Today's poet

[freckle]

That's really very excellent freckle, and i know just what you mean, that sense of urgency to want to capture a rich moment, and the sadness of recognising that impossibilty. I think you've definitely captured quite a 'Keatsian' tone to it though, as in...

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

John Keats

thanks mossy and this poem is just so brilliant...I can't really think of a better poem to describe the sensous side to autumn!

ps I am looking forward to enjoying the "liquid memories" of some well matured sloe gin...the main impetus for collecting the sloes....

[Mossdog]

Spell

Yes, I think a poem is a spell of kinds
that keeps things living in a written line,
whatever's lost or leaving - lock of rhyme -
and so I write and write and write your name.

Carol Ann Duffy

[freckle]

Spell

Yes, I think a poem is a spell of kinds
that keeps things living in a written line,
whatever's lost or leaving - lock of rhyme -
and so I write and write and write your name.

Carol Ann Duffy

so very true! and pertinent to our earlier discussion!

[Alf]

Night Garden

In the garden there is a row of dahlias
each a trembling piston ready
to ignite its pollen fervor.

You read the seasons as if they are fruit.
Tonight it's the season of oranges
blood red globes that hang
from the corpuscles of branches
their leaves saffron scarves
sweetly tonguing the forest's soft thigh.

You have witnessed moments
when the red mouths of pomegranates
opened up their constellations of seeds
and ushered in a wind clear as chamomile.

A stream offers its banks
litters a pillow of sand
With petals of jasmine and rose
the lament of a mourning dove
sculpts the transient sky.

You are always poised to
leap off the earth
and wave your magenta arms
to embrace the downdraft of flight.

T. J. Anderson

[Alf]

Good Night, Ladies


The hens won't do what I want them to:
They bristle, squat, grow petulant under
my reaching hand. But it's time to go
home. The sun's stretched to a streak

of rose flush along the fir-tops; the day's
turned lilac cold. Not yet night, though
I feel the darkening in my arms, frail
tremor, the bird's pin-boned, all fluff.

It's too early, or I'm too clumsy to corral
the rest of the cluster from under the coop.
I track their hop and dawdle, lopsided
as drunks, and twice as stubborn. I reason

with corn feed and terror, point out
unseen fisher cats skulking beyond
the pen. One hen circles hen-pecked
trenches, burrowed seats of safety,

another wing-flaps haplessly, mad at
her grounding. They're scared of me,
but I'm scared of what I can't see,
maybe fisher cats, maybe the last suck

of breath that unmakes me, the shadows
I pretend to love. Who wants the door
to close, to be wrangled by strangers
then cooped up? We're all chicken. Yes,

it's written in the twilight sky, the poem
of our good night. I carry a warm hen
in my hands, brown feathers, brown feathers
softly unfeathering, and her nervous coo.

Jennifer Chang

[freckle]

Night Garden

In the garden there is a row of dahlias
each a trembling piston ready
to ignite its pollen fervor.

You read the seasons as if they are fruit.
Tonight it's the season of oranges
blood red globes that hang
from the corpuscles of branches
their leaves saffron scarves
sweetly tonguing the forest's soft thigh.

You have witnessed moments
when the red mouths of pomegranates
opened up their constellations of seeds
and ushered in a wind clear as chamomile.

A stream offers its banks
litters a pillow of sand
With petals of jasmine and rose
the lament of a mourning dove
sculpts the transient sky.

You are always poised to
leap off the earth
and wave your magenta arms
to embrace the downdraft of flight.

T. J. Anderson

great choice Alf...i do like a bit of personofication of nature on a sunday evening !

[freckle]

Urg...its sunday night (ie monday morning tomorrow)...

aw well, chin up! (according to felix dennis)

Not all things go wrong
Felix Dennis
Not all things go wrong, and knowing
This, be wary of despair,
As you go through hell — keep going,
Make no brave oasis there.

Through the shadowlands of grieving,
Past the giants, Doubt and Fear,
Heartsick, stunned, and half believing —
Heed no whisper in your ear.

Not all things go wrong — and after
Winter’s famine comes the spring,
Kindness, beauty, children’s laughter —
Joy is ever on the wing.

[stevefoster]

It's Monday, it's a whole new week,
It may be bad, it may be bleak,
It may be good, but one thing's for sure my friend,
When it's all over, it's another weekend:thumbup:

[Alf]

Urg...its sunday night (ie monday morning tomorrow)...

aw well, chin up! (according to felix dennis)

Not all things go wrong
Felix Dennis
Not all things go wrong, and knowing
This, be wary of despair,
As you go through hell — keep going,
Make no brave oasis there.

Through the shadowlands of grieving,
Past the giants, Doubt and Fear,
Heartsick, stunned, and half believing —
Heed no whisper in your ear.

Not all things go wrong — and after
Winter’s famine comes the spring,
Kindness, beauty, children’s laughter —
Joy is ever on the wing.

Well that's Monday over with freckle and 4 more days till the weekend Steve :thumbup:

[Alf]

Unknown


She is most fair,
And when they see her pass
The poets' ladies
Look no more in the glass
But after her.


On a bleak moor
Running under the moon
She lures a poet,
Once proud or happy, soon
Far from his door.


Beside a train,
Because they saw her go,
Or failed to see her,
Travellers and watchers know
Another pain.


The simple lack
Of her is more to me
Than others' presence,
Whether life splendid be
Or utter black.


I have not seen,
I have no news of her;
I can tell only
She is not here, but there
She might have been.


She is to be kissed
Only perhaps by me;
She may be seeking
Me and no other; she
May not exist.

Edward Thomas