Today's poet

[Harry H Howgill]

Life is a bitch and then you die...depends on how hard your life is and your attitude I guess. It must be like that for some people who have to struggle everyday to stay alive, fed, free, unharmed. I feel very fortunate that if I died tomorrow I can honestly say my life had its challenges but so many great experiences and memories and I loved it for all its sad times and happy times.

I, for one, hope you are around for a substantial while longer, but you are quite right. Having travelled too and seen people living on the edge of life every day is quite something and can't help have an impact on the way one sees life. To appreciate life, whatever it throws at you is a wonderful thing.

[Harry H Howgill]

Are you psychic HHH? This sums my mood up totally. I just went off to make a cuppa and took a look at my kitchen and thought...this really needs a sort out and so I set to throwing out rubbish, putting out uneaten stale oats and cereal for the birds and reorganising. Just glued and hammered on some trim for my worktops that has been sat there for three years, why didn't I do it before?! Looks great. I now want to start on the rest of the house.

Someone mentioned spring cleaning to me today, to make some room in their house, and this just came to mind. I'm glad it fits.

[Harry H Howgill]

I'll never throw away my bowls of pebbles, shells, fossils, feathers etc though. I even have a tiny little birds nest that I found in the middle of the road once. It is a thing of beauty.

Pebbles, shells, fossils
and feathers et cetera
Items of beauty.

You missed a trick there Hes! I just nicked a haiku!

[Hes]

For every Bird a Nest

For every Bird a Nest --
Wherefore in timid quest
Some little Wren goes seeking round --

Wherefore when boughs are free --
Households in every tree --
Pilgrim be found?

Perhaps a home too high --
Ah Aristocracy!
The little Wren desires --

Perhaps of twig so fine --
Of twine e'en superfine,
Her pride aspires --

The Lark is not ashamed
To build upon the ground
Her modest house --

Yet who of all the throng
Dancing around the sun
Does so rejoice?

Emily Dickinson

[Stef F]

Year of the Hen – Margaret Atwood

This is the year of sorting,
of throwing out, of giving back,
of sifting through the heaps, the piles,
the drifts, the dunes, the sediments,

or less poetically, the shelves, the trunks,
the closets, boxes, corners
in the cellar, nooks and cupboards –

the junk, in other words,
that’s blown in here, or else been saved,
or else has eddied, or been thrown
my way by unseen waves.

For instance: two thick layers
of blank glass jars that once held jam
we made in those evaporated
summers; a frugal slew
of plastic bags; a cracked maroon umbrella
so prized when new;

a chocolate box with crayon ends
stored up for phantom children;
shoes with the grimy marks
of toes that were once mine.
Photos of boys whose names are lost
(posing so jauntily in front of chrome –
trimmed cars), many of them
dead now, the others old –

everything speckled and faded, jumbled
together like – let’s say – this bowl
of miscellaneous pebbles gathered
time after time on beaches now
eroded or misplaced, but scooped up then
and fingered for their beauty,
and pocketed as pure mementoes
of some once indelible day.

How did you know; I've just finished a massive clear out and it triggered lots of unhappy and a few happy trips down memory lane.

Out with the old, in with the new; time to move on to a future of rose not blue

[Hes]

Pebbles, shells, fossils
and feathers et cetera
Items of beauty.

You missed a trick there Hes! I just nicked a haiku!

Ha ha...and so you did! Very nice too.

these smooth pebbles
worn by the relentless waves
seaside memories

[Hes]

How did you know; I've just finished a massive clear out and it triggered lots of unhappy and a few happy trips down memory lane.

Out with the old, in with the new; time to move on to a future of rose not blue

I hope you can hold on to the good memories and let the bad ones go Stef. Years ago I had a carthartic burning of old love letters and photos and it made me feel so much lighter. (just kept a few dear ones in a box for better days)

[Harry H Howgill]

What a dainty little poem. If I was being poetic I might say it hops round just like a little bird itself. Lovely though.

For every Bird a Nest

For every Bird a Nest --
Wherefore in timid quest
Some little Wren goes seeking round --

Wherefore when boughs are free --
Households in every tree --
Pilgrim be found?

Perhaps a home too high --
Ah Aristocracy!
The little Wren desires --

Perhaps of twig so fine --
Of twine e'en superfine,
Her pride aspires --

The Lark is not ashamed
To build upon the ground
Her modest house --

Yet who of all the throng
Dancing around the sun
Does so rejoice?

Emily Dickinson

[Hes]

What a dainty little poem. If I was being poetic I might say it hops round just like a little bird itself. Lovely though.

I know what you mean HHH, it is a bit twee but quite sweet and it does seem to have a lightness to it, like a bird.

[Hes]

I was looking for a poem about cartharsis for Stef and I found this which isn't about that but is interesting:

How Things Work
by Gary Soto

Today it’s going to cost us twenty dollars
To live. Five for a softball. Four for a book,
A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls,
Bus fare, rosin for your mother’s violin.
We’re completing our task. The tip I left
For the waitress filters down
Like rain, wetting the new roots of a child
Perhaps, a belligerent cat that won’t let go
Of a balled sock until there’s chicken to eat.
As far as I can tell, daughter, it works like this:
You buy bread from a grocery, a bag of apples
From a fruit stand, and what coins
Are passed on helps others buy pencils, glue,
Tickets to a movie in which laughter
Is thrown into their faces.
If we buy a goldfish, someone tries on a hat.
If we buy crayons, someone walks home with a broom.
A tip, a small purchase here and there,
And things just keep going. I guess.