Today's poet

[Mossdog]

Creative Haiku juices are running tonight from Hes,Mossy and DT

I had a sublime run tonight. One of those times when you think you can run forever. Running fast on the flat and feeling strong on the hills with the road falling away under your feet for a change rather than trying to trip you up or stop you in your tracks.

Time for a bit of Willy Wordsworth from 'The Prelude' methinks


So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din
Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars
Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.
Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
To cut across the reflex of a star
That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed
Upon the glassy plain; and oftentimes,
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
Wheeled by me--even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round!
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.

Now that poem is highly appropriate Alf, thanks for posting it. Sounds like you were really flowing - isn't it just sublime when you hit the delicate balance, a kind of effortless synchrony, of mind-body-circumstance. Those sparkling moments/experiences are just so intoxicating.

[Hes]

That's so odd...I thought DT and typed Steve...doh!

Surely you mean nice one Derby Tup??? Can't reveal his real name:wink:

[stevefoster]

That's so odd...I thought DT and typed Steve...doh!

Been out running
Fell on me head
Thought DT, typed Steve, instead:wink:

[Hes]

:thumbup:Brilliant DT...I mean Steve.:wink:

Been out running
Fell on me head
Thought DT, typed Steve, instead:wink:

[Mossdog]

Petals

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Amy Lowell

[Alf]

Petals

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Amy Lowell

Loved that one Mossy. Its amazing how many streams and rivers appear in poems, the perfect metaphor for the passage of time

[Alf]

Sailing To Byzantium


That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
---Those dying generations---at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.


William Butler Yeats

[freckle]

Petals

Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart;
The end lost in dream,
They float past our view,
We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,
Crimsoned with joy,
We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;
Their widening scope,
Their distant employ,
We never shall know. And the stream as it flows
Sweeps them away,
Each one is gone
Ever beyond into infinite ways.
We alone stay
While years hurry on,
The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Amy Lowell

Some wonderful choices of late on this thread, I really enjoyed this and Alf's bit of the Prelude as well as the various haiku.

[freckle]

meant to post this last night but one child (who is now fine) projectile vomitted all over her bedroom...still better late than never...

Danse Russe
by William Carlos Williams
If when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees, -if I in my north roomdance naked, grotesquelybefore my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely, I was born to be lonely,I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades, -Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?

[Alf]

meant to post this last night but one child (who is now fine) projectile vomitted all over her bedroom...still better late than never...

Danse Russe
by William Carlos Williams
If when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees, -if I in my north roomdance naked, grotesquelybefore my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely, I was born to be lonely,I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades, -Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?

I enjoyed the poem freckle.

I was not sure whether the "better late than never" applied to the projectile vomiting or the poem though