Today's poet

[Alf]

Robert Frost returning from abroad finds things are not the same anymore especially when his girlfriend rejects his marriage proposal. He compares the end of the relationship with the end of the season and decides he should treat them both the same.

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost

[Wheeze]

OK, I'll go for the free form-whatever pops in to my head school.

Umm,
How about:

Buzzards call,
Bluff stone wall.
Lambs bleat,
Smell of peat.
Azure sky,
Yes, I can fly

Forever over these tumbling hills,
Soul free, heart light and full of life.

[Hes]

Its good to have a new voice on here Wheeze and I like both your offerings. Keep them coming.

OK, I'll go for the free form-whatever pops in to my head school.

Umm,
How about:

Buzzards call,
Bluff stone wall.
Lambs bleat,
Smell of peat.
Azure sky,
Yes, I can fly

Forever over these tumbling hills,
Soul free, heart light and full of life.

[Hes]

Nice image there Alf and too true! I liked your frostbite poem by the way and its always good to have a bit of Frost on the thread (I like what you did there ).

It must take its own sweet time Wheeze......each poem to be tasted, rolled round the tongue...savoured and swallowed...like a good claret

[Hes]

Problems with the Dictionary

Shouldn't the distance between impossible
and improbable be widened? Might miracle

deserve its own appendix: the ease with which night
becomes winter? There must be a word for it,

a term unique and apropos to star-pocked sky
and village roads blanketed by snow,

a good-natured—but stone drunk—schoolteacher
leaving a warm bar. It is improbable she will drive.

She does. North of town, wind uncovers ice-sheets.
A drift swarms ditch to ditch and the street

becomes impassible (see also impossible). She cannot
u-turn and begins walking home. She forgets

her headlights and roadside crops go miraculous:
snowed-in corn pastures awash in shadows

from her halogen bulbs. Another driver
would not see her. None come. The night is nothing more

than boot-prints in fresh powder, a wobbly path
tracking to back-patio where she frees the latch

and lets herself in. Her high-beams will burn
to sunrise. Her frozen steps will melt beyond definition.

Luke Johnson

[freckle]

Robert Frost returning from abroad finds things are not the same anymore especially when his girlfriend rejects his marriage proposal. He compares the end of the relationship with the end of the season and decides he should treat them both the same.

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost

a lovely melancholy offering from frost, i also enjoyed contributionsfrom hes and wheeze's orginal work...

had a lovely wintry run today, no snow as yet but plenty of frost underfoot casting a twinkling spell over the woodland i was scampering through...looking forward to a snowy run soon hopefully...

Stars
Robert Frost

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those stars like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

[Mossdog]

Coral

This coral's shape ecohes the hand
It hollowed. Its

Immediate absence is heavy. As pumice,
As your breast in my cupped palm.

Sea-cold, its nipple rasps like sand,
Its pores, like yours, shone with salt sweat.

Bodies in absence displace their weight,
And your smooth body, like none other,

Creates an exact absence like this stone
Set on a table with a whitening rack

Of souvenirs. It dares my hand
To claim what lovers' hands have never known:

The nature of the body of another.


Derek Walcott

[Mossdog]

I know gluttony is a sin, but this extra one from Derek is just too superb not to be tasted as well.


‘Sixty Years After’

In my wheelchair in the Virgin lounge at Vieuxfort,
I saw, sitting in her own wheelchair,
her beauty
hunched like a crumpled flower,
the one whom I thought
as the fire of my young life would do her duty
to be golden and beautiful and young forever
even as I aged.

She was treble-chinned, old,
her devastating smile was netted in wrinkles,
but I felt the fever
briefly returning as we sat there, crippled, hating
time and the lie of general pleasantries.
Small waves still break against the small stone pier
where a boatman left me in the orange peace
of dusk, a half-century ago,
maybe happier being erect,
she like a deer in her shyness,

I stalking an impossible consummation;
those who knew us
knew we would never be together,
at least, not walking.
Now the silent knives from the intercom went through us.

by Derek Walcott

[freckle]

Coral

This coral's shape ecohes the hand
It hollowed. Its

Immediate absence is heavy. As pumice,
As your breast in my cupped palm.

Sea-cold, its nipple rasps like sand,
Its pores, like yours, shone with salt sweat.

Bodies in absence displace their weight,
And your smooth body, like none other,

Creates an exact absence like this stone
Set on a table with a whitening rack

Of souvenirs. It dares my hand
To claim what lovers' hands have never known:

The nature of the body of another.


Derek Walcott

Ooo la la!...i remember when sunday nights had this theme regularly..or was it saturdays?....anyway, jolly good mossy!

[freckle]

I know gluttony is a sin, but this extra one from Derek is just too superb not to be tasted as well.


‘Sixty Years After’

In my wheelchair in the Virgin lounge at Vieuxfort,
I saw, sitting in her own wheelchair,
her beauty
hunched like a crumpled flower,
the one whom I thought
as the fire of my young life would do her duty
to be golden and beautiful and young forever
even as I aged.

She was treble-chinned, old,
her devastating smile was netted in wrinkles,
but I felt the fever
briefly returning as we sat there, crippled, hating
time and the lie of general pleasantries.
Small waves still break against the small stone pier
where a boatman left me in the orange peace
of dusk, a half-century ago,
maybe happier being erect,
she like a deer in her shyness,

I stalking an impossible consummation;
those who knew us
knew we would never be together,
at least, not walking.
Now the silent knives from the intercom went through us.

by Derek Walcott

beautiful choice...very poignant