Today's poet

[freckle]

I've just been chatting to a friend about haiku and wanted to show him the ones on here but 1200 pages ...can any one remember when we had a phase of them?

Hi Ian

Early on in the thread there was loads of haiku. DT was quite prolific (especially on some of his work trips abroad I remember, i hope correctly, when he wrote loads on his trip to japan) as was Hes, OW and many others, in fact almost everyone seemed to have a stab at writing them...we also managed to get some published in the fell runners magazine a while back. I always find them hard to write myself but enjoy reading others, maybe we should have another season..I know that for a while people seemed to get into the habit of writing them whilst running...ah those were the days!

start looking from #169 here is one of the DT originals...

Sat in grey workplace
July sun feels long time done
Headtorch glows in frost


and Hes #4894

Teatime

having simple tastes
tonight I will eat gnocchi
potato disguised

In fact come to think of it Hes produced a book of haiku and prints, Hes here is an excellent opportunity to publicise it!!!!!
:-)

[Alf]

longing for the summer and a day of meandering with nothing much to do.....

The Summer Day
Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

What a great way to finish a poem with a sentence like that

[Alf]

Mary Oliver must be one of the greatest living poets

On Winter's Margin

On winter’s margin, see the small birds now
With half-forged memories come flocking home
To gardens famous for their charity.
The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins
Hang at the entrance to the silent wood.

With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs;
By snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing
Like children for their sire to walk abroad!
But what I love, is the gray stubborn hawk
Who floats alone beyond the frozen vines;
And what I dream of are the patient deer
Who stand on legs like reeds and drink that wind; -

They are what saves the world: who choose to grow
Thin to a starting point beyond this squalor.

Mary Oliver

[Mossdog]

Mary Oliver must be one of the greatest living poets

On Winter's Margin

On winter’s margin, see the small birds now
With half-forged memories come flocking home
To gardens famous for their charity.
The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins
Hang at the entrance to the silent wood.

With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs;
By snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing
Like children for their sire to walk abroad!
But what I love, is the gray stubborn hawk
Who floats alone beyond the frozen vines;
And what I dream of are the patient deer
Who stand on legs like reeds and drink that wind; -

They are what saves the world: who choose to grow
Thin to a starting point beyond this squalor.

Mary Oliver

I second that Alf - she really is. And that last sentence is just sublimely profound.

[freckle]

Mary Oliver must be one of the greatest living poets

On Winter's Margin

On winter’s margin, see the small birds now
With half-forged memories come flocking home
To gardens famous for their charity.
The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins
Hang at the entrance to the silent wood.

With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs;
By snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing
Like children for their sire to walk abroad!
But what I love, is the gray stubborn hawk
Who floats alone beyond the frozen vines;
And what I dream of are the patient deer
Who stand on legs like reeds and drink that wind; -

They are what saves the world: who choose to grow
Thin to a starting point beyond this squalor.

Mary Oliver

great choice...i love the notion of "winter's margin"...i'm just back from a 9 miler around a desolate but beautiful derwent reservoir and towards the end it started to sleet, a contrast to yesterday's spring like feel...perhaps we are oscillating a bit at the minute before spring really begins in earnest

[freckle]

another mary oliver...here her meditation on death makes us appreciate life i think...

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~

[Alf]

another mary oliver...here her meditation on death makes us appreciate life i think...

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Thanks for that freckle, its been a great weekend for Mary Oliver poems :thumbup:

[Alf]

I think we can just have another one though


The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

Mary Oliver

[Mossdog]

YOU

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,
so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,
like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables
like a charm, like a spell.

Falling in love
is glamourous hell; the crouched, parched heart
like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin.
Into my life, larger than life, beautiful you strolled in.

I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass routine,
in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,
staring back from someone's face, from the shape of a cloud,
from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me

as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.


Carol Ann Duffy

[Hes]

Hi Ian,

I've actually got a nine page document that I can send you with all the haiku written by forum members up until post 2510. Why you might ask? because Harry H Howgill and I went through all the posts looking for original poems by members so we could select some to send in to The Fellrunner and we separated the haiku from the longer verses. I'd be happy to email it to you if you pm me your email address. All the haiku are credited to the authors. If anyone else wants a copy, let me know.

Hester

I've just been chatting to a friend about haiku and wanted to show him the ones on here but 1200 pages ...can any one remember when we had a phase of them?