the most recent poem you have read

[virtuoso]

I read this seasonal medley enshrouded with love. Enjoy!


The Four Seasons
By cjkrieger on 03/25/2015

Small speckles of wild grass
Looking like tiny green drops
That had fallen to the earth
Were the very first sign

Waving in the breeze
With their feathery tops rippling
They slowly reached for the sun
Growing much taller than myself

Then the dragonflies
Darting about like lost Messerschmitts
Looking for a place to land
Foretold of the coming

As I looked down the long winding path
I saw off in the distance
A slight figure of a woman
Drawing closer and closer

It was you
(And I had missed you so)
With your smiling face
And your arms wildly waving hello

Must be spring


The unusually humid
Hot summer night
Found my hands sliding
Along your warm, moist body

As I watched you
Uncovered
Lying nakedly on the cool sheets
My eyes followed a single drop
Of beaded sweat
Which had leisurely rolled down
Your gentle curves
And magically disappeared

As you awoke to my touch
Smiling
We both followed
The movements of my fingers
Thoroughly searching
For a single drop of water
Lost within the folds
Of your thighs

Must be summer


There was not a bird in the sky
They had all fallen
Into the top
Of a large red oak tree
On the northeast side of the meadow

Each one singing
Louder than the next
Until all the leaves shattered
And fell

Must be autumn


A single leaf
On a tree
Unyielding
Is all that remains
As a tribute to summer

While on the ground
Changing patterns with the blowing wind
The dry crinkling sound of leaves
Moves to and fro

As the tree quietly sleeps
Waiting
For the chilly mornings to pass
And the warmth of a spring rain
To say hello

I sit at my window
Staring down the road
Counting the passing days
Until I see your smiling face
And your arms wildly waving hello

Must be winter

[YesNo]

I read a poem by Steve Henn among my emails from Rattle today and checked out his website. http://www.therealstevehenn.com/theliveexperience.html

I enjoyed his humor.

[YesNo]

I remember hearing this as a child in a cartoon, but I forgot it until I saw shadow of iris's blog: http://www.shadowofiris.com/the-arro...-w-longfellow/

The Arrow and the Song
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1845

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

[Diggory Venn]

I have just read "A Sunday Morning Tragedy" by Thomas Hardy, which was published in his 1909 collection "Time`s Laughingstocks". Unfortunately it is too long to copy here and I cannot find a link, but it is worth seeking out (No. 155 in the "Complete Poems"). But be prepared - it is typical Hardy, much in the same vein as his last two major novels...

[tailor STATELY]

Sonnet 18 - William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[Poetaster]

Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself'. I'll post just the first few lines, but I like a lot of it very much.

I

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

[qimissung]

I read this seasonal medley enshrouded with love. Enjoy!


The Four Seasons
By cjkrieger on 03/25/2015

Small speckles of wild grass
Looking like tiny green drops
That had fallen to the earth
Were the very first sign

Waving in the breeze
With their feathery tops rippling
They slowly reached for the sun
Growing much taller than myself

Then the dragonflies
Darting about like lost Messerschmitts
Looking for a place to land
Foretold of the coming

As I looked down the long winding path
I saw off in the distance
A slight figure of a woman
Drawing closer and closer

It was you
(And I had missed you so)
With your smiling face
And your arms wildly waving hello

Must be spring


The unusually humid
Hot summer night
Found my hands sliding
Along your warm, moist body

As I watched you
Uncovered
Lying nakedly on the cool sheets
My eyes followed a single drop
Of beaded sweat
Which had leisurely rolled down
Your gentle curves
And magically disappeared

As you awoke to my touch
Smiling
We both followed
The movements of my fingers
Thoroughly searching
For a single drop of water
Lost within the folds
Of your thighs

Must be summer


There was not a bird in the sky
They had all fallen
Into the top
Of a large red oak tree
On the northeast side of the meadow

Each one singing
Louder than the next
Until all the leaves shattered
And fell

Must be autumn


A single leaf
On a tree
Unyielding
Is all that remains
As a tribute to summer

While on the ground
Changing patterns with the blowing wind
The dry crinkling sound of leaves
Moves to and fro

As the tree quietly sleeps
Waiting
For the chilly mornings to pass
And the warmth of a spring rain
To say hello

I sit at my window
Staring down the road
Counting the passing days
Until I see your smiling face
And your arms wildly waving hello

Must be winter

This is beautiful, virtuoso! Thank you so much for sharing!

[Diggory Venn]

Yesterday, the weather being particularly fine in the north of England we journeyed to Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire for a day out. Whilst enjoying the surrounding landscape we visited St Mary and St Cuthbert church, which adjoins the ruined priory. The graveyard there being very nice, commanding spectacular views. Anyhow, I was reminded of a favourite poem (as I always am when visiting churchyards) and when I returned home I read it again;

A Churchyard

Hundreds of times has grief been here,
Hundreds of mourners themselves lie here,
For some no grieved hearts followed their bier,
They had outlived all who shed a tear.

Emma Hardy (1911)

[~Ji]

O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman

And few others by WW. I pick up 'Leaves of Grass' every month or so and revisit a few favourites. It will be noted (because I know how to spell 'favourites') that I am not American. Nevertheless, the patriotism that pervades so much of Walt Whitman's writing speaks of and to humanity way beyond national borders.

[tailor STATELY]

To The Poet On The Subject Of Flowers (English translation) - Arthur Rimbaud http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-th...ct-of-flowers/

"electric butterflies" !

[Danik 2016]

I presently am reading the Brazilian poet Manoel the Barros. To my glad surprise I discovered that some of his poetry has been traduced.
ombmagazine.org/article/3060/five-poems

[Diggory Venn]

`Christmas 1924`

`Peace upon earth !` was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We`ve got as far as poison-gas.

Thomas Hardy. 1924

[Danik 2016]

Too true! Hardy witnessed the beginning of it all.

[sandy14]

one more good one by Charles Bukowski in Pleasures of the Damned

[comocaza]

There goes mine from my Canadian Literature course:

THE LONELY LAND, by A.J. Smith

Cedar and jagged fir
uplift sharp barbs
against the gray
and cloud-piled sky;
and in the bay
blown spume and windrift
and thin, bitter spray
snap
at the whirling sky;
and the pine trees
lean one way.
*
A wild duck calls
to her mate,
and the ragged
and passionate tones
stagger and fall,
and recover,
and stagger and fall,
on these stones —
are lost
in the lapping of water
on smooth, flat stones.
This is a beauty
of dissonance,
this resonance
of stony strand,
this smoky cry
curled over a black pine
like a broken
and wind-battered branch
when the wind
bends the tops of the pines
and curdles the sky
from the north.
*
This is the beauty
of strength
broken by strength
and still strong.