Today's poet

[Mossdog]

Variation on the Word Sleep
Margaret Atwood

I would like to watch you sleeping.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head
and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun and three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear
I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in
I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
and that necessary

night all! this fell poet is just toooooo tired!

That's such a lovely poem freckle - thanks for posting

[freckle]

Ready for Flight

From this I will not swerve nor fall nor falter:
If around your heart the crowds disperse
And I who at their whim now freeze or swelter
Am allowed to come to a more temperate place.
And if a runner starts to run to me
Dispatched by you, crying that all is trampled
Underfoot, terraces smashed, the entry
Into holy places rudely sampled,

Then I would come at once my love with love
Bringing to wasted areas the sight
Of butterfly and swan and turtle dove
Their wings ruffled like sails ready for flight

In such surroundings, after the decease
Of devils, you and I would live in peace

Eavan Boland

how utterly gorgeous!

[Hes]

Wind

If you sprint fast enough,
the corn runs with you,
whole rows quick on their roots.

Slow down and they jog
calm and breathless.
Stop and they turn

to walls. Hands on knees,
you pant, and all the leaves,
like wings, beat wildly.

Michael Walsh

[Hes]

There's been some really lovely posts here over the last day or so. I particularly like the cummins, Atwood and Alf's lovely choice which I've never read before.

[freckle]

Wind

If you sprint fast enough,
the corn runs with you,
whole rows quick on their roots.

Slow down and they jog
calm and breathless.
Stop and they turn

to walls. Hands on knees,
you pant, and all the leaves,
like wings, beat wildly.

Michael Walsh

Walsh? not of walshes? nice choice hes very evocative...oh and mossy liked the cummings, cute as ever!

[Hes]

Ha ha, nice one Freckle! Perhaps it is.

Walsh? not of walshes? nice choice hes very evocative...oh and mossy liked the cummings, cute as ever!

[Alf]

Wind

If you sprint fast enough,
the corn runs with you,
whole rows quick on their roots.

Slow down and they jog
calm and breathless.
Stop and they turn

to walls. Hands on knees,
you pant, and all the leaves,
like wings, beat wildly.

Michael Walsh

Loved that one Hes

[Alf]

A killer of a last line in this sonnet

The Hill

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass;
Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,
When we are old, are old. . . ." "And when we die
All's over that is ours; and life burns on
Through other lovers, other lips," said I,
"Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"

"We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here.
Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said;
"We shall go down with unreluctant tread
Rose-crowned into the darkness!" . . . Proud we were,
And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.
-- And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.

Rupert Brooke

[freckle]

Snooze

Independent that’s me
Until I can no longer be
Then what will you say of waiting
Silence perhaps.

The so called ally sleep
Narrator of other people’s dreams
Mouths via a neural repeat
the REM of Sunday lunch.

Dimly aware a prefrontal cortex
instructs the fingers to fumble
yet it seems important not to grumble
and to stop PRESSING

snooze.

[freckle]

New Every Morning

Every day is a fresh beginning,
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
And, spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.


Susan Coolidge