore. By midnight,
a moon
scratches the skin of the organised hills
an edged nothing begins to prune
let’s live like the light that kills
and let’s as silence,
because Whirl’s after all:
(after me)love,and after you.
I occasionally feel vague how
vague idon’t know tenuous Now-
spears and The Then-arrows making do
our mouths something red,something tall
E. E. Cummings