A Poem A Day

[brokenclay]

On 11/7/2021 at 2:36 AM, migo984 said:

That is lovely! 

 

I thought so, too, thank you!

 

 

A Mood

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

 

A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness--
Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness;
A fear that is not fear, a pain that has not pain's insistence;
A sense of longing, or of loss, in some foregone existence;
A subtle hurt that never pen has writ nor tongue has spoken--
Such hurt perchance as Nature feels when a blossomed bough is broken.

[brokenclay]

 

Play

by William Carlos Williams

 

Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am,

By what devious means do you contrive

To remain idle? Teach me, O Master.

[brokenclay]

 

From the Snowmelt of '66

by Tomas Tranströmer

translated by Patty Crane

 

Rushing rushing water's rumbling old hypnosis.

The river's flooding the car-graveyard, glittering

behind the masks.

I grab hold of the bridge railing.

The bridge: a large iron bird sailing past death.

 

 

[brokenclay]

 

Clarinet

by Chera Hammons

 

Apart, we are two quiet things:

a person and an instrument.

I in my body,

the clarinet in its case.

 

We are like good friends.

The clarinet takes nothing away from me.

It lets me borrow its notes.

 

If I loan it my breath,

I can speak with its sweet voice.

Together, we will make a world

full of song.

 

 

[txomsy]

A very nice poem.

 

BTW, that's a gorgeous Liliput, I hadn't seen one alike before. Which model is it?

[brokenclay]

42 minutes ago, txomsy said:

A very nice poem.

 

BTW, that's a gorgeous Liliput, I hadn't seen one alike before. Which model is it?

 

The pen is a Schon DSGN Pocket 6 in the Liza Frunk pattern. Somewhat shorter and fatter than the Liliput, I think. 

[txomsy]

Thanks, I didn't know of that one, I think Iooked at Schon pens long ago, but hadn't seen that one. Gorgeous indeed.

[brokenclay]

 

 

Into the Thicket

M. Bartley Seigel

 

We go looking for tea cedar, crow feather, and first snow
to stick, but find the mud still warm under our feet, the Earth's
moist breath still fogging the looking glass this late into fall.

 

Deep in our bones, we know we'll waltz on over the Frost Moon
before the first big freeze cracks Ironwood, and the hunkered
Sun, low in her cross-quarter nest, fades into dim Solstice.

 

The Wind Hag is just now beginning her November dance,
pirouetting north, Superior throbbing her meter
deep into the basalt below and beyond simple ken.

 

Deep in our bones, we feel the forest vibrate in omen,
but as we’ve no one near to confide in, we must worry
our best wishes, casting spells against the coming darkness.

[brokenclay]

 

Red Shift

by David Baker

 

Only here, through the clear lens of language

and under

 

                    the sparkling sky of a new-

moon's night in a cold month, here

 

only

       —I have walked this far without you—

 

where the calm chill fractures each isolate

body like a glass,

 

                               an emptying fear,

I have come, and stand, myself, abstract

 

as a star.

                 All around, in the true deep

 

distances, the trillion trillion trillion

lovely others sail outward,

 

                                              each toward its

own blank end—shattered cells in a burst heart,

 

words waving

                         goodbye—accelerating

 

in exact proportion to this moment,

darkening away

 

                            down the visible

spectrum while I wait, here always, without you

 

at the center of the extending,

                                                     memorial grief.

 

(Schon DSGN Pocket Six Redshift, 1.5 mm stub, Nemosine Neptune Blue)

[brokenclay]

 

Silence

by Thomas Hood

 

There is a silence where hath been no sound, 

   There is a silence where no sound may be, 

   In the cold grave—under the deep deep sea, 

Or in the wide desert where no life is found, 

Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound; 

   No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently, 

   But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free, 

That never spoke, over the idle ground: 

But in green ruins, in the desolate walls 

   Of antique palaces, where Man hath been, 

Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls, 

   And owls, that flit continually between, 

Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan, 

There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone. 

[Mercian]

I would like to offer some contributions to this thread - but brokenclay's handwriting is beautiful, whereas mine by comparison looks like something that a cat's regurgitated

 

I need to get improving my scrawl before Lowering the Tone here!

[brokenclay]

19 minutes ago, Mercian said:

I would like to offer some contributions to this thread - but brokenclay's handwriting is beautiful, whereas mine by comparison looks like something that a cat's regurgitated

 

I need to get improving my scrawl before Lowering the Tone here!

 

I respectfully disagree! Get on in there, and write out a poem for us!

[brokenclay]

 

 

Missed Time

by Ha Jin

 

My notebook has remained blank for months 

thanks to the light you shower 

around me. I have no use 

for my pen, which lies 

languorously without grief. 

 

Nothing is better than to live 

a storyless life that needs 

no writing for meaning— 

when I am gone, let others say 

they lost a happy man, 

though no one can tell how happy I was.

[Mercian]

18 hours ago, brokenclay said:

Missed Time

by Ha Jin...

 

 

That is indeed a lovely poem
Would you mind telling me what that pen is, and also which ink that is?

[Mercian]

On 11/24/2021 at 2:00 AM, brokenclay said:

 

I respectfully disagree! Get on in there, and write out a poem for us!

 

Well, OK, here goes:

 

 

I hope all y'all like the poem

[brokenclay]

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

 

That is indeed a lovely poem
Would you mind telling me what that pen is, and also which ink that is?

 

That's a modern Aurora Duo Cart (which, contrary to its name, holds only one cartridge), with Chesterfield Antique Oxford. Chesterfield inks are no longer around; I believe they were actually Diamine inks, rebranded by XFountainPens. XFountainPens eventually became Birmingham Pens.

 

 

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

I hope all y'all like the poem

 

Love it! Very Dorothy Parker. I don't think you need to worry about your handwriting at all.

[brokenclay]

 

Leaves

by Ursula K. LeGuin

 

Years do odd things to identity.

What does it mean to say

I am that child in the photograph

at Kishamish in 1935?

Might as well say I am the shadow

of a leaf of the acacia tree

felled seventy years ago

moving on the page the child reads.

Might as well say I am the words she read

or the words I wrote in other years,

flicker of shade and sunlight

as the wind moves through the leaves.

[brokenclay]

 

Balance

by Alice B. Fogel

 

Balance is everything, is the only

way to hold on.

I've weighed the alternatives, the hold

as harbor: It isn't safe

to let go. But consider the hover,

choices made, the moment

between later and too late.

Hesitation is later, regret

too late. You can't keep turning

and turning, or expecting

to return. This earth

 

is not a wheel, it is a rock

that erodes, mountain by mountain.

And I have been too soft,

like sandstone, but there is a point

where I stand without a story,

immutable and moved, solid

as a breath in winter air.

 

I have seen my death and I know

it is my neighbor, my brother,

my keeper. In my life

I am going to keep trying

for the balance,

 

remembering the risks and the value

of extremes, and that experience

teaches the length of allowable lean;

that it is easier — and wiser —

to balance a stone as if on one toe

though it weigh a hundred pounds

 

than to push it back against the curve

of its own world.

[brokenclay]

 

Advent

by Rae Armantrout

 

In front of the craft shop,

a small nativity,

mother, baby, sheep

made of white

and blue balloons.

 

                  *

 

Sky

           god

                      girl.

 

Pick out the one

that doesn’t belong.

 

                  *

 

Some thing

 

close to nothing

                               flat

from which,

 

fatherless,

everything has come.

[GlenV]

Just a short simple one thanks brokenclay for education in poet’s

work