Tag: Poem

Sonnet

We took up books of verse and lingered long ...

Illusions of Innocence ~

Time was, the sun stood high and corn grew green,
The juice of youth coursed through our throbbing veins.
Love easy and free as the night was keen.
The grass our bed, our bath the gentle rains.

We took up books of verse and lingered long,
Imagined we were wise as those in odes,
Took guidance from the lyrics of a song,
Cast off the quaint restraint of outworn codes.

All along, ignoring every sign:
The chill that comes and strikes the landscape dead,
The smut that spoils the corn and rots the vine,
The vulture drifting gravely overhead,
And, one subtle clue even less benign,
That not one selfless thought entered our head.

Love the one you're with ...

Hometown Haiku

Depression couple

~ Haiku for My Parents ~

Depression couple,
Never quite got the memo
That it was over.

Hometown Haiku

 

tombstones

Haiku for My Brother

Last time I saw him
We wandered among tombstones.
Now, he has his own.

Flower Time

I loved you first in lilac time
I loved you first in lilac time ….

Flower Time

I saw you first in jonquil time,
When you were bathed in grace.
You sat aglow with fire sublime,
And golden shone your face.

I loved you first in lilac time.
A bloom I plucked for you.
I wrote you verse with song and rhyme.
I hoped you loved me too.

I kissed you first in tulip time,
It must have been a sign.
The buds and we were in our prime
When your two lips met mine.

I married you in daisy time
On summer’s longest day.
We traded rings and heard bells chime.
We pledged always to stay.

Too soon we’ve come to aster time.
The days are shorter now.
Would stealing some be such a crime?
We’ll make it right somehow.

Should we endure ’til wintertime,
The time when flowers sleep,
Dreams we’ll share of a gentler clime
Where we no more shall weep.

Christmas Haiku

 

Nativity scene

Christmas Haiku

Inexplicable.
That the author casts himself
In such a small role.

Further thoughts about pearls …

Oyster.shell

Usually, I have a pretty good sense about when I’m done writing a poem.

But, after I posted that last poem–the one about writing poetry–I wasn’t satisfied.  It just didn’t feel finished to me.

I didn’t like the ending.  I didn’t really like the photo I had taken to illustrate it.  It just wasn’t right.

So, I went down to the beach of Liberty Bay on the Puget Sound, and found an oyster shell.  It inspired me to write a final stanza for the poem.

I feel much better about it now.

As the Oyster Forms the Pearl

As the oyster forms the pearl,
So the poet pens the verse
As balm for the current ache
Born out of the ancient curse.

As the oyster feels compelled
To shellac the sandy grain,
So the poet feels the urge
To transmogrify the pain.

So the pearl grows rich and round
As its luster covers the sand.
So the verse unseen takes form
In its way, designed unplanned.

Sad the pearl that lies unseen
In the depths of the murky sea.
Sad the verse that dies unheard
In the heart clandestinely.

So the diver frees the pearl,
Breaks the stony shell apart.
So the poet frees the verse
Ripped out of his broken heart.

 

 

 

 

Poems about writing poetry

Pearls

It seems like, eventually, every poet writes about writing poetry.

One of my favorites is Raymond Carver’s “Reaching”:

Reaching

He knew he was
in trouble when,
in the middle
of the poem,
he found himself
reaching
for his thesaurus
and then Webster’s
in that order.

What writer hasn’t found themselves in just that situation?

Billy Collins, writing more about poetry students than poetry, wrote this in his Introduction to Poetry:

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Isn’t that just like students — so desperate to capture “what it really means,” that they beat a poem to death?

This is my contribution to the vein of poems about poetry.  Just a bit of a drawn out metaphor, really.

As the Oyster Forms the Pearl

As the oyster forms the pearl,
So the poet pens the verse
As balm for the current ache
Born out of the ancient curse.

As the oyster feels compelled
To shellac the sandy grain,
So the poet senses the urge
To transmogrify the pain.

So the pearl grows rich and round
As its luster covers the sand.
So the verse unseen takes form
In its way, designed unplanned.

Sad the pearl that lies unseen
In the depths of the murky sea.
Sad the verse that dies unheard
In the heart clandestinely.

Hometown sonnet

Hometown
Life used to bustle round our stately square …

Hometown Sonnet

The old hometown is aging, as am I.
The once wide streets grow narrow with the years.
As night descends, you all but hear a sigh,
For what once was has gone, and twilight nears.
 
Now, friends and kinsmen number fewer too,
And memories fade like the painted sign
Proclaiming that the city “welcomes you!”
Strange how one’s soul and place so intertwine.
 
Life used to bustle round our stately square
’Til commerce shifted to the edge of town.
The grand facades are now much worse for wear.
Some landmarks have been torn completely down.
The business of my life took me elsewhere.
Cracks grew in walkways of both man and town.

 

 

A poem for Thanksgiving

Frost.in.morning.jpg

This Thanksgiving morning we awoke to a nice frost here in Western Washington.  We don’t get frost all that often in this gentle, marine climate, so it’s beautiful and rare treat.  Just one more thing to be thankful for today.

Here’s a little poem of thanksgiving written many years ago on another frosty day.

FROST IN MORNING

When the willow world is with hoarfrost hung,
And the white fog lifts leaving trees bright new,
The foliage flashes with a crystal clue
Of how the world looked when light first leaped young.

Before man’s weight and weakness had begun
To break the branch or bruise the sodden slough,
The garden grew unburdened, bathed in dew,
Grew like a canticle, perfectly sung.