Today's poet

[Mossdog]

Sorry to hear about the cold Hes. Great to see you visiting the thread too.


I Think, ACHOO!, I Have the Flu

I think, ACHOO!, I have the flu.
I'm sneezing, and ACHOO! ACHOO!
I'm not sure what, ACHOO!, to do.
You say, ACHOO!, don't sneeze on you?
ACHOO! Whoops. Now you've got it too.

Kenn Nesbitt

[Mossdog]

Saw this today and really liked it.

Winter Mantel
'Terar dum prosim' (a motto from Thomas Carlyle's home)

The copper vessel boasts its age
In the hand-hammered, tarnished sides.
The iron handle scrolls, then slides
Through hoops and crimps. Your fingers gauge

The vessel's volume, which you feed
With cones until you overflow
The brim. These wooden lilacs grow
Like blooms to shield ovules and seed

Beneath a shingled core. The winter
Winds and the snows won't break the spell
You stoke. Like conifers, we dwell
In timber towers. All might splinter

Like ornaments on loosened wire.
Beneath the clock you kindle love
For kids whose stockings hang above
Carlyle's creed and midnight's fire:

"Consumed in service" like the cones,
A hearth adorned to warm our bones.

by David Livewell

Like it. It reminds me of my favourite word which I learned from living in northern Namibia with the kwanyama for a few years....kondongolondongo meaning 'all used up" or "knackered". The word is almost a poem in itself !!:w00t:

[Hes]

ha ha, brilliant!:thumbup:

Sorry to hear about the cold Hes. Great to see you visiting the thread too.


I Think, ACHOO!, I Have the Flu

I think, ACHOO!, I have the flu.
I'm sneezing, and ACHOO! ACHOO!
I'm not sure what, ACHOO!, to do.
You say, ACHOO!, don't sneeze on you?
ACHOO! Whoops. Now you've got it too.

Kenn Nesbitt

[Hes]

Bet you've got some good stories to tell from that time. The word is great, I'm going to jot it down in my book. I have a notebook where I like to put random and interesting things. I carried one on my travels round Asia and South America and one of my favourite pages has some verbs from a dictionary that a missionary created whilst living among the Yamana people in Tierra del Fuego. Here is an example: 'Ukwina - to surprise shags by suddenly drawing out and holding up a lighted torch, the effect of which is to cause the shags to fall as if shot'.

Like it. It reminds me of my favourite word which I learned from living in northern Namibia with the kwanyama for a few years....kondongolondongo meaning 'all used up" or "knackered". The word is almost a poem in itself !!:w00t:

[Mossdog]

Bet you've got some good stories to tell from that time. The word is great, I'm going to jot it down in my book. I have a notebook where I like to put random and interesting things. I carried one on my travels round Asia and South America and one of my favourite pages has some verbs from a dictionary that a missionary created whilst living among the Yamana people in Tierra del Fuego. Here is an example: 'Ukwina - to surprise shags by suddenly drawing out and holding up a lighted torch, the effect of which is to cause the shags to fall as if shot'.

Ahem!! I had to VERY carefully re-read your post to make sure I had correctly understood the topic. Ah yes, ornithology and not a reference to a highly unorthodox means of contraception !

[Hes]

:thumbup:

Ahem!! I had to VERY carefully re-read your post to make sure I had correctly understood the topic. Ah yes, ornithology and not a reference to a highly unorthodox means of contraception !

[Alf]

Mein Gott! You two seem to have a a dose of festive melancholia.

Ok. So now for something slightly more yummy...well sort of...

To Mrs K____, On Her Sending Me an English Christmas Plum-Cake at Paris

What crowding thoughts around me wake,
What marvels in a Christmas-cake!
Ah say, what strange enchantment dwells
Enclosed within its odorous cells?
Is there no small magician bound
Encrusted in its snowy round?
For magic surely lurks in this,
A cake that tells of vanished bliss;
A cake that conjures up to view
The early scenes, when life was new;
When memory knew no sorrows past,
And hope believed in joys that last! —
Mysterious cake, whose folds contain
Life’s calendar of bliss and pain;
That speaks of friends for ever fled,
And wakes the tears I love to shed.
Oft shall I breathe her cherished name
From whose fair hand the offering came:
For she recalls the artless smile
Of nymphs that deck my native isle;
Of beauty that we love to trace,
Allied with tender, modest grace;
Of those who, while abroad they roam,
Retain each charm that gladdens home,
And whose dear friendships can impart
A Christmas banquet for the heart!

HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS

Good choice Mossy, I love Christmas Cake, always have, and it does provide a nostalgic connection with past Christmases (or is it Christmases past? ). I don't like the marzipan too thick though just a thin section between the icing and that rich cake :thumbup:

[Alf]

Ahem!! I had to VERY carefully re-read your post to make sure I had correctly understood the topic. Ah yes, ornithology and not a reference to a highly unorthodox means of contraception !

This is the poetry thread Mossy not 'Carry on Rhyming'

[freckle]

A Dream Within a Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow: You are not wrong who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand-- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep--while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

[freckle]

The Land of Nod
by Robert Louis Stevenson
From Breakfast on through all the day At home among my friends I stay, But every night I go abroad Afar into the land of Nod. All by myself I have to go, With none to tell me what to do-- All alone beside the streams And up the mountain-sides of dreams. The strangest things are there for me, Both things to eat and things to see, And many frightening sights abroad Till morning in the land of Nod. Try as I like to find the way, I never can get back by day, Nor can remember plain and clear The curious music that I hear.