Today's poet

[stevefoster]

I Sit and Think


I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall never see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.


John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Nice choice MG. Read it twice, could be Hobbit forming!

[Hes]

Ha ha ha...nice one Steve! I really liked MG's choice too.

Nice choice MG. Read it twice, could be Hobbit forming!

[Hes]

Oh no...that's not a cheery poem (good though). I'm going to keep my head in the clouds and hope for happy endings.

Ending

The love we thought would never stop
now cools like a congealing chop.
The kisses that were hot as curry
are bird pecks taken in a hurry.
The hands that held electric charges
now lie inert as four moored barges.
The feet that ran to meet a date
are running slow and running late.
The eyes that shone and seldom shut
are victims of a power cut.
The parts that then transmitted joy
are now reserved and cold and coy.
Romance, expected once to stay,
has left a note saying GONE AWAY.

Gavin Ewart

[Hes]

This is an interesting poem. I like the idea that we can be better people, the people we'd like to be, when we are with people that don't know us.

Found

I'd like to be who I am with her all the time. So brilliant,
she tells the nurse who freshens the bed. She just knows

where everything is. Without looking, I can slip my hand
inside her purse and pull out a tin of face powder.

She'll grope the empty bed
and by the time she begins to reach toward the table,

I've placed a Q-tip glistening with mineral oil
in her fingers. I want her to believe

this is the way things are now;
everything she needs hangs in the air, waiting.

If you want to know the truth, you can't trust me
with anything. I lose things no one should be able to lose:

a young brother, a mother.
But I can speak as slowly and loudly as you need.

I can make a book shout; surge us far into the chapter
and when your snoring wakes you, I'll jump back to the beginning.

You'll ask me if I've done this before.
I can press the call button and make women appear at the door.

Stephanie Levin

[Alf]

This is an interesting poem. I like the idea that we can be better people, the people we'd like to be, when we are with people that don't know us.

Found

I'd like to be who I am with her all the time. So brilliant,
she tells the nurse who freshens the bed. She just knows

where everything is. Without looking, I can slip my hand
inside her purse and pull out a tin of face powder.

She'll grope the empty bed
and by the time she begins to reach toward the table,

I've placed a Q-tip glistening with mineral oil
in her fingers. I want her to believe

this is the way things are now;
everything she needs hangs in the air, waiting.

If you want to know the truth, you can't trust me
with anything. I lose things no one should be able to lose:

a young brother, a mother.
But I can speak as slowly and loudly as you need.

I can make a book shout; surge us far into the chapter
and when your snoring wakes you, I'll jump back to the beginning.

You'll ask me if I've done this before.
I can press the call button and make women appear at the door.

Stephanie Levin

I enjoyed that Hes. I wonder where I can get one of those call buttons

[Alf]

This poem makes me want to go out and buy a pomegranate

Granada

To be so far from oxtail stew, sardines
in garlic sauce, blood oranges in pails
along the avenida, midday heat
wetting necks and wrists; to be so stuck
in stone-thick ice and clouds and recall
the pomegranate we shared, its hardened peel,
the translucent membrane gently parting
seed from luscious crimson seed, albedo
soft beneath bald rind, acid juice
running down our fingers, knuckles, palms,
the mild chap of our lips from mist and flesh;
so far away from that, and still
the tangy thought of pomegranates
crowning coats-of-arms and fortress gates
like beating hearts prepared to detonate
their countless seeds across Granada,
ancient town of strangled rivers
and nameless bones in every desert hill...
In Spain, said Lorca, the dead are more alive
than any other place on earth. Imagine, then,
the excavation of his unmarked grave
like the quick pull on a grenade's pin,
and the sound that secrets make
as they return from that other world
of teeth and blood and fire.

Joanne Diaz

[freckle]

This poem makes me want to go out and buy a pomegranate

Granada

To be so far from oxtail stew, sardines
in garlic sauce, blood oranges in pails
along the avenida, midday heat
wetting necks and wrists; to be so stuck
in stone-thick ice and clouds and recall
the pomegranate we shared, its hardened peel,
the translucent membrane gently parting
seed from luscious crimson seed, albedo
soft beneath bald rind, acid juice
running down our fingers, knuckles, palms,
the mild chap of our lips from mist and flesh;
so far away from that, and still
the tangy thought of pomegranates
crowning coats-of-arms and fortress gates
like beating hearts prepared to detonate
their countless seeds across Granada,
ancient town of strangled rivers
and nameless bones in every desert hill...
In Spain, said Lorca, the dead are more alive
than any other place on earth. Imagine, then,
the excavation of his unmarked grave
like the quick pull on a grenade's pin,
and the sound that secrets make
as they return from that other world
of teeth and blood and fire.

Joanne Diaz

I have been away too long!....this is lovely alf....

six weeks of the summer holidays with two small children has been wonderful (if exhausting!) with lots of lovely memories, they sharp grow up fast...

anyhow...on a different note....here is simon armitage at his romantic best...from the book of matches, an excerpt from a poem he wrote for the love of his life


Let me put it this way:
if you came to lay

your sleeping head
against my arm or sleeve,

and if my arm went dead,
or if I had to take my leave

at midnight, I should rather
cleave it from the joint or seam

then make a scene
or bring you round.

There,
how does that sound?

[Alf]

I have been away too long!....this is lovely alf....

six weeks of the summer holidays with two small children has been wonderful (if exhausting!) with lots of lovely memories, they sharp grow up fast...

anyhow...on a different note....here is simon armitage at his romantic best...from the book of matches, an excerpt from a poem he wrote for the love of his life


Let me put it this way:
if you came to lay

your sleeping head
against my arm or sleeve,

and if my arm went dead,
or if I had to take my leave

at midnight, I should rather
cleave it from the joint or seam

then make a scene
or bring you round.

There,
how does that sound?

Welcome back freckle

Loved the Simon Armitage extract and hope your kids didn't poke anything into their ears in the hols!.


The Listening of Plants


On the buffet where she kept her celadon dishes,
Mother placed a vase of pussy willows
hurried out of their branches.

The buds were cat toes walking up a mottled branch,
miniature koalas hanging on their eucalyptus
in a scattered line.

I snapped one off the twig and rolled the bud
on the flats of my thumb and finger,
its smoky gray coat how I imagined koala fur might feel.

I rubbed the willow bud along the bone of my jaw
wanting to know how a plant can wear animal skin.
It was too small, like touching nothing.

I splayed my hand along its curves,
felt the hairs rise in the divot of my palm,
I would have needed a sweater of willow to be satisfied.

Instead I slipped it into my ear. How did I know
a pussy willow was the right shape for the foyer of my ear,
long hall leading to the eardrum and the bones behind?

The bud rested there and I listened,
wanting to hear what it had to say
which was quiet, which was the muted listening of plants.

When I asked Mother to extract a pussy willow
from my ear, I couldn't explain its presence
how I listened and heard its secret.

Laura Shovan

[Alf]

Green Heron

A little green in a fine mist.
Its chest veed by what isn't
rust.

Hunched against the dusk,
it stands on what must be
rock.

I watch it succeed
at trying to remain
unseen.

Always its beak aimed
at those marks which aren't
rain.

Daniel Wolff

[Mossdog]

There's always so much fine poetry shared on this thread, it's so rich - thanks all for posting. Found this which I really like:


I was wrapped in black
fur and white fur and
you undid me and then
you placed me in gold light
and then you crowned me,
while snow fell outside
the door in diagonal darts.
While a ten-inch snow
came down like stars
in small calcium fragments,
we were in our own bodies
(that room that will bury us)
and you were in my body
(that room that will outlive us)
and at first I rubbed your
feet dry with a towel
because I was your slave
and then you called me princess.
Princess!

Oh then
I stood up in my gold skin
and I beat down the psalms
and I beat down the clothes
and you undid the bridle
and you undid the reins
and I undid the buttons,
the bones, the confusions,
the New England postcards,
the January ten o’clock night,
and we rose up like wheat,
acre after acre of gold,
and we harvested,
we harvested.
Anne Sexton (Us)