Today's poet

[XRunner]

Today is National Apple Day!

Attachment 4025
The Apple
by James Crowden

The apple is a saucey little item,
Daughter of blossom, sits neatly in the palm,
Exquisite in its pert roundness
And asking to be admired and handled.

Look for instance at the much forgotten stalk
The secret timing of its fall from grace
The gravity of the situation, the earthly grasp
Or else the apple of your eye cradled in the sun,

Plucked in perfection from the tree of life,
The rosie skin that takes a shine,
Protects the inner flesh, firm and crisp and even,
Till young mouths are brought into play,

And teeth sunk into sweet sharpness,
The hint of summer lost in autumn,
Each subtle fragrance stored within the mind,
A host of memories, the DNA of myth, the pips,

Eve's gift, a timely signal carried down the ages,
Sanctuary in miniature, sliced through,
The source of secret divination yields a fertile mind,
The inner core, now discarded, thrown away,

Rises up again, a shadey orchard meeting place
For slender youth, the tree itself
A secret assignation with the golden bough,
A song bird within a garden walled.

[Alf]

Today is National Apple Day!

Attachment 4025
The Apple
by James Crowden

The apple is a saucey little item,
Daughter of blossom, sits neatly in the palm,
Exquisite in its pert roundness
And asking to be admired and handled.

Look for instance at the much forgotten stalk
The secret timing of its fall from grace
The gravity of the situation, the earthly grasp
Or else the apple of your eye cradled in the sun,

Plucked in perfection from the tree of life,
The rosie skin that takes a shine,
Protects the inner flesh, firm and crisp and even,
Till young mouths are brought into play,

And teeth sunk into sweet sharpness,
The hint of summer lost in autumn,
Each subtle fragrance stored within the mind,
A host of memories, the DNA of myth, the pips,

Eve's gift, a timely signal carried down the ages,
Sanctuary in miniature, sliced through,
The source of secret divination yields a fertile mind,
The inner core, now discarded, thrown away,

Rises up again, a shadey orchard meeting place
For slender youth, the tree itself
A secret assignation with the golden bough,
A song bird within a garden walled.

Loved that poem xrunner. It was succulent, sensuous and just a little tart just like I prefer my apples (Granny Smiths)

[Old Whippet]

Alf - your new avatar makes this offering compulsory. And it's not the 1st time I've popped this favourite on this thread!

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

The Windhover


To Christ our Lord


I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

[freckle]

Here Comes Autumn

The grieving willows droop in deep mourning,
Their sad hair streaming like teardrops falling.
Here comes autumn, here comes the autumn cold
In its faded mantle woven with leaves of gold.

Various blossoms have fallen off their branch
Amidst a garden where the red mingles with blue.
The trembling breath of breeze shakes the leaves and
A few shriveled limbs like fragile bones in somber hue.

At times the moon appears with all her puzzled look.
And on the far side mountains start to veil with fog.
I hear the bitter cold stirring the wind,
But see no boats making their cross-stream run.

High in the cloudy sky the birds flee on
While the leaden air broods o'er the parting.
A few sad girls against the door lean in silence
Looking pensively into the distance

Xuan Dieu

I'm off to Vietnam tomorrow so it seemed appropriate to find a poem translated from Vietnamese

Have a good trip DT and don't forget the haiku!

alfster....whats all this apple talk? succulent and sensous and tart?........

anyway...on a totally different note here is something rather pleasant about dandelions....a weed close to my heart...

From "A Rhapsody" (excerpt)

Tis May; and yet the March flower Dandelion
Is still in bloom among the emerald grass,
Shining like guineas with the sun's warm eye on--
We almost think they are gold as we pass,
Or fallen stars in a green sea of grass.
They shine in fields, or waste grounds near the town.
They closed like painter's brush when even was.
At length they turn to nothing else but down,
While the rude winds blow off each shadowy crown.

John Clare

[Hes]

I love the sensual apple poem posted by XRunner! I've got a lovely crop of eating apples this year and, for once, my bramleys have done brilliantly too. I like my apples firm, crisp and juicy...mmmmm

Apples

Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain.

The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.

They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.

In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.

I, with as easy hunger, take
entire my season’s dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole.

Laurie Lee

[Hes]

Good choice OW! One of my favourite Manley Hopkins poems second only to Pied Beauty.

Alf - your new avatar makes this offering compulsory. And it's not the 1st time I've popped this favourite on this thread!

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

The Windhover


To Christ our Lord


I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

[Hes]

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:

Práise hím.

[Alf]

Alf - your new avatar makes this offering compulsory. And it's not the 1st time I've popped this favourite on this thread!

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

The Windhover


To Christ our Lord


I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

This is spooky OW I was reading that poem a couple of days ago. It was a former Guardian Poem of the Week and had the kestrel picture I used for my avatar. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/book...manley-hopkins

Maybe we are becoming a collective of like minds connected by invisible threads unconsciously communicating our thoughts to each other? Or have I got an overactive imagination

[Alf]

Have a good trip DT and don't forget the haiku!

alfster....whats all this apple talk? succulent and sensous and tart?........:o

anyway...on a totally different note here is something rather pleasant about dandelions....a weed close to my heart...

From "A Rhapsody" (excerpt)

Tis May; and yet the March flower Dandelion
Is still in bloom among the emerald grass,
Shining like guineas with the sun's warm eye on--
We almost think they are gold as we pass,
Or fallen stars in a green sea of grass.
They shine in fields, or waste grounds near the town.
They closed like painter's brush when even was.
At length they turn to nothing else but down,
While the rude winds blow off each shadowy crown.

John Clare

Just getting my own back for those cheese similes of yours freckle

Loved the John Clare poem which I haven't seen before. I will look up the rest of it after that taster

[Alf]

I love the sensual apple poem posted by XRunner! I've got a lovely crop of eating apples this year and, for once, my bramleys have done brilliantly too. I like my apples firm, crisp and juicy...mmmmm

Apples

Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain.

The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.

They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.

In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.

I, with as easy hunger, take
entire my season’s dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole.

Laurie Lee

That is lush Hes ! I love the second verse particularly. Laurie Lee certainly had a thing for apples (Cider with Rosie !).