A Poem A Day

[brokenclay]

 

I Am The Song

by Charles Causley

 

I am the song that sings the bird.

I am the leaf that grows the land.

I am the tide that moves the moon.

I am the stream that halts the sand.

I am the cloud that drives the storm.

I am the earth that lights the sun.

I am the fire that strikes the stone.

I am the clay that shapes the hand.

I am the word that speaks the man.

[mizgeorge]

Beautiful.

[brokenclay]

48 minutes ago, mizgeorge said:

Beautiful.

Thought-provoking, isn't it? Really like this one.

[PuliMorgan]

23 hours ago, brokenclay said:

 

I Am The Song

by Charles Causley

 

I am the song that sings the bird.

I am the leaf that grows the land.

I am the tide that moves the moon.

I am the stream that halts the sand.

I am the cloud that drives the storm.

I am the earth that lights the sun.

I am the fire that strikes the stone.

I am the clay that shapes the hand.

I am the word that speaks the man.

 

Brilliant! I have borrowed this without your permission. Hope you don't mind

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/360671-a-quote-a-day-or-whatever-stuff-whenever-i-can/?do=findComment&comment=4508290

[brokenclay]

26 minutes ago, PuliMorgan said:

 

Brilliant! I have borrowed this without your permission. Hope you don't mind

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/360671-a-quote-a-day-or-whatever-stuff-whenever-i-can/?do=findComment&comment=4508290

 

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And your handwritten version is lovely and flowing.

[brokenclay]

 

Saying Farewell at the Monastery after Hearing the Old Master Lecture on “Return to the Source”

by Gary Snyder

 

At the last turn in the path

          “goodbye—”

          —bending, bowing,

       (moss and a bit of

          wild

             bird-)

down. 

                                                                   Daitoku-ji Monastery

 

[brokenclay]

 

To Put it Differently

by Natan Zach

translated by Peter Cole

 

Poetry chooses choice things, carefully selecting

select words, arranging,

fabulously, things arranged. To put it differently

is hard, if not out of the question.

 

Poetry's like a clay plate. It's broken easily

under the weight of all those poems. In the hands

of the poet, it sings. In those of others, not only

doesn't it sing, it's out of the question.

 

[brokenclay]

 

Dawn at Saint Anna’s Skete

by Scott Cairns

 

Agion Oros, 2006

 

The air is cool and is right thick with birdsong

as our bleary crew files out, of a sudden 

disinterred from three sepulchral hours of prayer

into an amber brilliance rioting

outside the cemetery chapel. With bits

of   Greek and English intermixed, the monks

invite us to the portico for coffee, 

παξιμάδια, a shot of cold ρακί.

As I say, the air is cool, animate 

and lit, and in such light the road already 

beckons, so I skip the coffee, pound the shot, 

and pocket two hard biscuits. And yes, the way 

is broad at first, but narrows soon enough.

[brokenclay]

 

Spring

by F. J. Newboult 

 

        Owd Winter gat notice to quit,

           'Cause he'd made sich a pigsty o' t' place,

        An' Summer leuked raand when he'd flit,

           An' she says, "It's a daanreyt disgrace!

              Sich-like ways!

     I niver did see sich a haase to come intul

              i' all my  born days!

 

        But Spring says, "It's my job, is this,

           I'll sooin put things streyt, niver fear.

        Ye go off to t' Spaws a bit, Miss,

           An' leave me to fettle up here!"

              An' sitha!

     Shoo's donned a owd appron, an' tucked up her sleaves,

              an' set to, with a witha!

 

        Tha can tell, when t' hail pelts tha like mad,

           At them floors bides a bit of a scrub;

        Tha knaws t' flegstuns mun ha' been bad,

           When she teems aat all t' wotter i' t' tub.

              Mind thy eyes!

     When shoo gets hod o' t' long brush an' sweeps aat them chamers,

              I'll tell tha, t' dust flies!

 

        Whol shoo's threng tha'll be best aat o' t' gate:

           Shoo'll care nowt for soft tawk an' kisses.

        To tell her thy mind, tha mun wait

           Whol shoo's getten things ready for t' missis.

              When shoo's done,

     Shoo'll doff her owd appron, an' slip aat i' t' garden,

              an' call tha to come.

 

        Aye, Summer is t' roses' awn queen,

           An' shoo sits i' her state, grandly dressed;

        But Spring's twice as bonny agean,

           When shoo's donned hersen up i' her best

              Gaan o' green,

     An' stands all i' a glow,- wi' a smile on her lips

              an' a leet i' her een.

 

        To t' tips of her fingers shoo's wick.

           Tha can see t' pulses beat i' her braa.

        Tha can feel her soft breath comin' quick,

           An' it thrills tha-tha duzn't knaw haa.

              When ye part,

     Them daffydaandillies shoo's kissed an' then gi'en

              tha—they'll bloom i' thy heart!

 

1914

 

Glossary

Fettle: put in order

Sitha: look

Teems: throws

Threng: busy

Wick: alive, lively

 

[PuliMorgan]

[inkstainedruth]

Interesting poem.  

Even more so is its history.  Because apparently (unlike claims to the contrary) Mary Elizabeth Frye may NOT have written this (and apparently never published it in her lifetime).  A slightly different version, by someone named Clare Harner, was published a similar poem (entitled Immortality) in some poetry magazine called The Gypsy in December of 1934.  There are some variants to the words, and the in the (printed) formatting of the original, which also does not apparently contain the line about "the soft starshine" (instead the line is "I am the day transcending night.") -- yeah, I didn't know this before just a little while ago myself.

Although the poem did seem familiar to me (I'm now wondering if it was part of the burial service for my husband's two brothers's remains a few months ago).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

edited for typos

 

[brokenclay]

 

What I've Come to Discuss

by Karen Volkman

 

What I’ve come to discuss is mostly about shadows

and the airs left behind in caring, discarding,

the long inhibitions of whereso and when.

Alabaster, a dark quire, in its many pages and premises

the maze, from which move

tendrilled purples and contusions, magnificent

fuchsia receivers of false content,

the splayed flower, arterial, like the premise of a door

is where it leads to or from. Communication

of vessel, vial, capsule, hull, a tiniest nil

fires the neurons from their swooning stall,

is not a healing but adaptation to same

a quickening in deleting of sensation

a prior sizing. Stacked leaves (green shadows)

are givens in the columned garden, what work is needed

to determine that shape? Some hysteric

trope of repetition, rage for accretion,

dazed by its own mute replication,

like the minute lines of a hand. They are

its cries (writes Ponge, among others),

the tongue inseparable from its utterance (langue).

We weep to hear it, a language forgot.

I was saying I keep speaking

from some chamber sound deleted, which is why

I never call or write. In that theatre are many eclipses

and moons refracted in pinholes and wheels

wherein revolve astonished birds, and the Queen of Night

sleeps a rest restorative and profitable, and

andante allegro, the dead ships never sail.

[brokenclay]

 

Music at My Mother's Funeral

by Faith Shearin

 

During the weeks when we all believed my mother
was likely to die she began to plan
her funeral and she wanted us, her children,
to consider the music we would play there. We remembered
the soundtrack of my mother’s life: the years when she swept
the floors to the tunes of an eight track cassette called Feelings,
the Christmas when she bought a Bing Crosby album
about a Bright Hawaiian Christmas Day. She got Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring stuck in the tape deck of her car and for months
each errand was accompanied by some kind
of dramatic movement. After my brother was born,
there was a period during which she wore a muumuu
and devoted herself to King Sunny Ade and his
African beats. She ironed and wept to Evita, painted
to Italian opera. Then, older and heavier, she refused
to fasten her seatbelt and there was the music
of an automated bell going off every few minutes,
which annoyed the rest of us but did not seem to matter
to my mother who ignored its relentless disapproval,
its insistence that someone was unsafe.

[brokenclay]

 

Mountain

by Clifton Gachagua

 

On the day I set out on the climb,

grief saddled in my back like a bag of marbles,

my breath like clouds hanging on the low peaks of a mountain,

on the day I set out

leaving nothing behind, nothing on the bed, no version of myself,

just my voice through the night, the voice I use to ward off nightmares.

(My voice is a still life in itself, a shroud green and ultramarine deep blue,

a bowl of apples and tangerines on a table.)

On the day I set out,

the mountain is high in front of me, the unreliable god of mist and fog.

I have no voice to say how high

my fingers must lift as if on a lover's upper lip,

to take in the breath of how high my mountain is—white teeth behind

a snow cap, numberless springs, cold like the enzymes in spit—

a version of me is still asleep: the moving of a limb in sleep.

Everything becomes lucid.

[brokenclay]

On 1/11/2021 at 7:12 AM, brokenclay said:

 

One Perfect Rose

by Dorothy Parker

 

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.

All tenderly his messenger he chose;

Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet

One perfect rose.

 

I knew the language of the flow'ret;

"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."

Love long has taken for his amulet

One perfect rose.

 

Why is it no one ever sent me yet

One perfect limousine, do you suppose?

Ah no, it's always just my luck to get

One perfect rose.

 

Sometimes you just need a little sarcasm...

 

I'm recycling this one for St Valentine's Eve.

[mizgeorge]

35 minutes ago, brokenclay said:

 

I'm recycling this one for St Valentine's Eve.

And well worth it!

[brokenclay]

 

Carrying a Ladder

by Kay Ryan

 

We are always

really carrying

a ladder, but it’s

invisible. We

only know

something’s

the matter:

something precious

crashes; easy doors

prove impassable.

Or, in the body,

there’s too much

swing or off-

center gravity.

And, in the mind,

a drunken capacity,

access to out-of-range

apples. As though

one had a way to climb

out of the damage

and apology.

[brokenclay]

 

Planting the Meadow

by Mary Makofske

 

I leave the formal garden of schedules
where hours hedge me, clip the errant sprigs
of thought, and day after day, a boxwood
topiary hunt chases a green fox
never caught. No voice calls me to order
as I enter a dream of meadow, kneel
to earth and, moving east to west, second
the motion only of the sun. I plant
frail seedlings in the unplowed field, trusting
the wildness hidden in their hearts. Spring light
sprawls across false indigo and hyssop,
daisies, flax. Clouds form, dissolve, withhold
or promise rain. In time, outside of time,
the unkempt afternoons fill up with flowers.

[brokenclay]

A poem that rhymes!

 

 

Chanson Philosophique 

by Timothy Steele

 

The nominalist in me invents

A life devoid of precedents.

The realist takes a different view:

He claims that all I feel and do

Billions of others felt and did

In history’s Pre-me period.

 

Arguing thus, both voices speak

A partial truth. I am unique,

Yet the unceasing self-distress

Of desire buffets me no less

Than it has other sons of man

Who’ve come and gone since time began.

 

The meaning, then, of this dispute?

My life’s a nominal/real pursuit,

Which leaves identity clear and blurred,

In which what happens has occurred

Often and never—which is to say,

Never to me, or quite this way.

[brokenclay]

 

Haiku

by TC Tolbert

 

the gate is inside

of me –  i am holding it

open with a rock