Today's poet

[freckle]

i really enjoyed the mary oliver poem alf...quite ethereal images...lovely well i am very sleepy after entertaining a band of little (halloween) monsters today...longing for my bed! i like the story like feel to this verse... Nocturne
Wayne Miller
Tonight all the leaves are paper spoons in a broth of wind. Last weekthey made a darker sky below the sky. The houses have swallowed their colors, and each car moves in the blind sack of its sound like the slipping of water. Flowing means falling very slowly the river passing under the tracks, the tracks then buried beneath the road. When a knocking came in the night, I rose violently toward my reflection hovering beneath this world. And then the fluorescent kitchen in the window like a page I was reading a face coming into focus behind it: my neighbor locked out of his own party,looking for a phone. I gave him a beer and the lit pad of numbers through which he disappeared; I found I was alone with the voices that bloomed as he opened the door. It's timeto slip my body beneath the covers, let it fall down the increments of shale, let the wind consume every spoon. My voice unhinging itself from light,my voice landing in its cradle How terrifying a payphone ishanging at the end of its cord. Which is not to be confused with sleep sleep gives the body back its mouth.

[Alf]

i really enjoyed the mary oliver poem alf...quite ethereal images...lovely well i am very sleepy after entertaining a band of little (halloween) monsters today...longing for my bed! i like the story like feel to this verse... Nocturne
Wayne Miller
Tonight all the leaves are paper spoons in a broth of wind. Last weekthey made a darker sky below the sky. The houses have swallowed their colors, and each car moves in the blind sack of its sound like the slipping of water. Flowing means falling very slowly the river passing under the tracks, the tracks then buried beneath the road. When a knocking came in the night, I rose violently toward my reflection hovering beneath this world. And then the fluorescent kitchen in the window like a page I was reading a face coming into focus behind it: my neighbor locked out of his own party,looking for a phone. I gave him a beer and the lit pad of numbers through which he disappeared; I found I was alone with the voices that bloomed as he opened the door. It's timeto slip my body beneath the covers, let it fall down the increments of shale, let the wind consume every spoon. My voice unhinging itself from light,my voice landing in its cradle How terrifying a payphone ishanging at the end of its cord. Which is not to be confused with sleep sleep gives the body back its mouth.

I enjoyed that freckle and I hope you are fully recovered from the "monsters"

[Alf]

Congratulations to Michael D Higgins on his presidency. A poet as president :thumbup:

[Stevie]

I have enjoyed catching up with some of the poems posted on here recently.

I fear this poem will come among you as a troll amidst the beauty and truth of recent posts, but here goes. Tim Turnbull cares about beauty and truth even so.

Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn by Tim Turnbull

Hello! What's all this here? A kitschy vase
some Shirley Temple manqué has knocked out
delineating tales of kids in cars
on crap estates, the Burberry clad louts
who flail their motors through the smoky night
from Manchester to Motherwell or Slough,
creating bedlam on the Queen's highway.
Your gaudy evoction can, somehow,
conjure the scene without inducing fright,
as would a Daily Express exposé,

can bring to mind the throaty turbo roar
of hatchbacks tuned almost to breaking point,
the joyful throb of UK garage or
of house imported from the continent
and yet educe a sense of peace, of calm -
the screech of tyres and the nervous squeals
of girls, too young to quite appreciate
the peril they are in, are heard, but these wheels
will not lose traction, skid and flip, no harm
befall these children. They will stay out late

forever, pumped on youth and ecstasy,
on alloy, bass and arrogance, and speed
the back lanes, the urban gyratory,
the wide motorways, never having need
to race back home, for work next day, to bed.
Each girl is buff, each geezer toned and strong,
charged with pulsing juice which, even yet,
fills every pair of Calvins and each thong,
never to be deflated, given head
in crude games of chlamydia roulette.

Now see who comes to line the sparse grass verge,
to test them in Buckfast and Diamond White:
rat-boys and corn-rowed cheerleaders who urge
them on to pull more burn-outs or to write
their donut Os, as signature, upon
the bleached tarmac of dead suburban streets.
There dogs set up a row and curtains twitch
as pensioners and parents telephone
the cops to plead for quiet, sue for peace -
tranquility, though, is for the rich.

And so, millenia hence, you garish crock,
when all context is lost, galleries razed
to level dust and we're long in the box,
will future poets look on you amazed,
speculate how children might have lived when
you were fired, lives so free and bountiful
and there, beneath a sun a little colder,
declare How happy were those creatures then,
who knew the truth was all negotiable
and beauty in the gift of the beholder.

[Alf]

I have enjoyed catching up with some of the poems posted on here recently.

I fear this poem will come among you as a troll amidst the beauty and truth of recent posts, but here goes. Tim Turnbull cares about beauty and truth even so.

Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn by Tim Turnbull

Hello! What's all this here? A kitschy vase
some Shirley Temple manqué has knocked out
delineating tales of kids in cars
on crap estates, the Burberry clad louts
who flail their motors through the smoky night
from Manchester to Motherwell or Slough,
creating bedlam on the Queen's highway.
Your gaudy evoction can, somehow,
conjure the scene without inducing fright,
as would a Daily Express exposé,

can bring to mind the throaty turbo roar
of hatchbacks tuned almost to breaking point,
the joyful throb of UK garage or
of house imported from the continent
and yet educe a sense of peace, of calm -
the screech of tyres and the nervous squeals
of girls, too young to quite appreciate
the peril they are in, are heard, but these wheels
will not lose traction, skid and flip, no harm
befall these children. They will stay out late

forever, pumped on youth and ecstasy,
on alloy, bass and arrogance, and speed
the back lanes, the urban gyratory,
the wide motorways, never having need
to race back home, for work next day, to bed.
Each girl is buff, each geezer toned and strong,
charged with pulsing juice which, even yet,
fills every pair of Calvins and each thong,
never to be deflated, given head
in crude games of chlamydia roulette.

Now see who comes to line the sparse grass verge,
to test them in Buckfast and Diamond White:
rat-boys and corn-rowed cheerleaders who urge
them on to pull more burn-outs or to write
their donut Os, as signature, upon
the bleached tarmac of dead suburban streets.
There dogs set up a row and curtains twitch
as pensioners and parents telephone
the cops to plead for quiet, sue for peace -
tranquility, though, is for the rich.

And so, millenia hence, you garish crock,
when all context is lost, galleries razed
to level dust and we're long in the box,
will future poets look on you amazed,
speculate how children might have lived when
you were fired, lives so free and bountiful
and there, beneath a sun a little colder,
declare How happy were those creatures then,
who knew the truth was all negotiable
and beauty in the gift of the beholder.

Very good that Stevie and 5 verses and 50 lines in all just the same as the original

[Alf]

Selecting a Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.


Ted Kooser

[freckle]

Selecting a Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.


Ted Kooser

thats funny alf made me chuckle! :wink:

[freckle]

The Freedom of the Moon
Robert Frost

I’ve tried the new moon tilted in the air
Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster
As you might try a jewel in your hair.
I’ve tried it fine with little breadth of luster,
Alone, or in one ornament combining
With one first water-star almost as shining.

I put it shining anywhere I please.
By walking slowly on some evening later
I’ve pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,
And brought it over glossy water, greater,
And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,
The color run, all sorts of wonder follow.

[freckle]

BEING
Don Paterson

Silent comrade of the distances,
Know that space dilates with your own breath;
ring out, as a bell into the Earth
from the dark rafters of its own high place-
then watch what feeds on you grow strong again.
learn the transformations through and through:
what in your life has most tormented you?
If the water's sour, turn it into wine.
Our senses cannot fathom this night, so
Be the meaning of their strange encounter;
at their crossing, be the radiant centre.
And should the world itself forget your name
Say this to the still earth: I flow.
Say this to the quick stream: I am.

[Hes]

Alf and Freckle...great choices!!! Will read and savour again as soon as I have a bit more time.